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I confess that this morning’s gospel reading is not the sort of passage that I’m usually drawn to. But, as is often the case, when reading this one over again, something jumped up and bit me on the brain. It was this response by Jesus buried in the middle of the text: “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?” It’s not entirely clear to whom he was speaking as he said this. There was the man who had spoken up from the crowd and asked Jesus to look at his demon-possessed son, there were the disciples to whom the man had turned earlier, and there was the crowd gathered around. To get a handle Jesus’s exasperation, let’s look at each of these possibilities in turn.
First, the man who approached Jesus to begin with. He was clearly in a state of turmoil. His son was going through repeated convulsions, shrieking and foaming at the mouth. Today, we might conclude that he has some disease that is causing seizures; maybe he was epileptic. But in that day it was understood that he was possessed by a demon. The father was at his wits’ end. He turned to Jesus in desperation, calling out to him from the crowd, asking him to look at the boy. It’s hard to hear the biting words of Jesus in response to this man’s earnest plea, referring to his generation as wicked and perverse. As a trained and experienced pastor, I would have been more empathetic. I might have employed a Rogerian therapeutic response, something like, “You are clearly distressed about your son’s condition.” Or I might have simply been more comforting, “I’m so sorry. You must be in such pain about this.” But even if I said nothing at all, surely it would have been better than calling this distraught father and his whole generation “wicked and perverse”. What might Jesus have been trying to say to this guy? Could it be something as cold and unfeeling as: “Why are you looking to me for a cure? This is your lot in life; live with it!”? Playing with that possibility in my mind, I wonder if there is a degree of – albeit cold – comfort.
I wonder if the wisdom of such a response is the same harsh truth that the Lord spoke to Job and his friends at the end of Job’s book. Job has railed and ranted for thirty-four chapters about life being brutal and the Lord Almighty being unfair, and for thirty-four chapters Job’s friends have put him in his place, taking him to task for not trusting in divine goodness and the fairness of life’s balances. In the last chapter that Lord Almighty has appeared on the scene and, as vehemently as Jesus, rebukes Job’s friends because, in the words of the text, “you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” In other words, divine sanction is given to Job’s words, and he is basically saying that life is, indeed, unfair, and so, by extension, we are simply to do our best to learn to live with that unfairness.
If this is what Jesus has a twist in his knickers about, perhaps there is a deep wisdom to be mined here for all of us. All too many of us, I believe, approach life as if it is a kind of candy-store where all that is required of us is to do the right thing – that is, pony up our nickel at the counter – and we will get all the candy we deserve. We’ve all been around long enough to know, rationally, that it doesn’t work that way, but on a primitive, emotional level we feel that it should. And we can find ourselves either sulking and pouting, or desperately chasing after pipe-dream solutions to insoluble problems instead of letting the Spirit do its work to transform our hearts and minds to find the grace to adjust to a less than optimal reality. I don’t know if that’s what Jesus had in mind, but if he didn’t it’s still a pretty good lesson. The crowd that surrounded him was clearly impressed enough by his healing power that they could not be offended by his harsh words. Scripture says “all were astounded.” Maybe these days, our young people would put it in different words: “Awesome!”
Or, let’s consider the possibility that Jesus was speaking to his disciples when he leveled this scathing chastisement. You might note that just before Jesus went on the attack, the man had disclosed that he had gone to the disciples with the problem but they could do nothing. Could it be that he then turned to his closest followers and shot out the words, “faithless and perverse generation”? Was Jesus admonishing them for not having sufficient faith to heal the boy themselves? That also seems like a shot of pretty tough love. Wouldn’t he have gotten further in teaching them about faith by using a “spoonful of sugar” as Mary Poppins says, to help the medicine go down? Why so severe? I’m not sure I have an answer to that, but it does occur to me that faith-healing is a very tricky thing, and maybe the faith required to do it takes a bit of a jolt to wake up to. I remember watching Oral Roberts on television many years ago and seeing it as not much different than the so-called professional wrestling matches that were aired later in the evening. It all looked pretty hokey and staged to me. But then, I also hadn’t had any experience of such a thing. I have certainly heard many stories of people being healed of diseases when doctors could come up with no explanation for the cure. And it’s clear that modern medical science has hardly begun to grasp the power of the mind – the power of faith – in the healing act.
Dadgie and I knew a man of both powerful intellect and extraordinary spirit who was diagnosed with cancer. It was a form that the doctors had no cure for, and he was given months, or at best, a year to live. His response was to create a Japanese rock garden in his back yard. It was a beautiful, serene place with the ground covered by many thousands of small stones of various colors in a circular pattern. He would spend a certain amount of time each day out in the rock garden picking weeds, twigs, and debris blown by the wind out from between the stones. He said that each unwanted thing removed came with a reverent meditation in which he visualized removing cancer cells from his body. His cancer remained in remission and he lived for many years in this way. Is there some special power in faith to heal bodies? I rather believe there is. And maybe Jesus was just tired of the disciples spending so much time with him and still not figuring that out. At any rate that power is something to think about, something to stir the soul in times of distress, something remarkable, something “Awesome!”
But there’s another possibility – a kind of hybrid of these two. And this is my personal favorite. Maybe Jesus was almost mouthing his scathing condemnation under his breath. And maybe it wasn’t directed at any one or any small group of individuals. Perhaps it was an expression of frustration with everyone. Maybe it was intended for the whole crowd gathered there, and by extension, for you and me. And what is the mark of our participation in a “faithless and perverse generation”? Could it be that we so rarely seize either the transformational power of acceptance or the healing power of faith? They are opposite sides of the same coin, you know. The development of the kind of gentle, pliable heart that takes the hurts and traumas of life with grace is just the flip-side of the capacity to use the power of faith to bring healing to at least some of our wounds – physical, mental, and spiritual. And how does any of us gain the grace of that pliable heart or the power of that healing faith? Here’s my best answer: ask for it. You and I may not be the kind of believers who assume that prayer answers everything, but I tell you that it is a window through which the Spirit blows into our lives if we will open it. In fact, according to the New York Times, a study at Carnegie Mellon revealed that “Mindfulness meditation . . . can change the brains of ordinary people and potentially improve their health.”
Frederick Buechner, commenting on today’s gospel reading, writes, “I am saying just this: go to him the way the father of the sick boy did and ask him. Pray to him, is what I am saying. In whatever words you have. And if the little voice that is inside all of us as the inheritance of generations of unfaith, if this little voice inside says, ‘But I don’t believe. I don’t believe,” don’t worry too much. Just keep on anyway. “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief” is the best any of us can do really, but thank God it is enough.
“Seek,” Buechner continues, “and you will find – this power of God’s love to heal, to give peace and, at last, something like real life, so that little by little, like the boy, you can get up. Yes, get up. But we must seek – like a child at first, like playing a kind of game at first because prayer is so foreign to most of us. It is so hard and it is so easy. And everything depends on it. Seek. Ask. And by God’s grace we will find. In Christ’s name and with his power I can promise you this.”
Buechner has hit on the heart of it. Prayer does not heal every wound, resolve every issue, mend every relationship. But it can, little by little, open that window so that the Spirit that flows among us and through us can begin to remake our hearts, heal our purposes, ease our fears, and even, at times, mend our bodies.
And that is, well, “Awesome!”
After the great flood of Genesis, so the story goes, God struck a deal with Noah. Placing a rainbow in the sky, God promised that he would never again send a flood to destroy the earth, and whenever God looked at the rainbow – like a string tied around the divine finger – God would be reminded not to do such a terrible thing again. It’s an etiological tale devised partly to explain why there are such things as rainbows. We now know better. In fact, we have learned that, in a sense, a rainbow isn’t even a “thing.” A rainbow, as we understand it, isn’t actually a physical structure out in the sky somewhere. It really only exists inside our heads. Two separate people and a third with a camera will all see a rainbow, and the camera will record one on film. But they’re not all seeing one thing. Each one sees a different rainbow. It is an optical phenomenon created by the refraction of light from water molecules that is basically created on the retina of our eyes, or the film of a camera.
All of which gives the lie to Dorothy’s notion that “somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue”, since there is no somewhere that lies over a rainbow. And clearly the rainbow’s end is no place for a leprechaun to store his pot of gold, since the place doesn’t exist. But I like the idea of the rainbow as a reminder. When Dadgie and I were given the wonderful gift of trip to Hawaii many years ago, we discovered that one of the most characteristically lovely things about the place is the daily light show. Almost every evening there would be a brief shower followed by a rainbow. Now every time I see a rainbow I can’t help thinking about Hawaii and about the magical time we spent there. I don’t know if a rainbow serves as a divine reminder not to flood the planet, but it certainly can be a reminder of goodness, and worth, and beauty.
