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Our gospel lesson today ends with just about my favorite utterance of Jesus: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” John offers many cryptic words from Jesus about why he came, and what he was all about. He says, “I came . . . to testify to the truth, I came . . . not to judge the world, but to save the world, I came . . . so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind, I have come as light into the world. . . .” In many ways they’re all saying the same thing, but of all these, this is my favorite; he came that we might have abundant life.
And just what is that? I’d like to spend the next fifteen minutes or so noodling on that question. First of all, let me suggest what I believe life abundant is not. If you watch much TV or spend much time on the Internet you might be led to believe that if you use Aspercream you can climb mountains at any age. Or if your friends all ask about why you seem so much happier and healthier and vital, it’s because you finally asked your doctor about Viagra. And if you are looking for exotic looks, daily usability and blistering performance then, obviously, you’ve got to get your hands on the new Audi R8. I feel pretty confident that’s not what Jesus meant by life abundant.
But it’s so easy to get confused. New toys, shinier cars, zippier smart phones, all seem to resonate with some sneaky little voice inside that keeps whispering to our inner ear that the cure for our malaise, the answer to our nagging questions, the vanquishing of our pain or emptiness lies in something just around the next corner. All we have to do is take out the credit card and pony up.
After a lifetime of piling up shiny new toys that become closet fillers, then get moved to the basement, before finally being taken to the dump, I remain unconvinced that they have made my life any more abundant.
With apologies to the “happenin’” ones among us, the clues to abundant life are not being tweeted or twittered or tooted or Facebooked. They’re ancient. I’ve stumbled upon some of them in, of all places, this tired old book we call the Bible.
One such key is found in the second chapter of the book of Acts where it’s reported that, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.”
If that sounds a little utopian to you, it’s little wonder. This description of the folks who made up the early church touches a very tender place in most of our souls. It speaks of deep, meaningful, and genuine community. What these very early Christians discovered was the same simple lesson of the loaves and fishes: that sharing multiplies. Sharing your resources with others, particularly with those in need, multiplies the power of those resources and multiplies your own sense of self. Sharing your home and food with friends multiplies the goodness and joy of living. Sharing your experience of the holy, your devotion and worship, multiplies the power of the Spirit that dwells in our hearts and in our relationships. We touch and handle that multiplying power when we come together here in this place that has been hallowed by the laughter and tears of generations of believers. But if we’re truly honest, we know that there is yet a leanness in our souls, a vulnerable place that yearns for something more. Once a week for an hour or two of prayers and polite conversation is beautiful, but it’s not enough, not nearly enough. Our spirits are roused by this description from the book of Acts because our culture, and therefore our hearts, have become so starved for true community. “Friending” people on Facebook has become such a pervasive cultural phenomenon precisely because it speaks to that hunger in our hearts. But it’s like giving a starving man a cardboard picture of steak and potatoes.
I can’t direct you to a website, I can’t send you to an organization, I can’t offer a five step program, but from the lessons of scripture and of my own experience, I can tell you this: If you want to find abundance in life, seek ways to deepen, enrich, and expand your relationships, work at making community – this community of faith – as real, as honest, as profoundly meaningful as it can be. That means, in part, finding ways to move beyond and beneath our casual conversations about the weather, and to risk sharing our deepest hopes and fears, joys and hurts. It means, in part, finding ways to work, shoulder to shoulder, on those things that make the world a little better place to live, and to celebrate and sing and cry together with passion and purpose.
But, in the end, it’s still not the whole story. It’s not possible to find abundant life with others without bringing some abundance of our own to the game. That’s where the 23rd Psalm comes in. There could hardly be a better prescription for what ails our hearts and minds than this ancient song of the Israelites. The very first line is a two-by-four upside the head for those of us who’ve spent a lifetime collecting toys to try to make life better somehow: “I shall not want.” The thing that stabs at our souls and hurts our hearts so much is precisely how much of the time we spend “wanting.” We want not just things, we want fulfillment, we want pleasure, we want meaning, we want comfort, we want productivity, we want security, we want companionship, we want, we want, we want . . . . Are there those among us who have even a glimpse of what a life without want would be? America is addicted to want. We have so much. Especially in comparison to the rest of the world, we have a tremendous amount of comfort, of security, of ease in living, of avenues for fulfillment. And yet we are not satisfied. And as for those who have more of these things than you and I? They only want more. There is no end to this wanting – at least no end that can be achieved trough acquisition of the things we think we want.
