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I love those marvelous words of FDR spoken at the time our nation was in the Great Depression. It was 1933. The Depression worsened in the months preceding Roosevelt’s inauguration on March 4. Many people have compared recent recessions with the Great Depression, but there really is no comparison. Factory closings, farm foreclosures, and bank failures increased, while unemployment soared far beyond what we’ve seen in more recent times. Roosevelt faced the greatest crisis in American history since the Civil War. In his inaugural address, he said, “First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself!” Those words are like the man who spoke them – strong, confident, reassuring.
They are not like the words Jesus uttered to his disciples in the boat, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” Let me explain:
In verse 36 we read, “leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat . . . [and] A great windstorm arose” Now, I’ve gotten into boats. I can remember being with friends on a sailboat in two to three foot seas. That’s not considered much by sailors, but it was plenty enough for me. I remember the pounding of the boat against the waves as it dove into each trough. When we changed course and the boat leaned, I thought I was going to lose my lunch.
I’ve never been in a boat in a serious storm. I’ve heard plenty of stories about it, though. I’ve heard friends tell of being out on the water with eight foot waves crashing over the bow in the darkness – the kind of seas that make veteran sailors fear for their lives. I can hardly imagine being in that kind of storm at sea.
So, when I read here in Mark, “A great windstorm arose . . .” I can imagine a great storm. This is no little heavy wind. It says here, “the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped!” Not only were the waves crashing over the bow, but the boat was about to sink! That’s some storm.
Now get this. Then it says, “But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion.” He was asleep? That’s one of the most amazing things I’ve encountered in scripture. He was either an astonishingly great and soul-centered man, a narcoleptic, or a complete idiot!
“. . .and they woke him up.” Now, think about that for a minute. I have no idea how they did that. If he could sleep through a raging storm that was tossing the boat around and about to sink it, what in the world could these guys do that would get his attention?
So Jesus wakes up, assesses the situation, quiets the raging seas, and utters this truly baffling phrase, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
“Why are you afraid?” You’ve got to be kidding. It seems rather obvious. I’ve been in a boat in heavy winds. I was scared to death when it was nothing like what’s described here. “Why are you afraid?”
I’ve been frightened. I was a police officer. And if you think cops are never afraid, you’re mistaken. I remember starting to wear a bullet-proof vest under my uniform because there was some nut-case going around shooting police officers. I can remember high speed chases, trying to arrest a guy who was twice my size and drunk and resisting. I remember ordering larceny suspects out of a car at gun-point. I remember going home after a long and stressful shift, so caught up in my fears that I had to go check on the children in their beds to make sure they were breathing.
I don’t blame the disciples for their fear. I’ve been frightened. I remember huddling in the living room with a transistor radio while hurricane Gloria came rumbling through. And when it felt like the house was about to be reduced to rubble we went into the bathroom because it seemed like the sturdiest part of the structure. We crouched there while a sixty foot maple tree in the back yard came crashing to the ground. I don’t blame the disciples for their fear.
I doubt that you can either. When the obstacles have seemed so large, and self doubt has crept up on you, so that you wonder what you are doing, or what you are going to do. When the storms of life, of loss, of tragedy, of failure have moved in to blacken the sky overhead, and the winds of uncertainty have blown and piled up the waves like great walls, and all there seems below is a great, cold, black void, fathoms deep. You’ve been frightened.
I remember when the sixth grade bully beat me up on the playground. I told my dad about it. His advice? “The next time he comes after you, you just clean his clock – punch his lights out.” The fact that this kid was nearly twice my size was to have no bearing on the situation. Somehow, just saying, “don’t be afraid” doesn’t seem like good advice.
And Jesus doesn’t say, “don’t be afraid.” He doesn’t offer some stirring words like, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” or even, “fear not, the Lord shall be they confidence.” He challenges me, and he challenges you with a mind-blowing question: “Why are you afraid?”
That’s the question. It calls us to truly look at ourselves and come to terms with the source of our fears. It’s not the sort of word you might hear from most of us preachers when you’re in the midst of a traumatic and painful experience. We’re trained in seminary to try to hear and empathize with people’s fear and hurt. It’s not considered the time to challenge them.
And Jesus was perfectly able to empathize with the disciples. His amazing ability to sleep through a raging storm at sea notwithstanding, Jesus was capable of knowing fear. He certainly demonstrated that on the night before he was crucified, in the garden of Gethsemane. He prayed, and sweated, and trembled, and asked to be let out of this terrible situation. He knew. He knew what it’s like to live in a terrifying world. But he still put it to the disciples, “Why are you afraid?”
“Why are you afraid?” It’s a question that directs us to the very heart of our faith. The things that we fear are real. There are more things to fear than just fear itself. But it can be terribly important to ask ourselves what it is that lives at the deepest heart of our fear. We might say we fear losing our job, or getting cancer, or having something awful happen to someone we love, or just about anything else. But if we search diligently enough, we may discover other, deeper fears that fuel the more routine and daily fears. Are we afraid of death, or are we afraid of what death might be? Are we afraid of losing income, or are we afraid of losing the routines and titles that give us something to cling to for security? Are we afraid of global catastrophe, or are we afraid of losing the future, thus rendering the past meaningless? In the final analysis, most of our deepest fears boil down to the fear of what the universe and our place in it would be if there were no hope, no grace, no divine providence.
I think that’s why Jesus startled the disciples with what sounded like a foolish question. He was turning the disciples’ experience upside down. In essence, he was saying, “You think you’re afraid of the storm? Why are you really afraid?” I think he challenged the root of their fear because that’s the only point there is to make, and the only way to make it! Faith is not a magic elixir to make our fears vanish into thin air, but at a deep, existential level, faith is the opposite of our greatest, most profound fear. Faith is that connection with the heart of the universe that grabs us by the shirt collar and tells us existence is not arbitrary and capricious; it is an expression of divine intention. And there’s something about that way of approaching life that turns things upside down!
Because of the reality of grace, the world doesn’t always work the way we think it does. Just when we are at the end of our resources, and we’ve no place left to turn, the answer comes from the least expected place with no warning. The very thing you think is least likely to happen may well be the Divine plan. The irresponsible slacker, sleeping in the boat while a storm rages may just be the one who can, astonishingly, quiet the waters.
The world is full of miracles; we are surrounded by miracle-workers, and we usually don’t know it simply because we’re not looking for them. When you run out of options, another option can be created for you out of thin air. When you are most alone, you discover the wondrous healing touch of a friend.
You see, either we’re just going through the motions here, or this entire universe, along with each one of us, is resting in ultimately powerful, perfectly loving, and eternally abiding hands. And that makes all the difference.
To live by faith may not be to walk blithely through our days unaffected by the storms that rage, but it is to wrest from life at least a modicum of the peace that comes from knowing that the world is upside down, that storms can be stilled when that’s the last thing we expect, that the Lord of Life is in charge, even though it seems like there’s no one minding the store.
Every once in a while it’s important to remind ourselves that we are not among those who live without hope, and that our hope is built on a sure foundation. Whatever disturbs you, whatever dismays you, whatever keeps you awake at night, whatever gnaws at your insides, whatever causes you to worry and fret, whatever your fear, here is my word to you this morning: There may be a surprise in store for you. So look for it, be patient, be ready. And maybe ask yourself: “Why are you afraid?”
Dadgie and I have always had interesting nesting habits. Just about every time we’ve moved to a new place we’ve gone through this little ritual. She planted gardens and I built fences. The gardens are . . . well . . . self explanatory. The fences were often to keep the dog out of the gardens. I am usually quite proud of my fences. I’ve built picket fences, wire fences, stockade fences, you name it. But there is one problem that I haven’t yet quite figured a way around: after a few years, her gardens still looked bright and beautiful, but my fences started to rot. It’s the doggonedest thing! The very minute she put those flowers and vegetables in the dirt, they started to grow, and the very minute I put those posts in the ground, they started to rot. Now I know some of you watch “This Old House” and are ready to say, “Mike, just use pressure treated lumber.” I do use it, but my point is that even p.t. doesn’t last forever. Apparently, there’s something built right into those flower seeds that’s a miracle – a miracle that has long since faded from possibility in those fence posts, but a miracle that makes the flowers keep becoming more than they were.
It’s automatic! At least that’s the word Jesus chose to describe it (or, the translators of Jesus’ words, if you will). In speaking of the kingdom, he said it was like a seed planted in the ground, growing into a stalk of wheat that is brought forth from the earth (in Greek) automaté. That’s the same root from which comes our English word automatic. Growth is built-in. Organic development seems to be one of the basic ingredients in the recipe of creation. It’s common, apparently, to single-celled animals, complex organisms, and the kingdom of heaven. Jesus apparently considered it intrinsic to the Gospel; he spoke about it all the time. Many of the parables are about growth: grain, yeast, mustard plants, trees, weeds. Jesus seemed to love these kind of stories. And in this fourth chapter of Mark, he makes it very clear that what he is doing and calling us to do is not so much like building a fence as it is like planting a garden.