In his first epistle, Peter likens the event of the ancient flood to the waters of baptism. He writes, “. . . God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you . . . .” He’s using water as a symbol of the power to save. Admittedly, the analogy is stretched pretty thin in the case of the flood, since the story claims that every man, woman, child, and animal on the planet was destroyed by that water with the exception of those on the ark, but we’ll let that slide, because he makes a marvelous point about the water of baptism. He refers to the act of baptism as “an appeal to God for a good conscience.” I’m not one hundred percent sure what he means by that (and maybe it’s grist for a whole other sermon) but in the least I believe he’s suggesting that this symbolic washing of our bodies and the vows we take are a reminder that we do truly desire to live, and for our children to live, the kind of lives that Jesus taught, full of humble, self-giving grace and compassion.
Water is indeed a salvific reminder, whether it be the water of baptism or the water of a rainbow. All the water droplets refracting light onto our retinas spread out into reds and yellows and blues do indeed comprise a kind of saving act, because every time you or I looks into the sky after the rain and is reminded that at the heart of creation there is not murky darkness but brilliant light, not brutal ugliness but beauty and grace, we are saved just a little.
We need such reminders along the way if only because it’s easy to lose the light, the beauty, and the grace in a pile of grocery lists, meeting agendas, or dirty laundry. That’s the value of things like wedding rings, I believe. They’re always catching on something, pinching our fingers, or clicking against water glasses, reminding us that at the heart of a relationship is a blessed and elegant bond, a commitment made amidst the recognition that love is the supreme gift of life.
So the ancient storyteller of Genesis suggests that the rainbow is sort of God’s wedding ring. Every time God sees it in the sky he is reminded of his covenant and the vow that he took. Frederick Buechner writes that, “in one way, then, it gave Noah a nice warm feeling to see the rainbow up there, but in another way it gave him an uneasy twinge. If God needed the rainbow as a reminder, he thought, that could mean that, if someday God didn’t happen to look in the right direction or had something else on his mind, he might forget his promise and the heavy drops would start pattering down on the roof a second time.” Buechner’s fanciful slant on the story is a fine reminder. Whether the Almighty needs a rainbow wrapped around the divine finger or not, certainly you and I do. If our minds are absorbed or our attention is distracted it’s all too easy to forget that our very survival depends on the offering and receiving of grace and compassion, or, put another way, not to be so consumed by urgent conflicts that we lose track of truly important values.
The late anthropologist, professor, and writer, Loren Eiseley, recounted a powerful experience of being reminded of those values one day when he encountered a “star thrower” framed by a rainbow. He found himself in Costabel, walking along a beach in the very early morning as a storm seemed to be brewing all around. He passed a number of professional shellers, collecting starfish that had washed up from the ocean, preparing to boil them, dissolving the live creatures so the shells could be sold. Eiseley writes, “Around the next point there might be a refuge from the wind. The sun behind me, over the projecting point, a gigantic rainbow of incredible perfection had sprung shimmering into existence. Somewhere toward its foot I discerned a human figure standing, as it seemed to me, within the rainbow, though unconscious of his position. He was gazing fixedly at something in the sand.
“Eventually he stooped and flung the object beyond the breaking surf. I labored toward him over a half-mile of uncertain footing. By the time I reached him the rainbow had receded ahead of us, but something of its color still ran hastily in many changing lights across his features. He was starting to kneel again.
“In a pool of sand and silt a starfish had thrust its arms up stiffly and was holding its body away from the stifling mud.
“‘It’s still alive,’ I ventured.
“‘Yes,’ he said, and with a quick yet gentle movement he picked up the star and spun it over my head and far out into the sea. It sank in a burst of spume, and the waters roared once more.
“‘It may live,’ he said, ‘if the offshore pull is strong enough. . . .
“Do you collect?” Eiseley asked.
“Only like this,” the star thrower replied. “‘And only for the living.’ He stooped again, oblivious of my curiosity, and skipped another star neatly across the water.”
The man’s eyes seemed to invite Eiseley to join him, but the objective scientist demurred. He knew the act of trying to save these few starfish was folly, that “death is running more fleet than he along every seabeach in the world.” Eiseley writes, “I nodded and walked away, leaving him there upon the dune with that great rainbow ranging up the sky behind him.”
Much later, Eiseley returned to the beach to find this man futilely trying to give life in the midst of the storm. He writes, “Somewhere far up the coast wandered the star thrower beneath his rainbow. . . . The star thrower was mad, and his particular acts were a folly with which I had not chosen to associate myself. I was an observer and a scientist. Nonetheless, I had seen the rainbow attempting to attach itself to the earth.
“On a point of land, as though projecting into a dominion beyond us, I found the star thrower. In the sweet rain-swept morning, that great many-hued rainbow still lurked and wavered tentatively beyond him. Silently I sought and picked up a still-living star, spinning it far out into the waves. I spoke once briefly. ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘Call me another thrower.’ Only then I allowed myself to think, He is not alone any longer. After us there will be others.
“We were part of the rainbow – an unexplained projection into the natural.”
Eiseley said he realized there was a larger drama being played out behind the scenes – that there was something cosmic and perhaps divine at work in them, and it was humanity as well as starfish that they were seeking to save. The circle of the rainbow was a “visible model” of the “perfect circle of compassion” and throwing the stars was a declaration of life being sowed in the midst of death and defeat. And maybe that’s the object as well of the One who resides “far outward on the rim of space” where genuine stars are “similarly seized and flung.”
Maybe rainbows are, after all, something more than photons of light spread out by their colors on the screens of our retinas. Maybe they are special places where heaven touches earth and both Divinity and humanity are reminded by their perfection and loveliness that there is something in our meager existence that is worth saving, and that, in the end, beauty, compassion, peace, and light are far more powerful than all the forces of rage and destruction.
None of this is new. In fact it’s as old as the gospel. It’s implicit in everything we’re about here, and it’s buried somewhere in just about every sermon you hear from this pulpit. I didn’t expect you to be surprised. It’s just a reminder.
This past Wednesday was the birthday of perhaps the greatest of American Presidents, Abraham Lincoln. One hundred and sixty-four years ago, on February 11, 1861, Lincoln left Springfield, Illinois for Washington to be inaugurated as the 16th President of the United States. In his farewell address that day, he shared these words with his colleagues and friends in Springfield: “All the strange, chequered past seems to crowd now upon my mind. To-day I leave you; I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon General Washington. Unless the great God who assisted him, shall be with and aid me, I must fail. But if the same omniscient mind, and Almighty arm that directed and protected him, shall guide and support me, I shall not fail, I shall succeed.”1
It is clear that Lincoln had the greatest hope of Divine help as he assumed the Presidency of this deeply troubled and divided nation. But he did not have the temerity to assume that blessing of Providence. He asked those assembled on that Springfield day to pray for him, and for the Lord’s wisdom and guidance.
Contrast that with the Good Lord’s place in today’s news stories. Just last month, an army veteran drove a pickup truck into a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 14 people and injuring dozens more in the name of Allah because he wanted news headlines to focus on the “war between the believers and the disbelievers,” He had joined the terrorist group known as ISIS that has left a brutal legacy of death and destruction across the world. Though the group has continued to launch terror attacks around the world and inspire believers of its extreme ideology to carry out atrocities of their own while someone yells, “Allahu akbah” (Our God is great).
The distance between Lincoln’s hope for divine assistance and the religious cry of a fanatic convinced he is doing Allah’s will is a giant leap.
One of the great blessings of being human is also perhaps our most tormenting curse. We are creatures of immense passion. As any Star Trek devotee knows, the excesses of our emotional resolve are consistently enough to make Mister Spock raise an eyebrow in disbelief. But the worst of it is that we can’t seem to unleash our passions without invoking the Lord Almighty as the architect of our thoughts and warrior for our cause. It’s a disease of the heart. Valentine’s Day pledges notwithstanding, our hearts are often suspect. The prophet Jeremiah put it this way, “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse – who can understand it?”
The thing that gums up our coronary arteries isn’t cholesterol and saturated fat so much as it is idolatry. We have a perverse tendency to put our passions and convictions on the throne. We don’t bow down before the golden calf of money and power nearly as much as we prostrate ourselves before the idol of our own fancies and furies.
It has always been one of the great temptations and weaknesses of religion. Eugene Peterson put it succinctly. In the introduction to the book of Amos in his paraphrase of the Bible titled The Message he writes, “Religion is the most dangerous energy source known to humankind. The moment a person (or government or religion or organization) is convinced that God is either ordering or sanctioning a cause or project, anything goes. The history, worldwide, of religion-fueled hate, killing, and oppression is staggering.” 2
You know this yourself. You’ve not only read about the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the burning of witches up in Salem, you’ve seen it on television – God supposedly ordering planes to slam into the World Trade Center, or suicide bombers to blow up busses on the streets of Jerusalem.
But it’s not just religious fanatics who are stricken with this disease. You and I are subject to it all the time in lesser but perhaps more pernicious ways. We simply assume that because something makes such absolute and undeniable sense to us, it must be what’s in the mind of the Almighty. I know I do it, and I’ve got my suspicions about you.