The cessation of want is not a material or social endeavor; it is a spiritual quest. As Gandhi said, the greatest battles are fought within. And the only way to live without want is to pull it out of us like a weed, root and all. That’s far more easily said than done, but it is a struggle worth taking on. Personal meditation and reflection can help. Focusing the mind on letting go of desires as you go through your daily activities can help. Shifting your perspective by looking outside of yourself and finding great value in what is already at hand can help – like taking time to revel in lying down in green pastures or being led beside the cool waters. Those are ways that our souls can be restored, that we can regain a degree of wholeness and peace.
A dear friend of Dadgie’s and mine named Jim was diagnosed with cancer. We received word that the diagnosis had been made some time ago, and it was incurable. We didn’t know how long he had to live so we flew to Chicago to see him, not knowing if we’d find him emaciated, on his death bed, plugged into monitors and IV’s. We found Jim at home, looking exactly as he always had. He was in the back yard tending his rock garden. It was a beautiful creation of stones in different colors and sizes arranged in a lovely pattern. He told us that he spent a good deal of time each day pulling weeds out from between the stones. As he pulled each weed, he imagined he was uprooting a bit of that which did not belong, like the cancer cells in his body. This spiritual exercise was very characteristic of Jim. It also turned out to be key in helping him to not only have a better quality of life, but to keep him alive, I’m convinced, for far longer than medical science predicted.
You may not have a rock garden, but you can find concrete images, patterns of reflection, spiritual disciplines that can help you to uproot that in your life that is eating away at you. And as you pull it up and recognize it, I suspect that you will find it has everything to do with your wanting.
And I suspect it will have a lot to do with your fears. The Psalmist says, “I fear no evil.” That’s another beauty. You and I are driven by our fears, even at times when we don’t realize it. Our fears are the flipside of our wants. We fear meaninglessness, we fear loneliness, we fear poverty or attack or illness, we fear death. Is it possible to live fearlessly? The quest to do so is much like the uprooting of our wants. it’s a spiritual journey. I believe that when we can truly feel ourselves connected to the heart and soul of the universe, when we can finally recognize the oneness of all that is, and of our participation in that oneness, we can indeed dissolve our fears in the joy of being.
These things don’t happen overnight. They require great effort, patience, practice and perseverance. They are truly worthy endeavors for anyone at any time of life, but especially for those of us in our fall and winter years. The achievement of the kind of wholeness that vanquishes fear and uproots want is the ultimate task and crowning achievement of life. It can serve as a beacon of hope to those who follow.
I can’t get inside Jesus’ head, but as far as I’m concerned, this is what he was talking about when he said his whole purpose in being was that we might have life and have it abundantly. I think he meant that we were to pay attention to all he shared through the course of his ministry, and that if we did, we would be led to find a spiritual center that would release us from fear and want, and that we could bring the wholeness and peace of that spiritual joy to others, sharing of ourselves, our resources, and our very being in true and deep community.
And that is life abundant.
This lectionary reading from the gospel of John you heard this morning left me scratching my head. What struck me about the story was the question this woman at the well posed to Jesus. Put it this way: If Jesus suddenly appeared one day and gave you the opportunity to ask anything you wanted, what would it be? Now, there’s a thought to set your mind going. You can ask anything at all, but you have only one question. How do you spend it? Do you ask about the meaning of life? Do you inquire into the reason for suffering? Do you want to know if he really is who people say that he is, or what he can tell you about the afterlife? Well, this Samaritan woman at the well had exactly that opportunity. When Jesus, the stranger, clearly knew every detail about her life and marital history, it was obvious to her that this man was a great prophet who could see into the heart of reality and know the truth. So what did she ask? “Sir,” she said, “I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Come again? This is your one big chance to ask a question of the greatest prophet of all time, and you want to know whether you should worship on this mountain or in Jerusalem? I want to say, “Lady, wake up and smell the coffee! What are you thinking?” Well, it was, I suppose, a different time – people had different concerns and issues. Still, what’s the big deal about where’s the right place to worship?