Seeds of peace, planted long ago, have begun to germinate in many corners of the world. We saw it happen in Ireland and South Africa a number of years ago. There are even rumors lately of behind-the-scenes negotiations going on between the Israelis and Palestinians. If that came about it would indeed be a miracle. There are still nations at war; there are still religious rivalries that erupt into deadly conflict. There are still atrocities being committed. There are still ancient hatreds simmering in many lands. But, isn’t it remarkable how the conflicts on our planet seem to be scaling down, and our emerging global network of economic interdependencies seems to be making really large scale warfare like world wars less and less likely. We may be a long way from lasting global peace, but we just may finally be starting to grow in that direction.
It’s true for our world, and it’s true for our community of faith. When we look back at the history of our church, we are aware of times of struggle and times of triumph. We have seen the church supporting missions around the world and reaching out to people in our own community. As with any church, I’m sure our historical record includes conflicts and reconciliations, unity and diversity, set-backs and stunning achievements. Yes, we have dwindled in numbers, but we have grown together in love and faith and are striving every day to embody the Love of Christ.
And the same is true in your own life. Rarely do we take the time to notice, but it can be important to rest a moment along the way and look at the road you’ve traveled. It may at times seem that you take two steps back for every one forward, but over the long haul, you know it’s not true; you are more today than you once were. You are wiser, more able to listen and hear the hopes and fears of others. I believe it was Robert Raines reflecting somewhere on the remarkable growth of the human soul over time and his awareness that real growth often only comes when one has lived a number of years. He responded to the question of Nicodemus, “How can one be born again when he is old?” And Raines said, “Why that’s precisely when it happens!”
All of this is good to reflect on and sheds a hopeful light on our lives and our world. But there’s a significant caution for us in the story Jesus tells. It is the caution to not lose sight of the mystery of growth. In the parable, the seed grows secretly while the man sleeps. In the light of day he sees the growth of the plant, but he’s at a loss to explain how it happens. Because the miracle of growth is a mystery, it’s also a process that’s often hidden, almost imperceptible. Consequently, we need all the patience we can muster.
That’s the lesson we all learned from Nelson Mandella. He spent years in prison, with no certainty about his future, but he patiently nurtured the seeds of hope within, preparing himself for a day he could not be certain would ever come. Upon his release, he became the voice of justice and peace, and ultimately the leader of his nation. Those who are about the business of the realm of Love are most certainly people of infectious hope, but they must also be people of indomitable patience. So, even in the bleakest of times, we must have the wisdom to lie down on our beds at night and know the seeds, hidden in the darkness, are hard at work performing an automatic miracle.
Another aspect of the story Jesus told is equally critical for those of us who are trying to find our way in this age of uncertainty. Jesus goes to considerable lengths to illustrate that this mysterious growing of love and faith is a process, and a process involving human beings at critical moments. Yes, the grain grows mysteriously, but the seed has to be planted. The blade appears, then the head, then the full grain in the head, but the one who must harvest the crop stays vigilant throughout the growth cycle, sleeping each night, but rising each day to examine the progress. There’s no doubt about it, you and I are co-creators, partners in the divine work of creation and re-creation, collaborators in the unfolding of a new world and a new humanity. We are called to be earnest and diligent gardeners, tending to and watering the seedlings of all the beautiful things growing in our world, and pulling at the weeds of greed and self interest, intolerance and abuse.
I believe that the most terrible kind of death a person can suffer is the death of the spirit. That’s what happens when you give up on growth. Concerns for peace, social justice, human service, global ecology, civil rights, all have grown up out of the fertile soil of those in our nation, in our cities, in our churches, who have been vigilantly progressive. By that I mean they have refused to be content with things they way they are. They have been committed to a self-critical approach to life, that looks not only at the world around them, but first within, and asks, “How can things be better?” Not, “How can I keep things from getting worse?” I’m deeply concerned that we’re in danger of letting that spirit die in America. We are all too rapidly becoming a nation of finger-pointers. And I fear we are losing the capacity to look critically at ourselves. Goethe said it: “everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.” If the kingdom is going to come about (as we pray each week) “on earth, as it is in heaven,” if the seeds of peace and justice are going to grow within our own hearts and minds, if the flower of community is going to blossom in this place, then we must be vigilant, always seeking the opportunity to pitch in and be a part of the new thing that’s trying to bloom.
Finally, I’m struck by the fact that, even after all the focus on growth as a process, the kingdom becoming, growing like a stalk of wheat, the need for vigilance and care, Jesus points to the final harvest. If we are working, waiting, and keeping watch over the growth of the kingdom, we are working and waiting for a real outcome, not pie-in-the-sky. A new realm of love and justice and community is in the cards! Growth is not for its own sake. The process is not an end in itself. We may spend our entire lives becoming, but there is something to be. We may never see the end results of our labors, but there are results. Full fruition of the kingdom may continue to be unrealized, but it is nonetheless real. Don’t give up on tomorrow. It’s just a sunrise away.
So what’s all this got to do with fenceposts and flowers? Well, there are two kinds of people in the world, those who, like fence posts, get stuck in the muck and start to turn rotten, and those who, like flowers, spread their leaves and keep reaching for the sun.
I preached a few Sundays ago about Kit Smart and the importance of being crazy enough to, as he wrote, “Hear the Hallelujah from the heart of God.” I’d like to expand on that notion a bit this morning and talk about what it can really mean to go “out of your mind.”
An absolutely amazing picture is painted in our scripture reading from Mark this morning. Crowds were gathering to hear Jesus speak, and it’s clear that for many, it was a kind of circus sideshow. They wanted to come hear the crazy man. In the same sentence that Mark says the crowds were swarming around him, he points out that a lot of people who heard Jesus speak thought he was a few Fruit Loops shy of a whole bowl. The situation was so distressing to Jesus’ family that they were trying to get him to back off – maybe disappear for a while. Listen to this: “and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’” And apparently Jesus didn’t do much to convince the crowds that he had all his marbles. Because when they told him his mother and brothers were there to see him, he said, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And then he looked at the crowds gathered around to listen to him, and he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Don’t you think if he were concerned about the rumors and trying to demonstrate that his elevator went to the top floor, he would have said something a bit more conventional, like “Oh, I’m glad they came to see me. Tell them I’ll be right there.” If I may be so bold, I think Jesus may have seen some merit in being “out of his mind.” Let me try to explain that.
You and I are so often like those crowds who gathered for the sideshow, who came to spend a fun afternoon chuckling under their breath while they listened to the lunatic from Galilee. The media moguls have figured that out; they know what turns us on. From the so-called “reality shows” to the kind of stories that often pass for news these days, what we so often are drawn to are caricatures of humanity that are so broadly and outrageously drawn that they can serve to reinforce everyone’s sense of their own normalcy – the validity of their own view of the world. It’s a lot like going to hear a so-called prophet we think is off his rocker. Chuckling at him makes us feel superior and fortifies our own convictions. We all find that very satisfying. The problem is that, whether we’re talking about relational ethics, politics, or theology, simply having one’s own predilections and prejudices strengthened doesn’t necessarily lead to greater wisdom or truth. Witness the cancer of retrenched partisan ideology that has become our political system. Both sides in this current run for the presidency paint their opponent in the most extreme terms they can think of. It helps their own supporters feel superior and confident in their leader. Don’t we all do it? Depending on which end of the political spectrum you are on, the other guy is either a senile, doddering, old fool, or a megalomaniac out to destroy our democracy.
Truth is, we spend most of our time in our own minds. We are marinated, basted, and sautéed in the ideas that have formed us; we swim in the ocean of our own thinking; we wrap ourselves in the comfortable blanket of the world view carefully crafted in the factory of our minds. There is a certain arrogance in this business of living constantly in our minds. Our unshakeable and utter dependence on the validity of what we think we know carries the implied assumption that any of us is capable of comprehending truth all by ourselves, that we can actually grasp reality and know with omnipotent certainty divine and eternal intentions and determinations. It is the idolatry of setting one’s own mind on a pedestal as if it were the epitome of Divine Intention. Clergy are particularly susceptible to this kind of idolatry. The great German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew this danger well. While preparing today’s sermon I stumbled upon a remarkable phrase from Bonhoeffer dredged up by William Willimon. He wrote about “the curse of theology.” Bonhoeffer (writing in the day when all clergy were presumed to be males – so excuse the exclusive language) wrote, “The greatest difficulty for the pastor stems from his theology. He knows all there is to be known about sin and forgiveness . . . The peak of theological craftiness is to conceal necessary and wholesome unrest under such self-justification . . . The conscience has been put to sleep. Theology becomes a science by which one learns to excuse everything and justify everything . . . The theologian knows that he cannot be shot out of the saddle by other theologians. Everything his theology admits is justified. This is the curse of theology.”1 That’s quite a comment from one of the world’s greatest theologians. What Bonhoeffer refers to as “necessary and wholesome unrest” is that unsettling word from Jesus, that business of going “out of your mind,” that many pastors try to avoid by tying their theologies up in neat little ribbons and bows. Whenever you hear a preacher (including this one) issue an unequivocal declaration of what “the Bible says,” or what “God wants,” be afraid, be very afraid.