Presidents and potentates do it too. These days, it’s not uncommon for politicians to invoke religion and campaign on the virtue of their sincere faith and regular church attendance. All too often, however, they simply cough and wheeze with the same coronary malady as you and me. They pronounce the Lord’s rubber stamp on their own platforms and political agendas.
That’s one of the reasons I wanted to lift up President Lincoln on this February morning. He was the exception to the rule. William Lee Miller, author of Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography, points out that Presidents often extol Lincoln for many traits that he didn’t really have. Among them is the assurance that Lincoln could be so “optimistic” about his cause because of his belief in the Almighty. Miller points out that, to the contrary, one of Lincoln’s moral virtues was that he “explicitly set God’s controlling Providence over against, even in contrast to, the purposes of the contending parties, including his own.”3 In other words, Lincoln was one of those rare members of the human species who could dethrone his own passions and purposes, and regard them as falling under the judgement of the Lord.
There’s a clue for us here. And it points toward a cure for the disease that infects our hearts. It’s put forward eloquently by the same doctor who diagnosed our condition, Jeremiah. He put a curse on everyone who trusted in themselves and in their own strength of character, and he conveyed a blessing on those who figured out that the Divine will is not something to use, but something to trust. Trusting that Divine will does not mean having confidence that our plans will be realized, but trusting that, in the end, those Divine plans will. According to Jeremiah, the Lord doesn’t just coronate our ideas and paste gold stars on our homework, but actually “tests” our minds and “searches” our hearts.
You can’t come to terms with that truth without being humbled. And therein lies the cure. A teaspoon of humility and a few milligrams of trust taken regularly can dissipate the passions you set up on the throne of your heart and leave it vacant for the Lord of Hosts to move in. And that’s nothing less than a life redeemed – brought back from the pit of self-absorption and idolatry.
But there’s another medicinal benefit. When we finally boot our own ideas and preconceptions out of that throne, and spend our time honestly seeking a divine truth that’s larger than we know, there is an amazing strength of spirit that can overcome us. That strength comes from getting the world and ourselves back to their right sizes. You see, when we get caught up in worshiping our own ideas, our own cultural biases, our own standards and norms, the arteries of our faith become tiny and constricted. Before we know it, our whole world is no larger than the biggest thought we can think. And believe me, that’s pretty small. When that Lord of Hosts is back in charge, we are released from the enormous stress of having to be omniscient and omnipotent (and let’s face it, somewhere deep down inside we know we’re really not). We can let go of being right or wrong, winning or losing, succeeding or failing, and just do our very best to understand and follow, and trust that the Lord of All is smart enough to figure out a way to make it all come out OK. Do you know what that does for you and your cardiac condition? In the words of Dr. Jeremiah, it can make you “like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”
On March 5, 1861, a month after his farewell speech in Springfield and just one month before rebels fired on Fort Sumter igniting the civil war, Lincoln was visited at the white House by a delegation from the state of Pennsylvania. They had apparently expressed some concern about the status of the union and the Presidency. Pennsylvania was at that time, like many states, torn over the question of secession. The outcome of all this was still up in the air. In a brief appearance with this group of emissaries from the Keystone State, Lincoln offered these words: “Allusion has been made to the hope that you entertain that you have a President and a Government. In respect to that I wish to say to you, that in the position I have assumed I wish to do no more than I have ever given reason to believe I would do. I do not wish you to believe that I assume to be any better than others who have gone before me. I prefer rather to have it understood that if we ever have a Government on the principles we prefer, we should remember while we exercise our opinion, that others have also rights to the exercise of their opinions, and we should endeavor to allow these rights, and act in such a manner as to create no bad feeling. I hope we have a Government and a President. I hope and wish it to be understood that there may be allusion to no unpleasant differences.
“We must remember,” he continues, “that the people of all the States are entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the several States. We should bear this in mind, and act in such a way as to say nothing insulting or irritating. I would inculcate this idea, so that we may not, like Pharisees, set ourselves up to be better than other people.”4 Of all of Lincoln’s strengths, I believe his greatest was theological. He had the wisdom and humility to shoo his own beliefs and objectives off the throne, and the strength of spirit that was born of trusting the Lord to manage the future.
What a surpassing gift! To leave the Lord in charge of the universe, and to know one’s self as flawed and subject to weakness and error, is to unload a tremendous burden and to be profoundly connected to your brothers and sisters, because when each of us stands equally in need of mercy, we cannot separate ourselves from one another through judgment.
Has the world got you down? Are you angry that others don’t seem to see things as clearly as you do, or hold the right values – your values? Are you heart sick? Here’s a prescription for you: like a tree planted by water and nourished by the stream, pray for the wisdom to know that Divine truth is too big to fit inside your own opinions. Then, in quiet confidence you can send out your roots. Do not fear when heat comes; in the year of drought do not be anxious, and do not cease to bear fruit.
1 Illinois State Journal, February 12, 1861.
2 Eugene Peterson, The Message, NavPress.
3 William Lee Miller, Boston Globe, February 8, 2004.
4 Philadelphia Inquirer, March 6, 1861.
First of all, let me assure you that this sermon, titled “A Holy Terror, is not about any of my grandchildren. Nor is it — the record of my own childhood notwithstanding — about myself. Today, I’m taking my cue from what happened to the prophet Isaiah and the disciple, Simon Peter, when the Divine Will grabbed each of them by the throat and stared them in the eye. They found themselves in the presence of holiness, and they were terrified.
It was for Isaiah one of those marker points of life so pivotal that it becomes ever-connected in one’s memory to some significant world event. He makes the connection in one breath: “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord . . .” He had entered the temple in search of familiar rituals, and comforting surroundings, but was encountered by the last thing he expected — a holy terror. Isaiah cries out, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
A similar thing happened to Simon Peter one day while he was minding his own business, doing his day’s work as a fisherman. He and his partners had been fishing all night with no success, but were nonetheless dutifully occupied. He had not asked to have his day interrupted, let alone his life transformed. But a man with other plans stepped into his boat and began to preach. And at the end of the message he turned to Simon Peter and told him to put out into deep water and lower the nets. When they came up with more fish than they could handle, Simon Peter looked into the face of this preacher and realized in a moment who he was dealing with. Scripture says, “he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’” He was hoping, I rather suspect, that if he kept his head down and his eyes closed long enough, perhaps when he opened them again this majestic and fearsome man might be gone.
Whatever it was he saw in that face or heard in that voice, he knew he was in the presence of holiness — and he was terrified.
That’s not what we bargain for when we anticipate communion with Christ. Most of us are pretty good at minding our own business, and doing what we can to make life manageable. We don’t shirk our responsibilities, or presume too much. We simply would like for the great calamities and trials of life to somehow pass us by, while we do the best we can with those that don’t.
And we approach Sunday worship in much the same way. We want our religion to be meted out in digestible portions. We want our Sunday mornings to be pleasant, our church participation to be happy, and our experience of worship to be — well, regular. Terror is not on the menu.
In fact, if Sunday morning gets too strange or unfamiliar, or if our religious experience is not satisfying, or if the morning message is uncomfortable, we generally have some complaining in store for the pastor, or the deacons, or the musicians.
What if you walked in here some fine Sunday morning, and actually encountered the Lord of Hosts? What if the encounter shook your world until the pins started to come out, and terror seized your innards dropping you to your knees, until you had to hide your face?
In truth, we don’t know what might happen to us if that Lord ever really got a hold of us. Isaiah was commissioned on the spot to be a prophet and speak a disturbing word to the people. Simon Peter was compelled to drop his fishing nets, and become a disciple of this disturbing man who preached from his boat. Most of what we do in church keeps our lives neatly in order and insulates us against the life-changing power of a confrontation with the Divine. Carl Jung has written that the function of religion is to protect us from an experience of God. Commenting on that idea, Joseph Campbell wrote, “Some fifty percent of the mythic tales in Ovid’s Metamorphoses are of characters, ill-prepared, who were unfavorably transformed by encounters with divinities, the full blast of whose light they were unready to absorb. The priest’s practical maxims and metaphorical rites moderate transcendent light to secular conditions, intending harmony and enrichment, not disquietude and dissolution.”
Campbell has a point. And the word of scripture confirms it. The Spirit of Holiness confronts us with “disquietude and dissolution” just as consistently as with “harmony and enrichment.”
Religious types used to talk a lot about the “fear of the Lord.” We don’t use that phrase much anymore. But I remember Dadgie saying once that respect is a combination of love and fear. That stuck with me and really set my mind going. It’s true, isn’t it? In order to respect someone, there has to be just the slightest hint of fear involved – even if it’s just the fear of failing or disappointing that person.
Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to unload the notion of the “fear of the Lord.” Maybe a little fear of encountering the Divine could be a healthy thing. Maybe it’s a necessary ingredient in having respect for the holy. And, believe me, there is a basis for some fear.
The power of Divinity, unleashed in your life, will shake the foundations of your well-structured existence. The revolutionary ideas blown up by the wind of the Spirit will set your head spinning. The call of the Lord, if you indeed hear it, will turn you around and send you on a different road. We touch that power, feel that wind, hear that call so infrequently perhaps because it is more comfortable to keep the power of Divinity well contained in our proper prayers and harmonious hymns.