To tell you the truth, I’m not so sure her question is altogether different from what you and I might ask. It may seem so on the surface, but let’s give it a deeper look. Here’s one I think I might be inclined to put at the top of my list: “Tell me, Jesus, what’s this ‘living’ business all about? Why am I here? And is there any point in trying to make a difference in world that seems full of people intent on tearing everything apart?” That’s one any of us might like to put to him, right?
I think the Samaritan woman was asking something surprisingly similar. Her question was raised in the midst of a legalistic environment that had a clear hierarchy of races and classes, and a well-known set of religious practices that distinguished the good from the evil. She was a woman of Samaria – two strikes against her. Women were second class citizens, and Samaritans were considered by the Jews to be an “unclean” race. Religion in her time was all about performing the right rituals in order to please God and be considered righteous and worthy. So her question came from the depth of her soul. In essence it was this: Are you (meaning the Jews) right? Am I unworthy and unacceptable, because I’m a Samaritan, because I’m a woman, so I don’t worship in the right place? Is there any hope for me? That’s really our question to Jesus, isn’t it – at the root of it all? Is there any hope for me?
Jesus’s answer blasts apart her assumptions and the assumptions of her entire culture. When she asks where to worship he replies, “Neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” They’re discussing worship here, but it’s not the worship of your grandmother dressing you up in your Sunday finest to go be a good little boy or girl in Sunday school. They’re talking about the heart-shattering and earth shaking question that cries out from the heart of worship – is there any hope for me?
Jesus reframes the whole issue. He says it’s not about doing the right thing in the right place, so you can be right, and therefore acceptable. It’s not about winning your hope like the prize in some contest, or lucking out to be part of the right gender or culture like fishing a toy out of a Crackerjacks box. He is saying that hope is not something that is conferred upon you by merit of your right actions, or thoughts, or place in life, or by singing the right hymns or saying the right prayers. Hope is something that wells up from within you when your heart is touched by the timeless and boundless Spirit of divine Grace. Listen to how he answers her. It’s not about worshiping in the right place, he says. It’s about the nature of worship itself: “. . . the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Why do we worship? Some of us are here because we’re looking for something, because we want to learn something, or experience something, or receive something that will help us get through our days. And there’s nothing wrong with reaching toward the hand of Eternal Grace for help and guidance. Some are here because it’s the right thing to do – because praising the Lord is what the Bible tells us to do, and it’s what our parents did, and what’s expected of us. That also is not a bad thing. We certainly have plenty of examples throughout our religious history to teach us the value of tradition. Some are here for reasons they hardly even comprehend. There’s simply a big question mark in their lives, and they hope that somehow an answer is waiting, maybe in a place like this. That’s also a good thing. The unknowns and uncertainties of life are where the real battles are fought, and the greatest victories are won.