I think Jesus would have us go “out of our minds” from time to time. I think he wanted us to see a larger world than the one that neatly fits into the box of our preconceptions and expectations. I think that’s why he always said things that surprised, disturbed, and even shocked his listeners – things like “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple,” and “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! . . . father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother,” and “Who are my mother and my brothers? . . . Here are my mother and my brothers!” He loved to confound people’s expectations; he always found a way to throw them off balance, to get them “out of their minds.” You and I could stand to get out of our minds from time to time.
What is it to be “out of your mind?” First of all, I think it’s a wonderful expression of humility. If I’m willing to step outside of my own world view long enough to entertain another perspective, I just may be able to stop worshiping at the shrine of my own truth. Humility seems to be a rare commodity these days. Folks are convinced that those who disagree with them are delusional, wrong-headed, or, in the extreme, communists, socialists, fascists, or instruments of the devil. I love the old bumper sticker we used to see every now and then. It simply said, “Have you ever stopped to consider that you might be wrong?” Getting out of your own mind, if even for a brief excursion, is a great way to let a little air out of an inflated ego.
Secondly, to go “out of your mind” is to expand your world view in a way that shifts perspective and opens you to greater insight and greater possibilities. A world that fits inside one’s own small brain is a very little world indeed. There’s a whole wide universe of ideas, realities, and truths out there. And none of us can ever master them all. If you can practice stepping outside of the reality that you’ve constructed in your head, it can be truly astounding what you can learn. It’s a scary thing to do. Once we admit that there’s more truth than we know, it can shake our confidence and make us afraid that our whole world might collapse on us. But if we muster the courage to look further, and experience more broadly and deeply those alien ideas that don’t always fit our assumptions, we gain not only more awareness, but a greater understanding of how little we truly grasp. That’s what folks back in the time of Samuel couldn’t figure out. Every nation around them had a king. It was the thing to do. So they wanted a king so they could be like all the other nations. They couldn’t think any further than that. It was all that their minds could grasp, and it turned out to be disastrous. It wouldn’t be the first time in history that a nation got stuck in a rut due to a lack of vision.
Finally, to be out of your mind is to establish a greater bond with those around you. Maybe that’s the deeper truth behind Jesus’ words about his mother and brothers. He said, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Knowing what is “the will of God” is pretty tricky stuff, I admit. But the task of searching for that will, and striving always to get closer to comprehending it takes us away from being embroiled in our own agendas, and needs, and persuasions. It puts us on common ground with one another because when we acknowledge that it’s the Lord’s will and not our own that’s determinative, we can no longer separate ourselves from one another through judgment.
I’m very pleased to be in church full of people who are always going “out of their minds.” There is a culture here of searching, growing, listening, and learning. It is very healthy. We have many opportunities to speak with one another and to listen. I’m confident that you will all continue to demonstrate the humility that comes with knowing none of us has a monopoly on truth, and that you will make the love that you have for one another manifest in knowing each other to be your own brothers and sisters. Because of that, I always love our times of eating, and sharing, and listening. After all, it’s a great opportunity to get “out of your mind.”
1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Spiritual Care, cited by William Willimon in Pulpit Resource, June 10, 2012.
I remember when, years ago, Dadgie and I took a picnic to Tanglewood. We sat on the lawn beneath a giant tree and listened to the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Chorus perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. I recall that it was a beautiful day, and I remember looking up at the sky through the leaves of that great tree and feeling that this was the an eternal moment. I feel that a lot, though, when I listen to the Ninth Symphony. It was exactly two hundred years ago last month, with the ink practically still wet on the paper from Beethoven’s pen, that the symphony was first performed. It is a spectacular and inspired work that always brings me to a remarkable combination of laughter and tears – tears of joy. And that’s the idea, isn’t it – joy? The symphony was, according to Jan Swafford, Beethoven’s answer to the unanswered prayer “Dona nobis pacem” (or, “Give Us Peace”) at the conclusion of his sister work, the Missa Solemnis.1 The Ninth Symphony is an exuberant celebration of the divine gift of joy, inspired by Friedrich Schiller’s ode: An die Fruede (or Ode to Joy) which Beethoven set to music and incorporated into the final movement of the symphony. The poem begins with a shout, and an exclamation: “Freude, schöner Götterfunken” (Joy! Beautiful Godspark!). It refers to this joy as the “daughter of Elysium,” Elysium being the idyllic land of flowers and lovely meadows that is the domain of those souls destined for paradise. It is astounding that Beethoven, in his final years, would choose to shout for joy with this symphony. He was blind, racked with pain and humiliation from illness, and arguably on the verge of insanity. What was there in life to celebrate as divine joy? Therein lies the quest of this sermon.
I have not struggled with the kind of disabilities and torments that Beethoven did. But I have had my moments. Many years ago, before I married the love of my life, I found myself in a terrible state of depression. I was divorced and alone; I had lost my job, lost my home, lost my family. In a session of counseling with an excellent therapist I was led into the depths of that depression. And in the midst of my deep and desperate aloneness, I made a profound discovery. I realized that I still had myself! And in that discovery lay a hidden truth, something that I only gradually began to internalize in the months and years ahead. That truth is this: that I am profoundly connected to Life itself, to the universe, to every person, to God, to (and I’m partial to the way Tillich put it:) the “Ground of All Being.” And my connection to all of that is unbreakable, and it is Joy itself. It’s what the Psalmist was exclaiming those thousands of years ago. He wrote, “O LORD, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. . . . Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.” That divine communion is what Jesus spoke of in today’s reading from the Gospel of John. He employed, of course, a metaphor. He said that we are connected with a vine that has branches and bears fruit.
I happen to believe that every human being shares in that vine. Beethoven and Schiller seem to agree. The words of the Ode to Joy embedded in the Ninth Symphony celebrate the universality of this connection:
All creatures drink of Joy
At Nature’s breasts.
All good, all evil souls
Follow in her rose-strewn wake.
She gave us kisses and vines . . .
No matter who you are, no matter what your background, how many your weaknesses and failings, or how pervasive your disbelief, you are connected to this Core of existence; you are a recipient of those treasured gifts of kisses and vines. And in an ecstatic moment, Schiller seems to want to do more than make the point; he gives it a wild and passionate exclamation mark!
Be embraced, you Millions!
This kiss is for the whole world!
That kiss, that embrace, is joy. Joy is that connection, a connection with the Heart of Reality, a connection ultimately with one another (even with all the millions), as all of us are branches on the vine.
Jesus sums it up for us. He says, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” And then he says, “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” He couldn’t be more clear. The connection we share on this vine is joy itself – complete joy. And it has everything to do with loving one another – with, as Schiller put it, “all men being made brothers where the soft wings of joy sway.”
What does this mean? It means that joy is a very different thing than that transient emotion: happiness. It is not an emotion. Joy is a profound and unbreakable connection that remains firm – abides, if you will – even when blindness comes and the lights go out, when pain and illness take over a life, when loss and aloneness seem to be all that’s left. Such joy is the bedrock on which a life can be constructed. It does not yield to the tremors and quakes that upend plans and bring dreams down to the dust.
But, of course, there is always a caveat. Jesus says that every branch that bears no fruit is “removed” and even the branch that bears fruit is “pruned” to make it bear more fruit. I think he’s laying out the truth that people frequently cut themselves off from the nourishment of that vine by simply disregarding it. When we fail to acknowledge, nurture, and celebrate the abiding connection we have with the Heart of Being we find ourselves desperately alone. As Schiller writes in our ode, if a person has never called “even one soul on earth his own . . . let him steal away weeping from this fellowship.”
And, the very traumas and heartaches of life, although they cannot shake the foundation of our joy – our connection with Grace – once it is established, can serve to “prune” away the extraneous, hone our perspective, and remind us of what truly matters in life. I have known this in my own experience. It was a heart attack that finally cleared away the fog of trivial pursuits for me, and allowed me to distinguish that which is true and lasting from that which is momentary and unreliable. I’m sure that in your life there have been moments that have served you in that way. For Schiller the extraneous parts of life that need to be pruned are the habits and customs that we can find ourselves entangled in, and which can separate us from one another, or even from ourselves. He addresses Joy with awe, saying:
Your magical power binds together
What custom (or habit) tears apart.
It is simply turning away from that defining, holy connection that results in a profound alienation, and it is turning toward and affirming that connection that centers and grounds our lives and frees us for love. The point is, as someone once noted, “You can’t get to love except through joy, and you can’t get to joy except through love.”