Martin Luther once said, “The problem with most of us is that we have lost the ability to shudder. We have lost the ability to feel awe, to recognize mystery, and to fall prostrate at the feet of the holy.”
But the true power of these stories of holy terror, these stories of Isaiah and Simon Peter, lies not only in the terrifying and transforming force of the Lord’s presence, and the fear it inspired, but in the response! When confronted by that which is so holy and so other that it brings these men to their knees in shameful recognition of their weaknesses and failings, they respond by going where the disturbing word of truth takes them. Isaiah senses the need for someone to be sent to speak the Lord’s word to the people, and he answers immediately, “Here am I; Send me!” Simon Peter hears Jesus tell him that from now on he will be fishing for the hearts and minds of people, and he immediately drops his nets and follows him.
I have two messages for you today. First of all, don’t get so addicted to comfortable religion, that you avoid being encountered by the Holy. That disturbing Divine Presence will not necessarily find you in the midst of your comfort. You may have to be open to a bit of holy terror, if you are to allow yourself to be engaged by holiness.
Secondly, if you find yourself dumbstruck by the voice of all creation welling up from your toes, get down on your knees and pay attention. Then follow.
Have you ever said to someone, “Man, what a day; I feel like I’ve been running around in circles all day long!”? Have you ever stopped to consider what it means at an existential level to be running around in circles? It means you’re going over and over the same territory all the time, which means you are not being exposed to anything new or different, which means you’re closed off from a good deal of what’s out there to experience in the world, and from a good number of people with whom you might otherwise be relating. What circles do you run in?
Jesus had a little circle of followers; they were all Jews. And they all lived in the Jewish state of Israel. It was kind of a circle within a circle. But Jesus’ way of running in circles wasn’t like our way. We go ’round and ’round, repeating patterns of thought and following the tracks we’ve left before, like the wheels of a car going around a racetrack, each revolution of the wheel is a repeat performance. But that word revolution is a two-edged sword. It comes from the Latin re, meaning back, and volvere, meaning to roll. A revolution is a rolling-back. Have you ever been stuck in the snow? The problem is that your wheels just keep spinning in the same place. In order to get unstuck you need to roll the car back out of that rut to get it in a different place. Jesus was a revolutionary. He turned things around, and did so in ways that sent him and his listeners outside the carefully laid tracks of established thought and well-worn prejudices.
Our scripture reading from Luke this morning picks up where last week’s reading left off. Jesus had just wowed the congregation with a brilliant one sentence sermon that left them all in awe. Then he turned things around on them. He said, “the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah . . . yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” Like a true revolutionary, he was rolling them back out of their circular thinking; telling them that foreigners were regarded above Israelites in those sacred stories. They drove him out of town to throw him off a cliff. Trying to roll back people’s way of thinking and get them out of the ruts formed by the circles they run in is very risky business. It can get you run out of town, or worse.
And so it is with a certain degree of trepidation that I make the following suggestion: the church is not simply a safe, comfortable retreat from the world – a place where you can be supported by your friends, confirmed in your opinions, and comforted in your trials. The church is a place of revolution. It has been from the very beginning. A case in point? Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth.
You and I are fond of those words from 1 Corinthians 13: “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. . . . Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. . . .” We hear these words at just about every wedding. In fact, I have read them just about every time I’ve done a wedding. They are magnificent. What most of us don’t take time to notice are the words that lead up to these glorious thoughts about love. Paul makes it clear that he is responding to some serious conflict in the Corinthian church. There were various groups within the church (different “circles,” if you will) each claiming a separate leader. They were proud, each one thinking they were the smart ones who knew what was right and what was wrong. They were divided about sexual relationships, marriage, taking one another to court for perceived offenses, observance of ritual purity laws, fairness in food distribution. It seems they couldn’t find enough things to fight about. These were the kind of ruts they were running around and around in. And it is into this mess that the Apostle Paul sends this missive about love being kind, not jealous or boastful, arrogant or rude. Paul is being a revolutionary. He’s trying to shake them up, roll them back out of their tracks.
The church was founded on the words and ministry of a revolutionary figure, and founded as a place of revolution. This is a place where normal patterns of behavior, standard operating procedures, accepted social consequences, and natural human instincts are rolled back, and every action, every conversation, every point of view, every decision is subjected to a higher standard, a standard that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” and “never ends.”
Phillip Yancey tells the story of a revolutionary. He was a French friar named Abbé Pierre. “Born into a noble family,” Yancey writes, “[Pierre] had served in the French Parliament until he became disillusioned with the slow pace of political change. After World War II, with Paris still reeling from the effects of the Nazi occupation, thousands of homeless beggars lived in the streets. Pierre could not tolerate the endless debates by noblemen and politicians while so many street people starved outside.
“During an unusually harsh winter, many Parisian beggars froze to death. In desperation, Pierre resigned his post and became a Catholic friar to work among them. Failing to interest politicians or the community in the beggars’ plight, he concluded his only recourse was to organize the beggars themselves. He taught them to do menial tasks better. Instead of sporadically collecting bottles and rags, they divided into teams to scour the city. Next, he led them to build a warehouse from discarded bricks and then start a business in which they sorted and processed vast quantities of used bottles from hotels and businesses.
“Finally, Pierre inspired each beggar by giving him responsibility to help another beggar poorer than himself. The project caught fire, and in a few years an organization called Emmaus was founded to expand Pierre’s work in other countries.”1
Abbé Pierre came to realize that trying to do things the way they’ve always been done leads inevitably to getting the same results. He had to roll back the thinking of his time and organize the beggars. He had to become a revolutionary. That’s the model for the church. Pot-luck suppers and rituals of worship are comforting, but they are not our “meat and potatoes.” We are revolutionaries, or we are nothing. That’s a scary thought. It means we are constantly being pushed and pulled out of our ruts, out of the circles we run in. It means we’re likely to find ourselves a bit lost at times, in unfamiliar territory. I think that’s where we’re supposed to be.
The author, educator, and commentator, Steve Zeitlin points out how the revolutionary kind of circles can lead us to where we need to be and how terribly important it is to get a little lost in the process. He writes: “Stories move in circles, they don’t move in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles because there are stories inside stories and stories between stories, and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. And part of the finding is the getting lost, because when you’re lost, you have to look around and listen.”2
That’s it! That’s the value of getting whacked up side the head like the congregation in the temple did when Jesus told them they weren’t as special as they thought they were, or like the Corinthians did when Paul wrote to point out the ruts they were stuck in. It can leave us a little disoriented. And a little disoriented is maybe where we need to be in church, because then you’re forced to look up from the track in the road and pay attention; you’re forced to stop and consider what truly matters and what truly does not.
So here’s my revolutionary whack up side the head for this morning (and I hope it doesn’t get me run out of town or thrown off a cliff). Listening to Nowell and Mike at the annual meeting last week, I realized that they are considering and putting out for your consideration some different notions about our way ahead as a church. So I’m throwing my hat into the ring and suggesting the following: What if we totally rethought our structure as a congregation? What if we tried not having a traditional pastor, but instead strengthened what has already been developing here, which is for all the members of the church to be pastors to one another? What if we occasionally had members of the congregation lead our worship or offer a message from their own hearts and experience? Listening to Mike and Nowell last week at the annual meeting inspired me to think about what marvelous thoughts and words of inspiration could come from any of us. Could it be that our budget issues might lead us out of a rut and into a revolution? And, speaking of revolution — that going back to get unstuck thing — this is actually an old model. It’s how the early church formed, and it’s how many churches were organized in the early days of our nation. It’s how the Mormons and many “house churches” function today.
This morning we’re going to come to this communion table as individuals, and as a body — the body of Christ. There are no privileged places in this act of communion; everyone is a priest, everyone is a servant. What we reenact in this ritual is part of a story that’s very symbolic and even a little confusing that, if you’re lucky leaves you a little lost and therefore wakes you up.
Well, that’s my revolutionary thought for this morning. As I said, I hope it doesn’t get me run out of town. What I hope it does is start a conversation. And who knows where that conversation might lead us? Maybe we’ll lead each other to a place none of us have ever considered going. But it is my firm belief that we will be guided on our journey by love, a love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” and never ends.
1 Phillip Yancey, Searching for the Invisible God, Zondervan Publishing, 2000, pp. 239–240.
2 Because God Loves Stories: An Anthology of Jewish Storytelling, Steve Zeitlin, ed., Touchstone, 1997, p. 85.
I’m sure everyone is familiar with the old spiritual, “Dry Bones.” Well, anyone who has spent much time typing at a computer keyboard, or clicking a computer mouse button, knows the timeless truth that “the wrist-bone (as the old spiritual says) is connected to the arm-bone.” Sometimes, in fact, I can spend so much time typing and “mousing” that my wrist bone begins to complain about the connection.