But there are great hazards in our natural tendencies that can eat the very heart out of our worship and our fellowship and leave it lifeless and meaningless. You and I tend to cling to old answers to new questions and familiar patterns that lull us to sleep in our pews. The great rabbi, professor, theologian, and civil rights activist, Abraham Heschel writes: “It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion – its message becomes meaningless.”1
Heschel might be paraphrasing the words of Jesus: “. . . the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship . . . in spirit and truth . . . God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” I would submit that we not here either for our sake, or for the Lord’s sake. We don’t need a worship service to improve our lives, we’ve got self-help books, therapy sessions, support groups, families and friends that give us plenty of resources for coping. And if God is God – the unknowable, unnameable, source of all Being – then that Lord of Life doesn’t need us to be here either. I suspect that the universe will continue to hold together without our hymns and prayers. No, we’re here because Spirit is drawn to Spirit. We’re here because truth seeks out truth. What you are, at the deepest level of existence, connects in these hymns and prayers and words of scripture with the Ground of all Being. You are more than a collection of body parts, bits of knowledge, memories, and relationships. In the core of your being there is Spirit – it is a Spirit formed in the mystery of divine creation and called good. It is a Spirit fashioned at creation in the image of God, and through ancient rituals and modern praises, that “Götterfunken” – that God-spark – within you comes home to the flame. And that inner spark of yours is a light amidst the dark world of half-truths, compromises, white lies and equivocations that surround you. At the deepest level of your being you are an embodiment of the truth that Jesus spoke about – the truth that sets free the captives. And in the words that spill down from this pulpit, words of scripture, words of challenge, words that anger, and words that inspire, and in the magic of our Sunday gathering, and in the earnestness of our prayers, the spoken prayers and the silences of our hearts, the divine truth that dwells within you embraces the eternal Truth of the ages. That’s what Jesus was saying: “the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth . . . God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
William Willimon says that, “Worship is a countercultural activity in a hedonistic, auto-salvation-oriented, pragmatic, utilitarian society. It is scandalously ‘useless.’ Worship serves no more worthy purpose than the joy of being with the one who loves and is therefore loved. It ranks somewhere near the top of the list of other useless and purposeless activities such as singing songs, kissing, giving a gift without expecting anything in return, sitting quietly with a good friend, or doing nothing but watching a winter sunset. We can’t really blame those busy, serious folk who look at worship and wonder, ‘What’s in it for me?’ Their very question answers itself – for someone like them, alas, nothing.” Willimon goes on to ask the question that challenges us to set ourselves apart from the values and purposes that draw our world into chaos. He says, “What more revolutionary, subversive activity could one undertake in this ‘Me Generation’ than to be caught singing a doxology?”2
If Jesus surprised any one of us some morning on the street corner, maybe we wouldn’t need to ask him anything at all. Maybe with enough practice at being here and allowing the spark of our spirit to ignite in the presence of the flame of the Eternal Spirit, and letting divine Truth wash over us and connect with the truth of our own hearts, we might find ourselves no longer desperate for a word of hope. Maybe we could eventually find ourselves living beyond self-involved purposes, and worshiping for no explicable reason at all. Perhaps, if Jesus came to any of us and fixed our eyes with his, all that were necessary could be communicated in a smile.
Why worship? If you must, come seeking guidance. If it’s in your make-up, come out of tradition or habit or the expectations of others. If you are so driven, come looking for answers. But in the end, as you increasingly claim the spark and word that dwell within your bones, come in spirit and in truth, and find here nothing greater and nothing less than your soul’s sweet home.
1 Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, Farrar, Straus and Giroux,1976, p. 3.
2 William Willimon, “Pulpit Resource”, Volume 28, no. 1, p. 41.
Thomas Friedman in an article in the Boston Globe mentioned a song from the Crystal Palace dinner theater in Aspen called “The Peanut Butter Affair.” The song related the story of “a C.E.O. who had gone to work one day, without properly washing his face, and still had a lump of peanut butter on his chin. But none of his employees dared to tell him. When he got home, though, his wife told him it was there and he was appalled. But he was even more appalled when he showed up for work over the next few days and eventually ‘every jerk from the chairman to the clerk had a lump of peanut butter on his chin.’”1 The story is wonderful and really good for a laugh, but if we consider it deeply enough we might find it striking a bit close to home. Our culture is so thoroughly saturated with games of “follow the leader” that we barely know we’re playing it. The latest styles are musts whether in width of ties or pants verses skirts. Everyone has to listen to the biggest hit songs, watch the hot new TV shows, and have the latest model car (well, nearly so – my Camry is 13 years old). And when the twitter world gets tweaked, everyone is all atwitter. It reminds me of the song from the musical, The Wiz. As people parade around the Emerald City all wearing green clothing they sing:
I want to be seen green
Wouldn’t be caught dead, red
’Cause if you are seen green
It means you got mean bread . . .
But then comes an announcement from the Great and Powerful Oz: “I thought it over and green is dead. ’Till I change my mind, the color is red.” And suddenly everyone is wearing red and singing:
I wouldn’t be seen green
Ooo! Oo! Oo! Ah! Ah!