In the course of these two hundred years, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has taken its place as one of the most impactful pieces of music in human history. It has been claimed by people of all ideologies and nations on the earth; it was transposed into one of the great hymns of the church: Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee; it was played as the resounding note of celebration at the fall of the Berlin Wall; and it has been adopted by the European Union as their anthem. Jan Swafford writes, “What can be said with some certainty is that its position in the world is probably what Beethoven wanted it to be. In an unprecedented way for a composer, he stepped into history with a great ceremonial work that doesn’t simply preach a sermon about freedom and brotherhood, but aspires to help bring them to pass.”2
Well, I guess I’ve just preached that sermon. I think the Psalmist wraps it up best. He struggles, as we all do, with trying to comprehend the power and presence of Divinty. His struggle can be seen, in one light, as a reflection of all the larger struggles of our lives – the trials and the hurts that might threaten to distract us, turn us in on ourselves, and turn us away from the vine, the Joy – the complete joy – that is our connection with the Heart of Being. He puts it this way:
“How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them – they are more than the sand; I come to the end – I am still with you.”
Let’s sing together: “An Die Freude.”
1 Jan Swafford, in the program notes to BSO Performance at Tanglewood, August 25, 2013.
2 op cit.
I’d like to begin on this Memorial Day weekend by sharing with you a treasure from my computer files. It’s excerpts from an email I received from my father many years ago before his death: “Nearly three quarters of a century ago,” he wrote, “my country needed me in its war and I spent a significant amount of time away from my wife and two babies. As it happened I was sent to the U.S. Navy for duty in the Pacific theater. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor remained in the forefront of our minds, enabling us to shoot at incoming planes with no thought of the human beings flying them. If such a thought happened to cross our minds, which rarely happened, we quickly dismissed it because we weren’t shooting at people, we were shooting at ‘Japs’ who were our mortal enemies. . . .
“When I was discharged and back home I discovered that I had become a man with a different world view. I saw war – all war – as insanity! The essential element in the making of a warrior is dehumanizing the ‘enemy,’ thus removing the guilt (or at least providing a self-justification) for taking the life of another human being . . .
“All this fits together and makes perfect sense to me – but there remains hidden somewhere in the back of my mind the lingering memory of my very small part of WWII, and the emotions I both carried into it and those that persisted. The realization of this ‘moral contamination’ hit me years later. My son, a baby I left behind, grew to be a man who chose a career as a U.S. Naval Officer. In the course of his duties he was stationed in Japan and he served as secretary to the Commanding Officer of the Pacific Fleet. He did such an outstanding job that he was awarded a medal by an admiral of the Japanese Navy. He sent me a photograph of the admiral pinning the medal on him. To say I had mixed emotions would be an understatement. I felt all the fatherly pride one would expect but the ambiguity came as I realized that the man decorating my son was a man I would have been happy to shoot down less than three decades ago – and that he would have been delighted to blow my ship out from under me. That’s the ‘moral contamination’ I spoke of.
“Even today, in the twilight years of my life, I carry the scar which at times only lightly covers the emotional knee-jerk . . . of [is it] racism?” he asks.
“I hope not,” he continues, “though I have come to understand that such concepts are not as clear cut as most people would like to make them. . . . I grew up in a culture which I later recognized as racist but which at the time I accepted as normal. . . . [but] the major part of my adult life has been involved with interracial activities. I only wish and pray that before I die I might know the freedom from the intrusive remnants of my childhood.”
Well, that was quite an email. My father has been many things to me: an authority figure, a source of dependable encouragement and guidance, even a friend. But, in what he referred to as “the twilight years” of his life, he inspired me with his continuing quest to learn and grow.
My granddaddy used to say that if frogs had wings they wouldn’t bump their rear ends so much. There are great numbers of us who feel like frogs from time to time, and we’re getting pretty tired of scraping our rear-ends. We are painfully aware of the vast distance between who we are and who we wish we were – between who we have become, and who we were, perhaps, intended to be. At times it can almost bring us to tears.
I’d like to address a question that has been on many of our hearts from time to time: Is it really possible to change when you’ve spent a lifetime being who you are? Can something within ourselves actually call us beyond ourselves? Can there be something in the nature of things that transcends the nature of things?
I want to stand next to Nicodemus and nod my head in impatient agreement as he asks Jesus, “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” I’m not all that confused by what Jesus means when he says, “You must be born again,” but I still share Nicodemus’ question. Even if Jesus is speaking metaphorically (as he was inclined to do), doesn’t Nicodemus still have a legitimate complaint? If a change in one’s life so volcanic, so immense, as to be compared to rebirth is to come about, how can that possibly happen to someone who is old, battle-scarred, and set in their ways? We know how it works: you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Jesus rather artfully pushes aside our folk-wisdom, and offers a door to understanding the unimaginable through a couple of plays on words. The first one has to do with the words “born again.” The Greek phrase gennethe’sai a’nothen can be taken in two different ways. It can mean born anew (as the Revised Standard Version translates it), or born from above (the translation opted for by the New Revised Standard Version). The second play on words employs the Greek word pneuma which is regularly used to mean both wind and spirit. Jesus says, “The wind (pneuma) blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit (pneuma).” In both cases (“born again” or “from above” and the “spirit/wind”), a concept that transcends human experience is tied to an image that is commonplace in human experience. Certainly, birth is a vivid and familiar image; being “born from above” is anything but! Wind is heard and felt daily, spirit is transcendent. These words have two meanings: one ordinary, one extraordinary. Now, the larger point Jesus is making is that somehow the ordinariness of life can be infused with extraordinary power. That which is above can live in us. The transcendent power of Divinity is not under our control, but manifests itself, like the wind, if it wills and where it wills, surprises us, and transforms us. This is elegance. This is high poetry. The very words chosen, and the hidden play on words they contain, carry the deepest meanings of the larger message. In fact, that same poetry is woven into the very fabric of creation. Life, even at its most mundane, is nonetheless infused with the miraculous ability to transcend itself.
Barbara and Bill Myers, in their book, Engaging In Transcendence, describe the first attempts of their ten-month-old daughter, Melissanne, to walk: “Grabbing a table leg [she] determinedly pulls herself upright. Both her legs are shaking, but she won’t allow herself to slip back onto the floor. Supporting herself as she moves, hand over hand, around the corner of the tabletop, Melissanne conveys a sense of great seriousness, even as she looks toward her mother, who is seated some distance from Melissanne’s last available handhold. Chewing her lip, but keeping one hand upon the tabletop, Melissanne stretches toward her mother until, for the briefest of moments, she hesitantly stands alone. Tumbling down, Melissanne chortles with glee, grabs the nearest table leg and once more pulls herself upright, ready to repeat the process.”1
Their daughter’s story is compelling because even in as simple a thing as baby steps there is a universe of wonder. What keeps us reaching for the table leg, reaching for the smiling visage waiting across the room? What is it that tells a child to keep reaching when she keeps falling? We have a thirst to be more than we are perhaps because we are compelled by that which is beyond us. And perhaps in that invitation lies a power for change, for transformation, that is beyond our comprehension.
Joseph Campbell relates a marvelous story from the life of Carl Jung. Jung was counseling a young woman who was resistant to his psychotherapeutic interventions because she was so rationalistic and “impeccably geometrical” in her idea of reality. Jung writes: “I was sitting opposite her one day with my back to the window, listening to her flow of rhetoric. She had had an impressive dream the night before, in which someone had given her a golden scarab – a costly piece of jewelry. While she was still telling me this dream, I heard something behind me gently tapping on the window. I turned around and saw that it was a fairly large flying insect that was knocking against the window pane from the outside in the obvious effort to get into the dark room. This seemed to me very strange. I opened the window immediately and caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a Scarabaeid Beetle, or common Rose-Chafer, whose gold-green color most nearly resembles that of a golden scarab. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words, ‘Here is your scarab.’ The experience punctured the desired hole in her rationalism and broke the ice of her intellectual resistance. The treatment could now be continued with satisfactory results.”2
Was the beetle’s appearance at the window a “bit of good luck,” as they say, or something more? Whether one regards it as some sort of divine intervention or simply regards Dr. Jung as one who used his powers of perception and creativity to the fullest, the truth is that a woman was there seeking to be more than she was, Jung was there reaching for whatever he could to make a difference, and something burst into this therapy session from outside and changed everything. The truth is: something is always bursting into our lives and relationships from outside. It might be a phone call, or a beetle at the window, or a sentence in a book, or an email from a father. What matters is that when it comes, we are found reaching – still reaching, no matter what our age.
So, on this Memorial Day weekend I’m thinking about my father. I’m still proud of him. He reminded me that what is glorious in a human being, at any age, is the dependably surprising “spirit-wind” that comes from – who knows where – maybe from “above,” maybe from something being “reborn” within us, but moving us forward deliberately, persistently . . . like baby steps; tumbling and falling, as we will, but always reaching – confident that that which is more than we are is reaching back.
1 Barbara K. Myers & William R. Myers, Engaging in Transcendence: The Church’s Ministry and Covenant with Young Children, Pilgrim Press, 1992.