But a wondrous connection it is. Because of the connection between our arm-bones, and wrist-bones, and hand-bones, and finger-bones, humanity is capable of giving birth to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Tolstoi’s “War and Peace,” open heart surgery, robots taking soil samples on Mars, and who knows how much more?
Our body parts are magnificently woven together so that the whole is far greater the sum of the parts. When the finger-bone is, through the chain of joints and tendons and nerve synapses, connected to the head-bone, the result is greater than this (the wagging of a finger) — it is this (the beautiful sanctuary in which we worship).
What is true for our individual bodies is true also for the “Body of Christ.” That’s a term we use to refer to the Church of Christ in the world. The Body of Christ is us — it is people, connected by the ligaments and tendons of our common bond in Christ. The power of this body is a source of abundant hope in our world.
In the ties that bind us together as childtren of the Most High, there is a hope which lies beyond the rational assessment of optimum results and managed outcomes — a hope which confounds the purveyors of pessimistic probabilities. I tell you that wonders beyond your imagining can come of the power of unity in love.
This is my message today.
No power on earth is greater than that of the people of faith united. Even the seemingly impossible becomes possible when you and I are knitted together by the holy and inexplicable Spirit of the Lord.
That’s what we mean when we speak of being a member around here. It means being a member of the body of Christ in the same way that your arm is one of your bodily members.
The Apostle Paul puts it this way: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit.”
These words were written to a church that was being robbed of its power. The church at Corinth was weakened by the bickering of rival factions. Some folks were lining up behind Paul, some were siding with Apollos, some were with Cephas. It all sounds quite familiar to our twentieth century ears. There’s still a cancerous tendency on the part of otherwise intelligent, clear-thinking people to set up camp on opposite sides of an issue and take target practice at each other.
We also don’t find ourselves surprised at the echoes of avoidance and withdrawal in Corinth that we hear from Paul’s letter. We’re not surprised at it because we encounter it, and perpetuate it ourselves. It’s the tendency, if things aren’t going the way you like, and you don’t feel like fighting, to simply flee — run away, or drop out.
I’ve done it; I suspect some of you have too: “If he’s going to act like that, then to heck with him!” – or “I’ll show them, I just won’t go to their meetings.” – or the thousand other ways we have of opting out.
How about this one: “Who me? I’m too old to get involved. Let some of the younger ones do that now” – as though the foot could say, “since I’m not a hand, I’m not part of the body.”
Here’s another oldie but goodie: “I’m not so much a part of things around here; I just don’t have the kind of real faith that some of these other folks have” – as though the ear could say, “If I’m not an eye then I’m not part of the body.”
I bet you’ve never heard this one: “Oh, I don’t know if I’ll go to church today; nobody there would miss me anyway” – as though the eye could say to the hand, “I have no need of you.”
The Deacons or the Mission Committee cannot say to the Trustees, “I have no need of you.” A new member cannot say, “because I’m not a long-time member, I’m not part of the body.”
Such disembodiment takes the very life and power out of the church. And it steals that same life and power from each one of us, because we are fed by one another’s dreams, sustained by each other’s smiles, and upheld by prayers as well as hugs.
Some insight might be sought from some of our long time members — those who have endured the hard knocks, cried at the funerals, danced at the weddings, and generally been knocking around this place for 20 or 30 or 50 years. There is much they could tell us about the body, and what it is to be a part of it for a number of seasons. I could not presume to know all they could say, so I encourage any of you who are newer to the church to ask them. Hear some 30 or 40 year old stories about some former pastor, or some church project, or some tragedy or triumph and listen to what is not spoken. Listen to the patience, and the love and the quiet power of that testimony.
I would be so bold as to offer at least an observation or two about what we might hear from some of that accumulated wisdom on the subject of member-ship.
One of the things I suspect we would hear is: don’t get all distressed or worked up about whether we get a pastor, or if that person is going to meet all your expectations. Pastors come and go. Folks who have been around here a long time have seen plenty. The church is a much bigger thing than whatever pastoral leadership we may have at any given time. That’s a message most ministers fresh out of seminary are not delighted to hear. I have been around the block enough times to not only have heard it, but to know it and to trust the wisdom in it. The church is a gathered body of believers, and its elegance, creativity, power, faithfulness, humility (all the things that make for greatness) derive not from the brilliance of the clergy, but from those people who, over the course of the years, pour their very souls into its sustenance. That’s you.
I think you’d also hear from some of these long-tenured folks how much they have depended on one another over the years. Spending time together, people tend to learn a lot about each other’s gifts, and come to depend on the strengths of others. There is nothing quite so overwhelming as the first time you land in a hospital, and receive cards, and phone calls, and visits, and you learn how many people are praying for you. There’s nothing quite so empowering as to know that, when the chips are down, there is someone you can call who will take you to a doctor’s appointment, or watch the grand-kids, or lead the meeting you have to miss, or any of a dozen other things.
Gary Inrig, tells the story of two students who graduated from the Chicago-Kent College of Law several years ago. “The highest ranking student in the class was a blind man named Overton and, when he received his honor, he insisted that half the credit should go to his friend, Kaspryzak. They had met one another in school when the armless Mr. Kaspryzak had guided the blind Mr. Overton down a flight of stairs. This acquaintance ripened into friendship and a beautiful example of interdependence. The blind man carried the books which the armless man read aloud in their common study . . . After their graduation, they planned to practice law together.”
Like those two, we need each other. You may at times be blind to the critical realities staring you in the face, but someone near you can show you the way; you may at times be unable to grasp something of key importance, but someone with a firmer grasp of reality can give you a hand. Some of us are prophets, some are leaders, some apostles, some of us are pains in the butt. But every one of us is a treasure.
Another thing I suspect we would hear from those who’ve been “knocking around this place” for long years is: don’t sweat the small stuff. For someone who’s been a member for 30 years or more, “small stuff” is not being able to meet the annual budget, planning programs that completely fail, a nostril flaring, name-calling fight over which committee has control of the downstairs closet, or what kind of hymnal we’re going to choose. For someone who’s been a member for 30 years or more, “small stuff” is all those things most folks spend sleepless nights worrying about. Truth is, even the big stuff, the church survives.
To be a member of the body that has endured for 2,000 years is to ride out storms. It is to be eager to forgive, and patient in the face of incompetence or insensitivity. It is to be gentle with our foes, and just as gentle with ourselves.
And then there are things that the “old timers” can learn from those who haven’t been around so long. Creative ideas, fresh energy, new ways of looking at old problems. These are just a few of the many gifts that new people bring along with them. Those ideas, that energy, those visions, deserve respect, and add critical strength to the body.
To those newer folks among us I offer a word of encouragement. Bring your ideas, bring your passions, bring your dreams; you are terribly important to the church of Jesus Christ. And I offer you this hope: If you persevere, if you succeed in achieving a record of long service as a member of one of Christ’s churches, you will have earned the right to quietly move over and make room for someone new in your pew — a pew you may have sat in for decades. You will have earned the right to pour your soul into another struggle through another mind-bending, heart-wrenching social issue, when maybe you have already struggled through prohibition, and war, and integration, and Viet Nam, and “ban the bomb.” You will have earned the right to valiantly do your best to sing some new-fangled hymn that some new-fangled preacher has decided to foist upon you, when you’ve sung thirteen dozen new-fangled ones already.
And at the end of the day, you will have earned the right to sit back in your chair with a soft tear rolling out of the corner of your eye, recalling how lives have been changed in all those years, not least of them your own, and you will thank the Lord for the power and grace of being a part of the body.
All of us are “body parts”, and O how that makes us important. Because the body of which we are a part is the very hope of the world.
You’ve probably all heard about the schoolboy who was doing his homework, writing a report about his own life history. At a loss for an appropriate introduction, he sought out his mother who was in the kitchen preparing supper. Without warning, he asked, “Mom, how was I born?”
His mother, of course, knew that this question about human reproduction was inevitable, but she wasn’t about to deal with it while she was cooking dinner. So she put him off with the old saw, “The stork brought you, dear.”
The boy nodded and moved to the living room where his grandmother was knitting. Again without warning, he asked, “Grandma, how was my mother born?”
This dear lady knew the subject had to be dealt with by the boy’s parents, so wasn’t about to touch that one. “the stork brought your mother,” she explained.
“Grandma,” the boy persisted, “how were you born?”
“The stork brought me, too,” she responded.
He thanked her, returned to his desk, and began his report with these words, “There hasn’t been a normal childbirth in our family for three generations.”
The question about where we come from was addressed repeatedly in the Hebrew scriptures. In Genesis we are told that God created human beings from the dust of the earth. That leitmotif is taken up in one psalm after another, nowhere more magnificently than in the passage we heard this morning from the 139th psalm. The composer of this magnificent work has left us with an enduring treasure, and at the climactic moment of his verbal symphony, he speaks to the Lord and offers this gem: “it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
I think the reason the ancients spoke so much about who created us is that they were awed by the profound wonder of being human. The only way to give adequate honor to all that it means to be human is to acknowledge divine origins. And we are, indeed, “fearfully and wonderfully made.” St. Augustine remarked that, “People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.”1 And I think it was Bob Hope who pointed out that in a period of twenty four hours – just one day – the heart beats 103,689 times, blood travels 168,000,000 miles through the body, we eat 3 1/2 pounds of food, drink 2.9 quarts of liquid, breathe over 23,000 times, and inhale 438 cubic feet of air. He then concluded by saying, “Boy, I’m tired.”