I wouldn’t be caught dead
And if I’m caught at all
Then catch me in dead, red . . .2
And on it goes with everyone’s clothing changing color according to the whims of the Great and Powerful Oz. I think they had it about right; in the end, we all wind up with peanut butter on our chins.
In the Gospel According to John, Jesus is trying to explain to Nicodemus what it means to be “born of the Spirit.” His explanation goes like this: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” That’s a difficult saying to comprehend. But I think he is saying something like: don’t go around with peanut butter on your chin. Being born of the Spirit means moving like the wind. It means that you may not know, and folks around you certainly will have a tough time guessing, where you will be headed next. And that’s because you will not be guided by what everyone else is wearing, or what is the latest cool app for your iPhone; you will be guided by that ineffable Spirit of Holiness that pervades all Being and blows in through the windows of your soul.
That’s what happened to Abram. He was old; he felt old; he thought old; he talked old (I know the feeling). But when that ineffable Spirit welled up inside him and said, “Abram, you’re about to give birth to something spectacular,” he was just loopy enough to believe it. So he grabbed his son and took off on a journey to God knows where. And if you’re loopy enough to wipe the peanut butter off your chin and live like the wind, you just may find yourself surprised by doing that which you know you don’t have the courage or the conviction or the character to make happen.
It also happened to Nicodemus. He was left scratching his head when Jesus said, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus couldn’t figure out how someone could be born when they are already old. He didn’t realize that it happens all the time. Dadgie used to say, “I’m getting old.” And I’d say, “No, dear; you’re not getting old. You’re already old.” Well, I guess I’m already old too, but I find myself born again about once or twice a week. Usually it happens when I get reminded by friends or family or the exigencies and crises of life that my usual patterns and tried and true perspectives don’t necessarily apply. I get re-educated to the need to find new answers, listen to different voices (including those from within), see things from another angle.
In the movie, Dead Poets Society, Mr. Keating is an English teacher at a New England prep school for boys. This school is strict and utterly conventional. The boys wear uniforms and walk in orderly lines. They learn the classics in the same way boys had there for decades. Mr. Keating is trying to turn these boys into free thinkers. One day while teaching a class Mr. Keating jumps up on his desk and he looks around the room. He tells the boys that he’s standing up there to remind himself how important it is to see things from a different perspective. “You see,” he explains, “the world looks very different from up here.” And then he instructs them all to come up and stand on his desk, one at a time, and look at the room from that different perspective. The boys grudgingly make their way up to the front of the class; no one wants to be the first to get up on the desk. But they climb up anyway, one at a time, and then hop off the other side. Some of them look amused, some bored, some impatient and annoyed. But in some of their faces, there dawns a realization that stepping out of the rigid formation and unbending rules for a moment to see things from an entirely different perspective is not only liberating but enlightening.
A lot of the time, you and I would just as soon not have our perspectives changed or be surprised by anything, let alone by the Spirit of the Lord. No matter what your age, it’s easy to start feeling old. And then we become tired, a little shell shocked by the unwanted astonishments of everyday existence. And we begin to fear the surprise of death as much as the surprises of life. I’m reminded of the story told by Rabbi Skinner about the Jewish tradition of referring to the span of 120 years for anything desired to last a long time (as in: “may your good fortune last 120 years”). This is the length in the biblical story of Moses’s life. One man said, “I’d like to live 120 years and 3 months.” He was asked, “Why the 3 months?” He replied, “Because I don’t want to die suddenly.”
Most of us would not choose to live 120 years. It’s a very easy thing when we see that the days ahead are fewer than those behind us to just keep walking in formation and keep our heads down ’till it’s over. It is also as natural as can be to grow weary from the frustrations of our limitations, to become discouraged by our fruitless attempts to be bolder, more faithful, more understanding, or more temperate. On the other hand, the patterns of your life may be full of energy and bursting with new ideas. Believe it or not, that sort of pattern can also be a kind of trap, leaving you unable to hear a voice of counsel, or to find solid footing.