2 Joseph Campbell, The Portable Jung, Viking Press 1971.
Our scripture reading this morning relates a remarkable tale. The disciples were visited by a great windy noise, tongues of flame resting on their heads, and strange languages spoken that allowed all those who gathered around from every nation known on earth to hear and understand in their own language what was spoken. This event has been regarded through the ages as the birth of the Christian Church. But there is a little voice that crops up in the backs our heads when we read about it. Some of us allow the voice full reign, while others try to tamp it down. The little voice asks, “Is this really true?” That’s a larger question than we might imagine; it lives deeper in our hearts than we might think; and it is our question for this hour: Is it true?
The question that persists in the back corner of our minds is larger than simply: “Did these things really happen? Were there really tongues of fire and strange languages spoken?” At ground level, isn’t it the question with which each person walks through the doors here every Sunday morning? We talk about the life and teachings of Jesus, of his miraculous acts; we speak of the Almighty Lord of the Universe, preexistent and eternal; we offer prayers in the expectation or hope that they are effectual; we acknowledge a Divine Spirit dwelling among us and moving through our fellowship. And yet, every Sunday morning and perhaps through the week that little voice pesters and teases: Is it true?
But there are many different things that question can mean. We might each bring to it different notions of what truth really is. I’m reminded of the scene where Jesus appears before Pilate who interrogates him: “Pilate asked him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’ Pilate [famously] asked him, ‘What is truth?’” Jesus leaves Pilate, and us, hanging; he famously did not answer.
On the campaign trail it seems that truth is whatever a candidate wants to tell us, an awful lot of which boils down to what Steven Colbert once termed “truthiness”. So, we have blogs, Internet sites, TV news segments, and talking heads all devoted to rating the veracity of campaign rhetoric. My personal favorite category has always been “pants on fire”. But truth-telling isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. In the movie Liar, Liar, Jim Carrey plays a guy who all of a sudden has to tell the stark, naked truth in every situation. I haven’t seen the movie but I understand that he spends the entire time being slapped, beaten, and humiliated by everyone he deals with. I came across an online article titled, “I think you’re fat: This story is about something called Radical Honesty. It may change your life. (But honestly, we don’t really care.)” So, truth can be cruel, which is why, I suppose, we often opt for avoidance, or subtlety, or even “little white lies”. And maybe that’s why preachers avoid questions like the one posed this morning; they’re afraid of disturbing people with the honest question that lurks in the back of all our minds.
But I tend to think we avoid the disturbing question for a deeper reason: because, as Jack Nicholson suggested in the movie A Few Good Men, we can’t handle the truth. What’s true about Jesus, and God, and prayer, and the Spirit is too large and too powerful to neatly fit into a given Sunday morning from ten to eleven. Jesus said that if we knew the truth it would set us free. Here’s the question: do we really want that freedom? Do we want to be free of our preconceptions and prejudices, free of our dependable failings and miseries, free of the security structures in which we house ourselves to ward off the familiar fears that we keep conveniently howling around us, free of the false gods of pride, and place, and possessions to which we regularly bow down? Knowing that which would free us from all this is a truth we can’t handle. So we speak around the edges of that truth. We use words like “grace” and “love” and “salvation” and “forgiveness” and “faith” as if we really understood what we were talking about. And, not so far removed as we like to imagine from our remote ancestors who sat watching shadows on the cave walls, we show up here on a Pentecost morning to hear a familiar tale of fire, and wind, and strange tongues. And what do we find? If we’re lucky we find something akin to what they found: awe. Awe, of course, is not an answer. It’s a state of mind. Or rather, a state of spirit.
But that frightening, freeing truth of which Jesus spoke – what of it? If we’re lucky enough to find awe here, perhaps we’re at least trying to touch the white-hot truth of Jesus. And maybe trying is what it’s about. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, writing in The Christian Century commented about “. . . the journalistic who-what-when-where-how that we grandchildren of the Enlightenment think comprises truth.” She contrasts this desire to pin down the facts with the willingness to have one’s life changed before understanding fully what is changing it. Then she writes, “Actually, this is the only way life ever really changes. You won’t understand marriage until you’ve been hitched for a while – maybe not even then. You’re not going to know what it’s like to have a baby until you have one. You don’t even know your profession until you’ve been in it a while. Nothing in life is obvious immediately. It all grows on us.” You have to admit, she’s got a point. And it just may be the beginning of an answer to our question. Maybe the answer is . . . well, growing on us.
We come here together on Sunday mornings singing and praying, and rub elbows downstairs with cups of coffee and bits of conversation. We sit in meetings, and occasionally sit at table and share meals together, or wash dishes, or take food to a food bank. Sometimes we plow the same old ground in conversations; sometimes we, as a colorful old acquaintance of mine once put it, “pee on each other’s shoes” but somehow, nonetheless, don’t give up on each other. And someone looking in from the outside might see all this and imagine it all to be such a waste of time. But they don’t see inside. Inside, something is stirring. It’s hard to put a name to really; we might call it Spirit; we might call it “abundant life”; I choose to call it an answer – growing.
You see, the disciples came together on Pentecost and in their coming together something happened that astounded them and allowed them to see one another as if lighted up by some divine, flaming halo. And in the Spirit of their fellowship the barriers of communication fell like scales dropping from blind eyes and suddenly they could all understand one another’s language. That was magic! Did it happen literally as described in the book of Acts? It really doesn’t matter, because I’ve been in such situations. I’ve seen the holiness dance on another person’s head, real communication suddenly break through the usual jabberwocky, and I know it’s true. I know about the abundance in living that Jesus spoke of that transcends agendas and resolutions, wells up from hearts engaged in prayer and song, fills moments of coffee and conversation with grace and joy. Boris Pasternak is quoted as saying, “What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: Life always spills over the rim of every cup.”
Each week, we stumble into this sanctuary with a question rumbling around in the recesses of our hearts. Each of us eager to find out if this is the day – the day when our secret yearning will finally find its answer: Is it true?
I was in the ministry for a little over forty years, and I’ve been going to church most every Sunday for over a quarter century longer than that. I’ve studied theology, and studied the Bible. I’ve sat with people through some of their most trying days, and ushered more lives in and out of this world than I can tally. And what have I learned from it all? Frankly, not a lot. But I have learned this much: Is it true? You bet your life it is.
One of the oldest and most perplexing questions in Christian theology is called “theodicy,” which means “vindication of God.” Classically stated, it is the vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil. In other words, is the Almighty responsible for everything that happens – and, if so, how come such awful things keep happening? In just this past week we saw people killed and injured and homes destroyed in tornadoes that swept through the southeast. Was someone who lost their life unlucky or doomed? Was someone who lived nearby but was unscathed saved by serendipity or divine intervention? To some of you, I know, these questions are pointless and irrelevant, but to many they are troubling and echo around in the deepest chambers of the heart. When you slammed on the brakes, swerved, and narrowly missed hitting someone who stepped out into the road, did you breathe a little prayer of gratitude? When the awful event does happen to you, do you find yourself at some level asking what you did to deserve this?
The composer of the psalm we heard this morning had an answer for you – very simple and very clear: “. . . the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” That was, in fact, the orthodox theology of the day. It was the same theology that Job was confronted with by his so-called friends. According to this way of seeing the world, if something awful happens to you, it means you’ve done something awful to deserve it; righteous people are rewarded with good things in life. I have to tell you that theology has never set well with me (it didn’t set well with Job either, by the way). It’s a kind of circular logic – reminds me a little of the old witch test: throw her in the river, and if she drowns it means she was a witch. That notion never took into account the fact that some people can swim and some can’t.
I may be reading a bit into the story, but it seems to me that the disciples we read about in the book of Acts were viewing things differently. When it came to making a crucial decision about who should assume one of the leadership roles in this community of the followers of Jesus, they didn’t do interviews and check references to determine who was most qualified or who was more holy. They threw the dice. Scripture says, “they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias.” What “casting lots” meant was that they wrote the names of each candidate on stones, and put the stones into a vessel, then shook it until one of them fell out. That was their guy. Now, the clear implication of scripture is that they were seeking divine guidance in casting the lots, but my reaction to it is that, at some level, they were acknowledging that random chance was not, as you and I often think, a totally separate thing from divine providence.
Maybe it’s not all as cut and dried as the Psalmist seems to think. Maybe the rain does, indeed, fall on the just and unjust alike. And maybe sometimes you get rained on simply because you happen to be outside at the time. But is there in the randomness of what may befall any of us at any time still a divine hand at work in a manner of which we may have only the slightest hints? We’re in very murky and uncertain territory here. Let me talk about that murkiness for a moment. I’m reminded of something from Jeffrey Brown, the outstanding PBS NewsHour correspondent, in his book of poetry called The News Poems. In it there is a poem titled “The Art of the Interview”. He describes a time during a news interview when the lights suddenly went out in the studio and writes, “. . . still, again, always in the dark.” I love that line. It reflects a raw existential truth. Whether the lights are on or not, you and I are in many ways “still, again, always in the dark.” I think that’s partly how it’s intended to be. The deepest truths in life are clouded in mystery. Faith is little more than groping around in the dark hoping to touch a portion of that truth, but the task of groping in the dark for truth is growth-producing and, ironically, enlightening.