But all of that is by no means the most fearful or the most wondrous of things about being human. The things that stir my heart and send my mind whirling are things like the story of a young man we’ll call Hasan (he didn’t give his real name for security reasons). He’s an engineer, and he was protesting for freedom in the streets of Damascus for the months. He said, “I started protesting against my government on March 15 and I have demonstrated in Damascus and its suburbs many times since then. But I learned the lessons about tear gas on the first day of Ramadan when I joined one of three protests in the Midan, the heart of the city’s protest movement. There were about 7,000 protesters on the streets . . . I was walking near the front of the crowd when I heard the sounds of Shahiba who had come up behind us and were attacking the rear of the crowd with batons and tear gas guns. . . . Three tear gas grenades fell right in front of me. Some protestors picked up a couple of the canisters and threw them back at the Shabiha. A friend near me tried, but it burned his hand and he dropped it. For about 20 seconds I couldn’t breathe and the smoke surrounded me. I felt like someone set me on fire. I felt like there was fire on every inch of my skin. I was sweating and felt a very bad taste in my tongue and throat.
I ran blindly to an alley and tried to get some fresh air into my lungs. I was lucky that my friends and I had searched in the Internet and we knew not to rub our eyes. One protester tossed me a can of soft drink to wash my face. I poured it all over my head. I couldn’t tell whether it was Coca-Cola or Pepsi but it helped me to recover . . .”2
Please note that before Hasan went out on the streets to protest, knowing what had been going on, he and his friends researched what to do when you are overcome by teargas. Here’s what’s fearfully wondrous about being human: that a young man like this and thousands of others like him can hold within their hearts the precious idea of freedom, and that they can see people, gassed, arrested and carried off to be tortured, gunned down in the streets, and keep coming out to demonstrate day after day, for months on end.
Here’s what’s fearfully wondrous about being human: that a young, black pastor, filled with dread, can go to Memphis where he knows there are people determined to kill him. And that young man can stand up in a church sanctuary and say, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!” That such words, that such power, that such courage and leadership could emerge from the soul of one human being is so wonderful it’s almost frightening.
Let me share with you what that same young preacher wrote in a sermon fifty years ago about what it means to be human. He was talking about the man Jesus spoke of who decided to build new and larger barns to store up all of his crops, so that he could “eat, drink, and be merry.” Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Jesus did not call this man a fool merely because he possessed wealth. Jesus never made a sweeping indictment against wealth. Rather, he condemned the misuse of wealth. Money, like any other force such as electricity, is amoral and can be used either for good or for evil . . . . The rich man was a fool because he permitted the ends for which he lived to become confused with the means by which he lived. The economic structure of his life absorbed his destiny. Each of us lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. These include the house we live in, the car we drive, the clothes we wear, the economic resources we acquire – the material stuff we must have to exist. There is always a danger that we will permit the means by which we live to replace the ends for which we live, the internal to become lost in the external. The rich man was a fool because he failed to keep a line of distinction between means and ends, between structure and destiny.”3
Dr. King was keenly aware of something about the amazing artistry of being human, something that many of us pass over while we’re storing up our grains in bigger barns. It’s a truth that I thought of while watching the birds. Dadgie and I have been fascinated by the birds that flock to the bird feeder outside the window from our dining room. In these winter months, it’s remarkable how many of them come, and how much they will eat. They’re delightful creatures. Their instincts keep them working constantly through these frigid days just to survive. Here’s what’s fearfully wondrous about being human: that we do more, exponentially more, than survive, that we have the capacity to live for greater ends, that we have inner lives that speak to us of our destinies, that we make art, create literature, espouse morality, and can plumb the depths of the soul to make contact with divinity, the beating heart of creation itself.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of our time is told by what we do to the fearful wonder of being human. To advertisers as well as political campaigns we are nothing more than “targets.” To the IRS and the Social Security Administration we are just numbers. In military campaigns human beings are “troops,” or “hostiles,” or “collateral damage.” Maybe that’s one reason it becomes easier for soldiers to urinate on enemy corpses. I remember having to fight for my personhood one time in the hospital. I know nurses and hospital staff are overworked, and I know their jobs can be head spinning, to say the least. But one afternoon, while lying in my hospital bed following a heart attack, someone came into the room to draw blood. He never looked up from his clipboard, but simply muttered, “Are you 315a?” I said, ‘No, last time I checked I was Mike Scott.”
One of the greatest tragedies in all of this is how we allow ourselves to be accomplices in the cheapening of humanity. You and I fall into the trap of treating others, as well as ourselves, as nothing more than functionaries. In this culture we are defined by what we do. If someone asks about you, what’s your answer? You might say, “I’m a stock broker,” or “I teach school,” or “I’m a housewife,” or “I’m retired,” which says next to nothing about you. All the good stuff, all the stuff that matters about you is what Dr. King spoke about: the inner life of spirit, and the artistry of living, and intonations of destiny. When a human being is reduced to a description of their function in society, then once that function is no longer being performed, they can become like a machine on which someone has pulled the plug. They just lose power, wind down, and go out of commission. What an incredible waste! What a thing to do to this fearfully wondrous creation of divine inspiration!
Here’s my advice this morning. Do not permit “the means by which you live to replace the ends for which you live.” When you see remarkable examples of courage and moral strength (whether it’s in the news reports from Syria or in your next door neighbor, celebrate the wonder of human capacities. Take time each day to acknowledge the artistry of your own soul and the inestimable value of your being, and to acknowledge the one who formed your inward parts, who knit you together in your mother’s womb. For you are fearfully and wonderfully made.
1 Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Book 10.
2 http://middleeastvoices.com/2012/01/syria-witness-stories-of-allegiance-protest-and-survival/
3 Martin Luther King, Jr. Strength to Love, Harper & Row, 1963.
I have to confess to being stumped this week when I began to consider today’s sermon. I looked at all the scripture texts in the lectionary for this Sunday, and none of them seemed like they would “preach.” Particularly this Psalm: “The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders . . .The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars . . .The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness . . .” Upon first reading, I thought, “well, that’s a lovely image, but it just doesn’t resonate with our human experience.”
I have a feeling you might agree. Most of us would probably say that we don’t hear the voice of the Lord “thundering,” and “breaking the cedars,” and “flashing like fire.” Most of our days pretty much consist of routine pleasures, persistent worries, and regularly scheduled crises, and are pretty devoid of thundering and fire-flashing and cedar-breaking, let alone hearing the voice of the Lord.
So, I thought, how in the world do I make a sermon out of a text like this? Then I chucked a little at myself, “What was I thinking? Of course the voice of the Lord thunders.”
Sometimes the voice of the Lord rocks our lives so powerfully that it seems fire is flashing through our lives, and cedars are toppling around us. Remember the words? “. . . one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” And if the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. – words that inspired a nation and roused a generation to rise up and live the dream of freedom and justice – were not the voice of the Lord speaking to our age, I don’t know what they were. Those words crashed like thunder across our land, and shook the forests of apathy until the timbers cracked. Oh, the voice of the Lord thunders!
That voice is so powerful it can take a mere idea, and with a flash of fire, mold it into a mighty social force we call the Church, spanning the globe and breaking the barriers of language, class, and culture. After all, what is it that calls us into being, calls us together, and holds us in communion but the word of the Lord? That word is a voice, and it shakes the foundations of our lives. You hear that word in sermons, but it’s not my words that matter. It’s the word in which our words are grounded — the word of ancient and timeless scripture that is amplified until it thunders in our ears. And more than that, it’s the mysterious word of the Spirit that flashes through our worship like fire.
I never know how that Spirit will be manifest here. I’m often amazed at how befuddling this task of preaching is. I might spend twenty hours preparing a sermon that I believe is one of the best things I’ve done. I’m proud and eager to bring this gem to you that I’ve polished, and it leaves everyone cold. On the other hand, I have prepared sermons that I simply never quite got a handle on, and had to walk into the pulpit embarrassed that I was bringing such a dog before these good people, only to have folks leave the sanctuary with tears in their eyes, proclaiming that it was the best sermon yet. And often times, the very point of the message is lost on the listeners, who nonetheless pick up on some minor element, or a word in passing that resonates with a deep crisis or need in their lives, and they go away fulfilled — by nothing I ever intended, or even noticed that I said. And it happens in the music from our wonderful Michelle and Pat. People can be absolutely swept up by the Spirit of the Lord through the music here. It can happen in the stillness of silent prayer; sometimes, if we bring our heart’s concerns earnestly to that moment, the quietness can roar like thunder. When we come together, centered on the word, that thunderous voice speaks to us.