But succumbing to the law of inertia, of always doing what you’ve always done, is just as pitiful an existence as walking around with peanut butter on your chin. Every moment can hold out the bright promise of a different direction, of something surprising to you, of something new and wonderful. And every moment can afford the opportunity to offer something unexpected to yourself or those around you. Nicodemus doubted that a person could be born when they are already old because he never knew any of you!
Jesus said, “The wind blows where it chooses.” I can tell you about the wind blowing where it chooses; a few weeks ago I thought that wind was going to blow my house right off its foundation. The wind that Jesus spoke of sneaks up on you! It finds you when you’re feeling smug and self-satisfied, or in the mood for nothing but self-pity; it picks you up off your feet, and like Dorothy in the land of Oz, drops you right smack dab in the middle of a new way of looking at things. You may not even know where the tracks of Christ are, let alone where they’re going, but that wind will carry you in the right direction, sometimes even against your will, if you’ll let it.
They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, that by the time you’re three your personality is already established, and once you reach mid-life, you’re not likely to change your patterns of behavior. Well I’ve got a piece of advice for any of us grown-ups out there who may have given up on ourselves. Let’s wipe the peanut butter off our chins, feel the leading of the wind in our souls, join the league of those who are born of the Spirit, and keep knocking on doors. To paraphrase Jesus, sooner or later one will open up.
1 Thomas Friedman, “They’ve All Put Peanut Butter On Their Chins”, Boston Globe, March 8, 2017.
2 “The Emerald City Sequence” from The Wiz, Quincy Jones and Charlie Smalls.
I’ll never forget one occasion when I went into a gift shop to buy a gift for someone (I don’t remember what or for whom). I do remember that I was admiring some gift I thought would be ideal. I decided to buy it and picked up one that was boxed, opening the box to make sure the gift was intact before purchasing it. At that, the owner of the store, an elderly gentleman, shouted at me from clear across the store, “That’s a no!” I turned and stared at him, wondering if he thought he were my father, or that I might be five years old. I simply put the box back and left the store, never to return.
I think something similar happened to Christian churches somewhere along the way. They got so caught up in purveying their lists of sins and saying to people, “That’s a no!” that a lot of folks just walked out and never looked back. So, churches like ours realized that the gospel is not about beating people over the head with all those “no-no’s”; we emphasize the positive side of the gospel, and celebrate diversity. In a “non-creedal” church like ours, “soul liberty” is cherished: each believer has the right and responsibility to work out his or her own faith without being told what to believe.
These principles are very dear to me, but when I read scriptural legends like those this morning of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden or Jesus being tempted by Satan, I realize they are there to make a point about faithfulness, and I am forced to ask myself, and all of you: Is there anything that we in this church say “No” to? I think these stories from Genesis and Matthew are instructive.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve’s attention was directed to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and were told, “That’s a no!” But this quaint little tale is about more than recognizing nakedness and putting on fig leaves. The temptation presented by the serpent was to be like gods and have a kind of ultimate, divine knowledge. It is a very common temptation. I succumb to it constantly. I catch myself believing that the way I see things, the “truth” that I know, is ultimate truth. Anyone who sees it differently is obviously ignorant, deluded, or simply ignoring the facts. It is this very temptation, and the degree to which people succumb to it that leads to ugly divisiveness, and in the extreme, to wars and crusades. It is perhaps the chief human failing throughout history: the tendency to assume ultimate authority – in essence, to try to be gods.
To that temptation this church says, “No!” Even as we find ourselves, like Adam and Eve, repeatedly succumbing to it, we nonetheless affirm that it is the spirit of soul liberty that causes us to value diversity, and in turn forces us into a posture of humility and rigorous self-questioning. We reject all forms of idolatry, and that includes placing our own minds on the throne of eternal truth.