Well, my groping in the dark and attempting to touch the mystery of grace, providence, luck, and serendipity leads me, as is often the case, to the adjoining dark room where the mysteries of science are housed. Albert Einstein famously said, “God doesn’t play dice with the world.” He said that in reference to the theories of quantum physics that were being put forward by others. Einstein simply couldn’t quite get his very consequential mind around the uncertainty and randomness that quantum theory predicted to be at the heart of existence. But, indeed, scientists have found that uncertainty – that constant rolling of the dice – does turn out to very predictably describe the workings of the sub-atomic, quantum realm of reality. In scientific circles it’s called the uncertainty principle. Basically, it means that because uncertainty lies at the heart of quantum existence, anything can happen. For instance, it’s possible for the broken pieces of a coffee cup that has fallen on the floor to come back together on their own and make a new, whole coffee cup. It’s not that it is impossible, it’s simply that the probability of it happening is so astronomically remote that it might as well be impossible.
Here’s my contention: kind of like the disciples in the early church did, the Almighty does indeed play dice with the world. But it’s the Lord’s casino, and the dice are loaded.
The fundamental question that motivates much of cosmology is this: Why should there be something rather than nothing? Why are there sunsets, and Toyotas, and people, and stars, and galaxies? Why is there matter, and energy, and laws of physics? I can’t answer that question to the satisfaction of many scientists, but I can suggest that the existence of existence argues for the existence of Divine grace. This is so because in order for stars, and sunsets, and Toyotas to be, the universe has to contain all the necessary ingredients (matter and energy and laws of physics), and if those elements and laws were not balanced in a way for order to emerge, there would be nothing but chaos – or nothing at all. To put this in another way, all of the randomness at the tiniest heart of existence, in the realm of quantum physics, has to be ruled by laws of probability that ultimately lead to an ordered universe in order for our world to be. To put this another way, the created order, even though ruled by a great deal of random chance, is heavily tilted by its very existence in the direction of things working, being held together, and continuing. To put this another way, Mr. Einstein, God plays dice with the world, but the dice are loaded.
This all should not come as a great surprise to you. You know that terrible things can and do happen. But if you give it a little thought, you know also that most of the time, on most days, in most places and most circumstances, terrible things do not happen. Horrific tornadoes make the news because it is a rare occurrence. If devastating, life taking, home destroying storms were happening in all places at all times, our species could not survive. Yes, people died and many were injured, and our hearts go out to them, but in millions of homes across the land people live in relative peace and comfort. The nature of nature is that it all manages to work. Even human agencies and activities, as bumbling as they often are, mostly succeed. Reality is tilted in the direction of order, and creation is tilted in the direction of grace. Terrible accidents happen; misery befalls us. But how many times have you breathed a sigh of relief when the terrible accident was narrowly avoided? How many days, how many hours and minutes with sufficient food, shelter, and even a degree of love can you tally up in your life? If you add it all up and put in the balances the catastrophes and hurts on one side, and the times of life basically working and offering possibility and promise on the other, it’s not even close. This is not by accident; it’s how the world is put together. I’m telling you, the dice are loaded.
What are grace, providence, luck, and serendipity? Here’s my answer: they’re all different words for the same thing. No, I don’t think the Almighty decides one day that there’s going to be a tornado and these particular people are going to lose their lives. And I don’t think that holy and righteous people get all the goodies in life or that if some terrible thing happens to you it’s because you did something to deserve it. But I do think that grace and providence are built into the created order. Just ask the disciples. When they went to fill Judas’s place, they had sufficient confidence in how the world was put together by divine providence that they simply rolled the dice.
I’d like everyone to open up your bulletin and take a look at my sermon title. That’s right: “flabber dabber.” In fact, “flabber dabber, flabber dabber, flabber dabber.” Think my elevator finally stopped going to the top floor? Well, that’s exactly what they thought about the man who wrote those “flabber dabber” words. His name was Christopher Smart, and all the way back in the eighteenth century he wrote an incredible poem about the “great Flabber Dabber flat clapping fish with hands!” The line is from a voluminous work titled Jubilate Deo, which means “Rejoice in the Lord.”
I was first introduced to Christopher Smart and his “flabber dabber” language by Thomas Troeger, who referred to this extraordinary man and his mind-bending poetry in a sermon one day. I have been fascinated by it ever since. Apparently, I’m not the only one who has been intrigued by this bizarre poet who ended his life behind bars over two hundred and fifty years ago. The modern composer, Benjamin Britten chose Smart’s words as the basis for an equally amazing cantata by the same name. The cantata doesn’t actually contain the line about the “Great Flabber Dabber.” It’s the 11th of 237 lines which comprise the fourth fragment of Smart’s poem . . . an epic work that took almost seven years to write.
What are we to make of a guy who writes something like, “The Great Flabber Dabber flat clapping fish with hands?” It sounds like jabberwocky. But Smart’s manuscript contains a note that says “vide Anson’s Voyage and Psalm 98th ix.” Now, Anson’s Voyage is a natural history book of Smart’s time. It contains pictures of flatfish and seals flapping their fins. Psalm 98 reads in part: “Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it! Let the floods clap their hands . . .” “Flabber dabber, flabber dabber” – it’s the sound of seals and flatfish and oceans slapping out praise to the Almighty, who, as Christopher Smart saw it, was not only the recipient of such praise, but was also the conductor of the great universal symphony which itself is a song of praise. The Lord not only hears the sound of the seas slapping their waves against the shore in time with the joyful leaping of fish, but is “the Great Flabber Dabber flat clapping fish with hands.”
Well, they locked up ol’ Christopher Smart for seven years. He was committed to a series of mental institutions because he was a little too extraordinary for his time. The official charge was “praying in public,” but it certainly didn’t help his cause any that over the course of those years in the asylum, he wrote such lines as these:
“Let Ishmael dedicate a tyger, and give praise for the liberty in which the Lord has let him at large” . . . or “consider my cat, Jeoffry. For he is the servant of the living God, duly and daily serving him. . .” or “For the mouse is a creature of great personal valour.”
But if Christopher (or “Kit,” as he was called) was a madman, he was also brilliant. His seemingly rambling words are, in fact filled with obscure references to biblical passages and natural events. His poetry is written in doublets, and draws on the pattern of ancient Hebrew poetry, creating balanced sections that mirror each other. One could write volumes about the cryptic allusions and deeper meanings of his verse. But one theme recurs consistently and persistently. It’s summed up perhaps most beautifully in the line Britten chose for the final chorus of his cantata:
“Hallelujah from the heart of God, and from the hand of the artist inimitable, and from the echo of the heavenly harp in sweetness magnifical and mighty.”
That was his theme. Shut up in Bedlam, scratching verses of poetry on the walls of his room with a key, cut off from normal social contact, not able to publish, alienated from most of his former friends, his poetry, from first to last, was his “Hallelujah from the heart of God!”
There was another man, many centuries earlier, who was also considered loopy for saying things like that. His name was Jesus of Nazareth, and in the verses you heard this morning from the Gospel of John, he says that his whole purpose was “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” He said this kind of thing all the time. In John chapter 10, it’s almost the same thing. He says that he came, “that they may have life, and have it abundantly!” People thought he was crazy. Scripture says that many of the Jews thought he was, in the words of John, “out of his mind.”
All of which is entirely understandable. “Hallelujah from the heart of God,” and things like “complete joy” and “life abundant,” are messages that sound absolutely crazy in the midst of the kinds of days and years and lives we lead. We who stand on the outside of the asylum walls, know the world to be a far sadder place than Kit Smart realized. We who have the vantage point of history from which to hear Jesus’ words about abundance in living, know the truth about life: that it can be sparse and lean.
Life gets pretty lean when, instead of Fred Flintstone lunch boxes, children bring guns to school. Life gets pretty lean when everyone seems eager to line up and join demonstrations against either Israel or Gaza accusing one side of atrocities when both have an enormous amount of blood on their hands. And every one here knows what I’m talking about when I say there are times when no one is in the mood to utter a “Hallelujah.” I know what struggles many folks all around are dealing with. I know about the fears for their children, and the daily stomachache from the crisis that won’t go away, or the one that seems to keep looming on the horizon. I know about the times of such deep loneliness that you think you simply won’t be able to bear it any more. I know about the wait for lab results, and the prognosis no one wants to hear. I know about the daily agony over the fate of our country and our world. I know about families and the families of families, about the marriage struggles, and the drug problems, and the brushes with the law, and losses – the losses that just seem to keep coming. And there’s no one here who’s immune. So you and I can have a bit of empathy for those who have considered it certifiably crazy to talk about “hallelujahs” and “abundant life.”
But, you see, it’s never been any different, not in the first century, and not in the eighteenth century. Jesus was considered a madman, and Kit Smart was locked up. Apparently, you do have to be a little off your rocker to live with joy that’s “complete.” Apparently, your train has to be missing stops at a few stations to see the divine power at work in the heart of life and sing about it. Apparently, your marble count has to be a little short to offer fullness and hope and abundance in living to another human being.