You see, it’s not a matter of how good a sermon writer, or preacher any of us is, it’s not even how beautiful the msic is (although it is), it’s not how dramatically or eloquently someone reads the scripture lesson, it’s the truth of the Lord’s voice thundering through our worship, in spite of the meager words offered that can lift us up to the throne of grace.
And the voice of the Lord “shakes the wilderness” of our daily routines in ways that we seldom even notice. As I said last week, we hear the word ‘epiphany’ used quite a bit these days. This past Monday was the day in the church year we call Epiphany. As I said, it refers to Christ’s manifestation to the world, symbolized by the visit of the magi, being the first gentiles to see him. But now, the word is used to refer to just about any new insight or awareness that someone has. Maybe that’s appropriate, because a sudden disclosure of essential meaning or an intuitive grasp of reality through some simple, striking event, can most assuredly be the voice that “causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare.”
Although I didn’t see the movie, I’m told the film Jerry Maguire had just such a moment. As the lead character, played by Tom Cruise, sits at his computer late at night, the computer screen begins to glow with a mysterious aura. McGuire has an epiphany, and he pounds out on his keyboard a whole new “mission statement” for his sports management company. With this new mission, the company will be less focused on maximizing profits, and more on developing strong relationships with clients. Everyone loves the statement, except, of course, his boss, who fires him.
But we all know, it is from such ideas that great things can come. Each of us has had moments when truth has broken into our world without invitation or warning, and started turning everything upside down. Don’t kid yourself; the voice of the Lord thunders.
Today’s Psalm offers two very important lessons about that voice. First of all, it’s not a vague, general voice, spoken equivocally to an indeterminate audience. It’s a voice with rifle precision. It doesn’t just make trees break and bend. No, it breaks the cedars — and not just the cedars, but the cedars of Lebanon. It’s a voice with aim. It doesn’t just rattle trees; it shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. So, don’t come to church looking for broad references that will fall down on everyone’s ears like the rain, and leave them to go home dripping with platitudes. If you’re going to come sit in these pews, you’d better strap yourself in, because somewhere in the scripture, or the sermon, or the anthem, or a prayer, the voice of the Lord is going to engage you about something very near and dear to your heart, something very specific in your own life or world. And it can hit you with a power that makes the oak trees whirl!
The other thing we can glean from this Psalm about this voice is that, when the word comes to us, we can recognize it by the content. The clue is in the last verse of the Psalm: “May the LORD give strength to his people! May the LORD bless his people with peace!” That’s a fitting conclusion, because when the voice of the Lord rattles your cedars, you can figure it’s going to be about one of two subjects: strength or peace.
The divine word will either find a way to strengthen you (even if it means refining your gold in the fire of adversity), or that word will endeavor to give you peace. And if you’re really paying attention, there’s usually a share of both adversity and peace to be found in its message. I truly believe that it is the purpose of worship to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. But more than that, I believe it’s the way life works; it’s the yin and yang of creation. The world is filled with powerful messages that will salve your wounds when you are broken, and knock you off your pins when you are full of yourself. Those messages are echoing around you all the time with a voice that cracks the trees. All that’s required is for you to stop and pay attention.
So if someone wonders why nobody hears God’s voice anymore like they did in the Bible, you say to them, “Are you kidding? The voice of the Lord thunders!”
How many times in recent memory have you heard someone say, “I had an epiphany the other day!”? The word in our culture has become synonymous with a bright idea, or a new thought. Etymologically, it’s actually come almost full circle from its origins. The original word was Greek, epiphaneia, meaning a disclosure or revelation. In the New Testament epiphaneia was used frequently to refer to a spectacular appearance of or intervention by God. As the doctrines and rites of the early church crystalized into orthodox traditions, the word was used almost exclusively to refer to the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles – those magi from the East (or “three kings” of the famous carol), and hence, the annual celebration of that story. In time, we returned to using the word epiphany more broadly to refer to any manifestation of God, and finally, we are now back to something close to the original Greek meaning: it’s just something that’s revealed or appears to us.
I think this little etymological excursion is very “revealing” (if you will). It’s a wonderful illustration of the interplay between the sacred and the secular. The early church picks up a common Greek word and makes it into holy language, then the culture re-embraces the word and re-secularizes it. That’s a lot of what the story of Epiphany that we celebrate today is all about.
In this season, the retelling of the story of the wise men warms our hearts and reminds us of Christmases long ago, of moments in the spotlight wearing a raggedy bathrobe and a crape paper crown, or standing outside someone’s door with scarves thrown around our necks against a chilly wind singing “We Three Kings.” The fact that the origins of the story are obscure, and that, nonetheless, the visitors mentioned in the account were certainly not kings, and there weren’t necessarily three of them doesn’t diminish the joy of its telling. It’s a wondrous tale, and it was, I believe, meant to be just that.
It was, among other things, a declaration of the majesty of this singular moment in history, a moment of such profound meaning and transcendent power that even the stars were moved in their courses to mark it. But it was more than that. These wise men bring something besides precious gifts; they offer to Jesus and to us a radical vision of the world as it could be – a vision so daring and so sweeping that its implications are still not fully grasped by us.
“. . .wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising.’” If we take a moment to figure out just who these guys were, and what part they played in this story, we just might catch a glimpse of the Divine vision, and discover the astounding message buried within the message of the manger.
“Wise men” as we read it in our Bibles is an English translation of the Greek word μἀγοι, or magi. The magi were originally a priestly class of Medes, but the term came to be used of astrologers in general. The center of astrology, since the third century, B.C. had been in Mesopotamia. So, when Matthew refers to Magi from the East, he is no doubt speaking of Babylonian Astrologers. Now, it’s important to note that such astrologers were regarded in New Testament times by many devout Jews and Christians as evil. They were foreign practitioners of a strange brand of semi-religious sooth-saying that stood in total contradiction of their conception of God – the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob – the God of John and of Jesus.
Astrology was a very ancient practice. These Babylonian mystics conceived of the ecliptic (the apparent orbital circle of the Sun) as being divided into 12 equal parts, or zodiacal signs. As these signs rose successively in the eastern sky, they foretold the fate of those who were born beneath them. These ancient astrologers cataloged a list of omens that were indicators of divine will, and predicted when evil would befall individuals. For many astrologers, there was an element of polytheism in their practice. The sun and moon and planets were regarded as gods.
So, when Matthew casually recites in the opening verse of the second chapter of his gospel that Magi from the East came to Jerusalem, having seen a significant star in the sky, we need to try to hear that phrase with more ancient ears. We need to hear it with the ears of those first century Christians to whom it was addressed. To do that, maybe we should translate it into words that might hit our 21st century ears in the same way. For instance: “In the time of President Biden, after Jesus was born in Philadelphia, Shi‘ite Muslims from Western Afghanistan came to Washington, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born your king? For we learned about him while participating in a righteous Jihad.’” The parallel is imprecise, but the shock value may be close.
These Magi from Babylon were not part of the club! They not only weren’t believers in the “one true God,” they were foreigners from the land of an ancient rivalry who couldn’t have a clue about what the Lord was doing in bringing a Messiah into the world. But this is how Matthew chooses to begin the story of the birth of Jesus. In Matthew’s telling, except for Joseph, these Babylonian astrologers were the first people on the planet to receive a sign from on High that Jesus, the Messiah, was born in Bethlehem. They were the first! Not the temple priests. Not devout Jews looking for the coming of the Holy One. Not by a dream with a vision of angels and stairs to heaven. Not by a voice speaking from the clouds or a burning bush. No, it was these Babylonian morons who actually believed in astrology – that destiny could be interpreted from the stars and planets. And they received the message by seeing the star of Jesus rise in their zodiacal system! Can you even begin to imagine how that choice for the very beginning of the story of the birth of Jesus blew the minds of those first Christians?
Let’s be honest about it, most of the time we think Jesus is part of our club. Rationally, we know that every culture on the planet has their own depiction of Christ with different pigments and facial characteristics, but deep down, we think all those Chinese and African and Hispanic pictures of Jesus are a little silly, don’t we? Jesus looked like us, right? (Not really). And if Jesus were born today, our big question would be: who would he have supported for President? Well, here’s a concept – what if Jesus weren’t a Democrat or a Republican or an independent, what if he were born in Ethiopia? Now, wouldn’t that mess up your mind?
Here’s the power and breadth of Matthew’s vision: the Lord of this Universe transcends just about everything we hold sacred. That Lord is bigger than any boundaries we establish, breaks down every wall we put up between human beings. If the Lord chooses to communicate something of ultimate importance to those we would brand as heathens, so be it, or chooses to infuse an astrological sign with profound meaning, well, just put that in your pipe and smoke it. If the Lord of All decides to knock us off our pins by going against everything we hold dear, get used to it.
One of my favorite all time movies is Fiddler On the Roof. You may recall that Tevye, the milkman, explains that in turn of the century Anatevka they keep their balance through “Tradition!” Throughout the film, Tevye carries on a conversation with God, whom he regards as in control of everything and always there to hear his every question and complaint. He talks to God even as his world starts to fall apart. The traditions that have held everything together for generations are crumbling around him. One by one, his daughters take up with men and violate the sacred rules and parameters of marriage. First, his daughter, Tzeitel, gives a pledge of marriage to a man without having her marriage arranged by the matchmaker! Then, Hodel falls in love with a man, and together they come to Tevye seeking not his permission to marry, but only his blessing! All this is head-spinning for poor Tevye, who in each case talks to the Lord and to himself, trying to get his mind around these changes to the institution of marriage. “No matchmaker? No permission from the pappa?” But in each case, he finally comes to accept the new way. Then, the third daughter, Chava, goes too far. She falls in love with the enemy. She decides to marry a young Russian soldier. For poor Tevye, this is too much. If he bends that far, he says, he’ll “break.” So he disowns Chava, and tells his wife their daughter is dead to them. Everyone’s heart is broken. But Tevye is caught within the walls of his own traditions, the same traditions that help them all to “keep their balance.” He sees these traditions as sacred; they are the very embodiment of the Lord’s will. But what Tevye seems to learn through the course of the story is that will is a far larger thing than he can begin to imagine. And it seems to keep getting larger and larger. Finally, in the end, there is a hint that Tevye will learn that will is larger even than his definition of “the enemy.” As they all prepare to leave Anatevka for the last time, and Chava and her soldier are going off down the road, he looks up and says, “May God be with you.”
Not only Tevye, but perhaps, Joseph Stein, who wrote the story of Anatevka, might be blown out of their shoes and socks by the redefinition of marriage taking place in America today.
There is a new world coming. There is always a new world coming. And it’s always a bigger, broader, more inclusive world than any of us is prepared for. The Lord of Life has great plans for us. And our circumscriptions and orthodoxies frequently do more to impede those plans than to promote them. That which we consider secular, even profane, can be inspired with sacred meaning, and that which we hold sacred may serve to separate us from our brothers and sisters, and ultimately from that Lord of Grace.
Matthew begins his Gospel with a thunderous overture. And these strange visitors from the East deliver the message with unmistakable clarity: there’s a new kind of king born in Bethlehem, and it’s a new kind of kingdom; and it’s bigger than you think.
I almost chose to not preach from the lectionary this week. None of the scripture readings seemed to grab me. Until I took a second look at this passage from Luke’s gospel. And here’s what I read all over again for the first time: “And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey.” – “they went a day’s journey.” Think about that for a minute. Mary and Joseph left this city for home without their twelve-year-old son, and didn’t notice that he wasn’t anywhere around for an entire day of traveling. Now, those are some seriously laid-back parents. Their inattention is written off with this simple explanation: “Assuming that he was in the group of travelers . . . .” They had just been in a major city, about sixty-five miles from the little town where they lived – a three or four day journey by caravan – and when they left, they didn’t bother to make certain their twelve-year-old son was with them – “Assuming that he was in the group of travelers.” Now, there’s a Bible story for you. But it gets better. After traveling for a whole day without him, they finally figure out he’s not there, so they head back to the city to look for him. It’s a big city. They search for three days! I don’t know about you, but in those circumstances I would be just about at my breaking point. When I finally did find that kid sitting in the temple talking with the rabbis I wouldn’t know whether to squeeze him and slobber all over him for joy, or strangle him! Here’s what Mary did: “When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’ He said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’” OK, that’s when I decide to strangle him. “But,” scripture says, “they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.” She “treasured all these things in her heart.”
The picture I’m getting is of parents who give their twelve-year-old an unbelievable amount of rope, and who aren’t terribly anxious about what he’ll do with it. As far as his mother is concerned, the whole episode seems to have been a treasured learning experience. I don’t know, maybe it’s because people didn’t live as long back then so life was more compressed, but it seems that these parents were already well into the process of letting go of this boy – of giving him wings and letting him fly on his own – at twelve. But it’s clear that the boy was letting go of the apron strings as well. When his parents found him, he said, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” A rather precocious twelve-year-old, to say the least. So, it finally sunk in to me that this story is about letting go. And I figured that’s a pretty apt theme for this last Sunday of 2024, a time for letting go of one year as we reach for another.
You and I tend to cling to so much. And, at times, our death-grip on the things of our lives can be strangulating. We cling, of course, to our possessions. I was walking down the driveway to the mailbox the other day when I spotted a squirrel running off through the underbrush toward a tree. I had an instant, silly thought. I said to myself, “The foolish little animal thinks this is his land. It’s not; it’s my land, and he doesn’t even know it.” Then, of course, I chuckled a bit at myself. It’s not my land any more than it’s his. We’re both just using it while we’re alive on this earth. Some other humans like myself have some pieces of paper on file somewhere claiming that I and my wife “own” this property, as if any creature can own the land beneath its feet. Those pieces of paper on file don’t really make it more mine than the squirrel’s. It’s all just part of the planet that we both happen to be inhabiting for the moment. That realization caught me a little off guard. I want this to be our land. There’s something comforting in the thought of holding that possession. It gives me a sense of security. But changing my outlook, and letting go of “our land,” also felt a little liberating to me. I wonder how much any of us might mature as human beings if we were able to let go of our sense of ownership – of that need to cling to possessions as if we ourselves were the center of a constellation of things that make us important. And that sense of ownership can also be extended to our children. letting go of them is especially hard. But Mary and Joseph are good examples. When a child is given wings and plenty of space, it can be a wonder to behold how they can fly. Letting go of the things to which we cling might actually allow us to have greater respect for those around us, our neighbors, our children, and maybe even the squirrels.
Simone Weil offered a vision of this kind of letting go. She wrote: “To empty ourselves of our false divinity, to deny ourselves, to give up being the center of the world in imagination, to discern that all points in the world are equally centers and that the true center is outside the world, this is to consent to the rule of . . . free choice at the center of each soul. Such consent is love. The face of this love, which is turned toward thinking persons, is the love of our neighbor.”
I tink she’s got it right. We not only hold tight to our possessions, perhaps we hold even tighter to ourselves – or, more accurately, the sense of ourselves – the identity we have created for ourselves over a lifetime of working, relating, and creating. The problem with our desperate hold on this identity is that it’s an attempt to cling to the past, to all that we have known and valued about ourselves and our world. And we are not allowed such a luxury. Life is a dynamic, evolving thing. At times, it seems the only constant is that everything changes. So we are called upon to let go of the past. At regular intervals in the course of our living the parameters of our lives change, the particular challenges to be faced change, even our identities must change.
The pastor and writer, Mike Yaconelli, offered a vivid image of this reality in an article before his death a number of years ago. He wrote: “Once you find where [God’s] trail is, you are faced with a sobering truth in order to go on, you must let go of what brought you here. You cannot go on without turning your back on what brought you to this place. It is like swinging on a trapeze. Once you have gained the courage to swing, you never want to let go . . . and then, without warning (around age 50, for me), you look up and see another trapeze swinging towards you, perfectly timed to meet you, and you realize you are being asked to let go and grab onto the other trapeze. You have to release your grip. You have to reach out. You have to experience the glorious terror of inbetween-ness as you disconnect from one and reach for the other.” I think Yaconelli’s trapeze image is a great one to “hold on to” – so to speak. Every stage of life, it seems, involves a letting go of one bar to reach for another. That can be a very frightening prospect, but it’s absolutely essential.
Ultimately, what all of our years are preparing us for is letting go of life itself. That’s the final challenge. I have spoken to you before about my brother, Bill. In his final days with ALS disease, somehow, he managed to hold on. But in the larger sense he had been letting go – through a remarkable and inspiring process. I believe I’ve related to you before his words to me after his diagnosis. He said that if he could choose a way to die, this agonizingly protracted withering away would be his choice. Because, in his words, “death is the last great adventure in life, and I don’t want to miss a minute of it.” That’s facing into death, and a form of letting go that I have found unbelievably courageous and has inspired me ever since.
Michael Jinkins, the President of Louisville Seminary, writing in the Christian Century some years ago, asked, “. . . ‘What happens when we die?’ I think I would have to say now, ‘We let go.’ . . . Faith is a matter of learning to let go, to entrust ourselves to God. When we die,” he says, “we really do let go. Like a tiny infant unable even to hold onto her mother’s finger, unable to grasp and pull ourselves up, we let go when death is here, and in letting go we are tacitly entrusting all we are to God for whatever may come.”
So, here we are at the doorstep of another year. In truth, January 1st will probably be virtually indistinguishable from December 31st. But all the emotional freight attached to the turning of the calendar makes it a very convenient time for this sort of reflection. The child left behind in the big city and finding his way to the temple and to his future is, in some ways, our story. It summons us to consider what we are letting go of, and what we might be reaching for. The answers to that query may differ among us, but the basic reality is the same for us all. Freedom, growth, and grace in living require that we loosen our grip, so that our hands will be ready to find what the Lord and the future have in store.
I wish for you all open hands, open arms, and open minds; and a very happy New Year.
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