People in this congregation have given their lives to caring for others as a nurse, or have volunteered at Project Hope, tutoring and nurturing children in need, or preparing community suppers, or organizing food drives. You have to be a little off your nut to care more about others than about yourself. You have to have a few screws loose to greet every day with a wide smile when those days are filled with problems and pain. You have to be little wacko to believe in children who are failing, and give your life and your time to them. I think that’s exactly right! Because Lord help us if we ever gain our right minds according to the standards of a world that so sanely teaches children to kill, politicians to lie, and millions to tune out with drugs, alcohol, or television.
I am so thankful for this community of people who’ve gone off the deep end! I am thankful that here we come together once a week, dragging our hurts and fears and trauma and terror behind us, to sing “hallelujahs” and speak to one another of complete joy and abundant life! It doesn’t come easily, but when it comes, it’s one heck of a testimony. At times, just the act of declaring our belief in that joy, or repeating that hallelujah, can turn our heads and hearts around and help us to find the wonder and beauty of small things like Kit Smart found in his cat, a mouse, a flower. Or it can help us to see more deeply into existence, as Jesus compelled us to do, and to discover there the trust in divine power that can change lives and change the world.
Joy is often suspect. And perhaps rightly so, because the smiles are too frequently plastic, and the “hallelujahs,” transparently desperate. But there is a better way. When we come with our sorrows and hurts intact, bringing our tears and our rage, and stand together in the presence of love, every so once in a while we’re fortunate enough to lose our minds – and gain our hearts.
I believe there is a “flabber dabber” person in all of us, just waiting to find expression. But we can become so constricted by our lack of vision that we withdraw from hope. And then we become a little less alive with each day of quiet despair that we live. There is complete joy and abundant life to be found! It begins, even in the midst of pain, with an appreciation of the simple wonders and beauties of life; it grows to fullness in the presence of a loving community; and it finds fruition in a depth of understanding, trust, and praise that, quite frankly, is a little wacky in the context of a hopeless world.
So, my prayer for all of us is that we will be considered looney, that they’ll want to lock us all up for failing to grasp the true hopelessness of our situation. May we forever be so out of touch with reality, and may we thereby hear the “Hallelujah from the heart of God, and from the hand of the artist inimitable, and from the echo of the heavenly harp in sweetness magnifical and mighty.”
Amen.
I’m sure many of you have heard things like this, but it’s good to be reminded from time to time. The college graduating class of 2024 shares the following characteristics:
-They have no memory of the Bill Clinton presidency.
-They have always lived during an age of AIDS, and were still in high school when the COVID pandemic started.
-They have never known a world without computers and cell phones.
-They have no clue what the expression “you sound like a broken record” means.
-They have never seen a TV with only 13 channels.
-They have never paid only a dime for payphone call. In fact, most of them have probably have no idea what a payphone is.
The speed at which the generational odometer spins is mind-boggling isn’t it? But if the cloud of dust from the wake of the newest generation as it races toward its destiny is bewildering, so is it awe-inspiring to behold the footprints left in the sands of time by those who have passed this way before. I am one of those who can be absolutely carried away by being in a very old place and imagining the lives of the people who lived there.
I had that feeling a while back on a trip to visit family in Arkansas. While there, we went to the Pea Ridge civil war battleground. It’s now a national military park, but on march 7th and 8th in 1862, its large open fields, wooded ridges and roads were the site of one of the early decisive battles between Federal troops and the Confederate Army. We looked at artifacts from that two day long blood bath: pistols, bayonets, canteens, and uniforms of soldiers – some with bullet holes in them. We went to the Elkhorn Tavern on Telegraph Road where in 1838, thousands of Cherokee Indians had walked on their forced exodus from ancestral lands in Georgia and the Carolinas – the infamous “Trail of Tears.” Twenty four years later, the lawn and road in front of the tavern were strewn with the bodies of young soldiers in blue and grey uniforms. I wandered over to the big stone fireplace, and shook my head in amazement, thinking about what kinds of meals have been cooked within that hearth over how many generations, what amazing things those stones had seen, and what has been said in conversations shared within those walls. That’s the sort of thing that gives me “goose bumps.”
And so, at least for someone like me, something very large and very ancient stirs from its slumber in the depths of my soul when I hear these words put down thousands of years ago by some unknown person of faith:
“Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.”
When I see photos of my great-grandchildren smiling with the joy of youthfulness, there are moments when I imagine them, years hence, studying their own great-grandchildren, and in an instant I am transported back to my own childhood, and the smells and sounds of my neighborhood, and I find myself strangely connected to other generations, past and future — to my grandparents as toddlers, to my grandchildren as elders, and to, in the words of the ancient Psalmist, “a people yet unborn.”
Those are fleeting moments, but they are magical. Most of the time, I’m not thinking about the future, or the past, because today has problems enough of its own. You know what I mean. It’s the garage door opener not working, the project deadline looming, and the appointment at 3:00 that’s got to be over in time to get to the grocery store because dinner is early to make time for the evening meeting, and . . . on it goes.
So on this Sunday morning in April in the year of our Lord, 2024, I’d just like for all of us to stop for a minute, and draw a breath, and put ourselves into a “context” — see ourselves as we are, links in a very, very long chain. And I’d like to ask you: what are you proclaiming to a people yet unborn?
Your life is a story, and it’s written in the hearts of the people you touch. That story becomes part of the oral tradition of a family and of a people. Like it or not, you are speaking to those who come after you; you are speaking to them with the substance of your life.
There are so many examples around of this dynamic. People are telling stories with their lives all the time. Just pick up the newspaper and you can read about them. Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuala has been described as an autocrat and a dictator. According to estimations by the United Nations and Human Rights Watch, under Maduro’s administration, more than 20,000 people have been subject to extrajudicial killings and seven million Venezuelans have been forced to flee the country. He has been accused of crimes against humanity including murders, thousands of extra-judicial executions, arbitrary detentions, and torture.1 Maduro has made a statement with his life.
On the other hand, there was “Fanny.” Fanny was an elderly woman in a church that Dadgie pastored years ago. She was the matriarch of her large clan (she herself had nine children), although “matriarch” was a pretty highfalutin’ word for someone in a family that poor. They had enough to eat — at least they had milk and bread. They had milk because one of Fanny’s brothers had a farm with a few cows. They had bread because Fanny baked six loaves every other day.
Fanny was a church lady. She had her own spot in the third pew from the front on the right side, and she was there every Sunday. Her grandfather founded the church. But then, this isn’t a story about her ancestors; it’s a story about Fanny.
How Fanny lived was evident in how she died. You see, Fanny was absolutely aware of the presence of the Spirit, and the goodness of the Lord in her life, but she felt that she herself was a poor follower of Christ, because she just didn’t know enough. She didn’t feel that she understood the Bible, and didn’t know all the things that educated folks knew about religion and such. So, she read. She read the Bible, and she read every book about the Bible she could get her hands on. But it never seemed to her that it did any good. She still just never quite “got it all.” By the time she was in her 80’s she had read more books, and more books about the Bible, and more of the Bible itself than just about anybody in town. But she considered herself grossly uneducated.
Fanny approached every day as a gift. She approached it with a smile, and with an eager spirit, and a loving heart. And all those smiles, and all that eagerness, and all that love was repaid again and again. Everybody loved Fanny. And everybody felt just a little closer to the Lord when they were around her.
She didn’t die quickly. The disease spread over her body in the course of months. She lost weight, then she lost strength, then she lost the ability to walk. In the last days, as people gathered around her bed to talk with her, she still gave them that warm, loving smile, and did her best to brighten their spirits. She was at peace, you know. She knew the Lord would hold her in everlasting hands, and never let her go.
One of the prominent men of the community, a banker, came to Fanny’s bedside and talked to her for an afternoon. As he sat there next to her, talking about the little church, and Fanny’s big family, he couldn’t help remembering a Bible study group he was in with her once upon a time. He had asked the question, “If people ask, ‘Are you a Christian?’ what should we say?” A little tear started to well up in the corner of his eye as he remembered her answer. “I don’t know what anybody else would say,” she said hesitantly, “but as for me, I don’t think I’m doing a very good job at it, but I’m just doing the best I can.”
Fanny’s daughters and granddaughters drove in from different towns during the last weeks, taking turns staying with her night and day. They wouldn’t have thought of doing otherwise. Pretty much all of her children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren went to church. They were a powerfully faithful family. But then, this isn’t a story about Fanny’s descendants, it’s a story about Fanny.
When she died, the money flooded in to the little church in her memory from all corners. It was used to build a library of religious books — a place for other little girls who didn’t think they knew anything about the Bible to sit and read.
I share with you Fanny’s story as a loving act of sacred “journalism.” It’s a report, of sorts, on what David Watson refers to as the “message of good news. . . [that’s] still unfolding.” And that’s our calling, I believe, as Watson said, to be journalists rather than salespeople. Journalists, because the good news is a story to be told, not a commodity to be sold.
And whatever your life is about, hatred or love, violence or faithfulness, you are, by your living of these days, telling a story. It’s a story with a context. We tell it in the context of our ancestors and our descendants. We tell it as brothers and sisters of Christ. We tell it as children of Abraham. And, as Paul made clear in his letter to the Galatians, that lineage is not in blood, but in faith. We are all children of Abraham.
Anyone who tries to count the stars of heaven and knows that they represent the spark of Divnity in the lives of generations too numerous to count is a child of Abraham. Anyone who learns how to gently smile through the pain of dying because of the certainty of being held in the loving arms of the Lord of Life is a child of Abraham. Anyone whose eyes well up at the bedside of an old woman with the overpowering recognition of, as Jacob said to Esau, “seeing the face of God” in her is a child of Abraham.
In the end, for those who live by faith, all of our stories are the same story. And it is this: “The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD. May your hearts live forever! . . . Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn.”
1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Maduro
I’m not a big hockey fan. I’ve always thought that hockey seems like an excuse for grown men to get into fistfights. There’s the great old Rodney Dangerfield line: “I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out.” At any rate, the one thing that impresses me is the NHL tradition of both teams lining up on the ice after the game and shaking each other’s hands. I thought that would be a good idea for all professional sports teams. It would be a great example, I think, for the drunken lunkheads who start street riots after championship games.
There are very few of us died-in-the-wool Red Sox fans who don’t hate the New York Yankees and everything they stand for. But I’m starting to wonder: is the whole rabid rivalry thing in sports just another outlet for a need that dwells deeply in the human breast – the need to have an enemy?
This was all going through my head as I reread this icon of our tradition, the 23rd Psalm. And this line practically jumped off the page at me, “[the Lord] prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” The first thing I began to mull over is: What is an enemy? That may seem like a silly question, but I’m not so sure it is. I wonder if we ever think very deeply about what we mean when we refer to someone as an enemy. The best I could come up with is that an enemy is someone who is trying to win at the expense of my losing in a zero-sum game, or, to put it succinctly, someone who hurts me or threatens to hurt me. So, it all comes down to this: the existence of an enemy is predicated on my desire to not be hurt. So an enemy is not an objective reality in the world beyond me, it is an extension of my own hurts, desires, needs, and fears. In short, the enemy does not live “out there,” it lives “in here.” I love the old “Pogo” comic strip, particularly the episode where Pogo and his crew are on the way back from a campaign in the swamp with cooking pots on their heads for helmets, and I think it was Albert the Alligator who said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
All of which seems like a good basis for looking at this line from the 23rd Psalm. What might it mean that the Lord “prepares a table” for me “in the presence of my enemies?” Can you take a moment and try to get that picture into your head? You are surrounded by your enemies, and, what do you do? You sit down to eat. That is a stunning image, and it speaks volumes. First, it says that you are, in the face of an imminent threat, making yourself vulnerable. There is perhaps no more vulnerable position you can get into than sitting down to eat – particularly in the ancient Near East, where the tradition was to sit on the floor either with legs crossed, or reclining against a cushion. It is the ultimate expression of pacifism. It says to those who may be regarded as your enemies that you are not prepared to fight. In fact, you are prepared to suffer the consequences of their attacks rather than fight. Now, I have struggled through most of my adult life with pacifism. Most of you know I am a former police officer. I carried a .357 magnum and a nightstick and was prepared to use either of them, and did. But I have also always wrestled with the teachings of Martin Luther King and Gandhi. I believe their insistence on non-violent non-cooperation with evil reflects the kind of soaring humanity to which we are all called. Before my police years, as a younger man – it was, as I recall, 1966 – I was on my way home from a basketball game one night in the Chicago suburb where we lived. I was walking toward a bus stop when I found myself surrounded by a gang of young black men. With no provocation I suddenly felt a ringing knock to my head. One of these guys had hauled off and hit me in the head. He kept beating on me. I had been hearing those words of Dr. King, and they had resonated with my Christian upbringing, so I just kept saying to these guys, “I’m not going to fight you, man.” To this day, I don’t entirely know how much of my refusal to fight was noble, non-violent resistance, and how much of it was just fear of getting killed. Needless to say, I got beat up pretty badly that night. But the incident has stayed with me. It has been a kind of experiential keel around which I teeter and yaw back and forth between belief in non-violence and a commitment to self-defense, and the defense of others. All of which is to say that I’m no pacifist, but this image of sitting down at a table to eat surrounded by one’s enemies captivates me, and makes me think there is something yet more wonderful that I and you are being called to here.
Secondly, the one who sits down to eat when his enemies are upon him is making a profound statement about the nature of enemies. Sitting to eat is perhaps the most common, routine thing that any of us do. We do it three times a day, generally speaking. And we do it unceremoniously and almost unthinkingly. To take a seat and eat when supposed enemies are upon me is to virtually deny their existence; it is to say, in effect, I have no enemies. It is to acknowledge what I was suggesting earlier, that enemies exist within, not without, and are therefore only a product of our minds. If I choose not to be threatened, I have no enemies. So, what’s for dinner? I’d love to be that grown up. I’d love to be so unattached to my possessions that I didn’t fear losing them, so secure in my life that I didn’t fear losing it, so evolved that I was beyond playing zero-sum games, and was therefore beyond allowing any enemies to be generated in my mind. I sincerely doubt that I’ll ever get there, but I’d like to think that, reflecting again on Dr. King’s words, as a people we’ll get there, someday.
And finally, I think sitting down at table in the presence of enemies is a staggering invitation. I think it says to those presumed to be enemies, “join me.” Breaking bread together is one of the most intimate things we do in human relationship. That intimacy is reflected here when we gather around the table once a month. Something wondrously loving passes between us as we take the bread and the cup. We find ourselves on the most level of grounds. We share an experience that is rich in empathy. We know, in the breaking of the bread, that we are all full of goodness; we are all tainted with evil; we are all worthy, and all in need of grace and forgiveness. It’s at the table, when the food is offered and the shared meal begins, that barriers are broken down and we see one another as true sisters and brothers.
I wasn’t eating at the time, but I had an experience of this kind of dawning empathy that nearly knocked me over when I read Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. It’s the story of the Great Migration of Blacks from the South to the North and West during the course of the twentieth century in America. It follows the true life stories of three black migrants over the course of several decades. One of them, a man named George Starling who took a job as a coach attendant on the trains that ran up and down the East Coast, was reading the newspaper one day and reflecting on all the abuse and beating and murder of blacks he had witnessed growing up in the south. He was reading about, “Hosing and police dogs and people watching it as if it were a made-for-TV movie and the blacks just had to take it like they had for generations.
“‘I had the paper in front of my face,’ he said, ‘And I got so mad. I dropped the paper down, And when I dropped the paper, I’m looking right in a white man’s face just sitting across from me. I had never seen the man before, didn’t know him from Adam, but he was white. And the hatred just surged up in me after looking at this thing in the paper. I just wanted to hurt somebody white. And I had to just really restrain myself to keep from just getting up.’”1
I was sitting in my living room as I read this in Wilkerson’s book. And at that point I set the book down and rubbed my face, and stared off across the room for a long while. I felt as if I were privy to the inner thoughts of that young black man who had beaten me in the head that night so long ago on the north side of Chicago. And as I weighed all this in my mind, it struck me that I was beaten up right around the same time that Dr, Martin Luther King, Jr. was leading a protest in Cicero, on the southwest side of Chicago, and a white mob had attacked him and his marchers. Someone threw a rock at King’s head and he bled from the wound. I found myself almost breathless as I, for the first time in all those decades, stepped for one brief moment inside the head of my attacker.
Kierkegaard asked, “But what, then, is love?” And he answers himself, “Love is to presuppose love; to have love is to presuppose love in others; to be loving is to presuppose that others are loving.”2 That sounds like so much pie-in-the-sky, mush-headed, idealism. But there is something deep within our souls, and stirring around beneath the lines of this treasured ancient psalm that tells us there is truth to be mined here. Perhaps our greatest challenge is to learn enough about love that we are finally able to know the hurt within the one who wishes to hurt us.
But there’s more. In the final analysis, as Christians – those who profess Christ – we have a further slant on this ancient psalm and its picture of eating in the presence of enemies. It was summed up beautifully by Gordon Marino commenting on those words of Kierkegaard. He wrote, “Kierkegaard counsels that I can love those who have wronged me because that is precisely what Jesus commands me to do. Loving my enemies is not an option, but a requirement.”3
Well, I doubt that I’ll stop being a rabid Red sox fan, or stop hating the Yankees. But, who knows, if I grew up a bit more, maybe I could even admit that some Yankees might be nice guys after all. But seriously, folks, here’s the skinny: if you can muster the courage, the next time someone wrongs you, maybe the best response is, “What’s for dinner?”
1 Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, Random House Vintage Books, 2010, pp 379-380.
2 Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, Harper Classics, 2009.
3 Gordon D. Marino, “Leap of Love,” The Christian Century, July 17, 2002
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