If there were any regular human being on this planet who might be given right to a kind of divine authority, we could suppose it would have been Gandhi. But he was wise enough to know his own limitations. I love the story, whether apocryphal or not, of a troubled mother who had a daughter who was addicted to sweets. One day she approached Gandhi, explained the problem to him and asked whether he might talk to the young girl. “Bring your daughter to me in three weeks’ time and I will speak to her.” After three weeks, the mother brought her daughter to him. He took the young girl aside and spoke to her about the harmful effects of eating sweets excessively and urged her to abandon her bad habit. The mother thanked Gandhi for this advice and then asked him: “But why didn’t you speak to her three weeks ago?” Gandhi replied, “Because three weeks ago, I was still addicted to sweets.”1
The tale of Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness is also instructive. His first temptation was to break his fast by making bread from a stone. This is the age old desire to get something for nothing, to win the lottery, to make it big. And in our world that usually means trampling on others to make one’s fortune – or, to paraphrase Jesus, trying to live only for one’s bread, and ignoring the truths embedded in the Gospel.
Parker Palmer has an excellent take on this particular temptation. He writes, “Human nature . . . seems to regard perpetual scarcity as the law of life. Daily I am astonished at how readily I believe that something I need is in short supply. If I hoard possessions, it is because I believe that there are not enough to go around. . . . The irony, often tragic, is that by embracing the scarcity assumption, we create the very scarcities we fear. If I hoard material goods, others will have too little and I will never have enough. . . . We create scarcity by fearfully accepting it as law, and by competing with others for resources as if we were stranded on the Sahara at the last oasis.2
Palmer has put his finger on a fundamental distortion of the human condition. And to this we say, “No!” This church stands for love and for justice. That stance means that we will not give up on the ideal of equality in opportunity and in resources. It means that we are committed to giving of our own resources for the sake of others, and sharing in our abundance in scorn of the fears of scarcity.
The second temptation was for Jesus to throw himself off the temple tower to demonstrate that he would not perish. This is a temptation to which many young people succumb. You see them on the highways, driving as if they were invincible. But they are not entirely alone. It’s easy to begin taking our living for granted, until we become so careless or calloused that we fail to recognize the mortality of not only ourselves but of other people and of institutions. It is a simple mental trick to imagine that somehow everything’s in the hands of the Almmighty, so I don’t need to take responsibility – or, as Jesus put it, to put God to the test.
To this abandonment of responsibility for ourselves and for a world of brothers and sisters this church says, “No!” We take up the responsibility for the advancement of the kingdom. We say that the hands to do the work of divinity in this world are our hands, and so we strive to do Christ’s work in the world: to bring food to the hungry, and to work, and witness for peace.
And Jesus’s final temptation was to worship Satan in order to gain temporal power over all the world. The lust for such power has ruled the hearts of men for millennia (and I do say “men” because we seem to have predominated in this one). And so often the avenue to gaining power is to, if not worshiping evil, at least give a wink and a nod to it. I love the scene in the TV series West Wing in which a campaign consultant is trying to convince the President in a meeting to abandon his principles on an issue in order to win votes. Toby, the Communications Director, looks at him and says, “I just figured out who you were.” The consultant jumps in, “He’s going to say Satan.” Toby replies, “No. You’re the guy that runs into 7-Eleven to get Satan a pack of cigarettes.”
To those who abandon fairness and compassion, or prostitute themselves to evil for the sake of gaining power over others, this church says, “No!” We will not run into the Seven Eleven to get Satan a pack of cigarettes. We will speak truth to power – or, in our case, at least the closest we feel capable of coming to truth. That phrase, “speak truth to power” was coined by civil rights leader Bayard Rustin in a 1942 letter to the New York Monthly Meeting. Offering his anti-war sentiments, he wrote: “the primary function of a religious society is to ‘speak the truth to power.’ . . . Let us avoid the possibilities of spiritual suicide.”3 Born in 1912 and living in an era of unbelievable repression, Rustin spent his life speaking truth to power as an activist for civil rights, nonviolence, and gay rights. In 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Medal of Freedom. For us, that speech to power may involve writing letters to congressional representatives, signing petitions, taking part in marches and protests, or contributing to causes we believe in.
This is a church that stands for tolerance, openness, dialog, and freedom of conscience. But, as we begin this season of Lenten soul-searching, if we are going to be honest in our allegiance to the gospel, we must acknowledge that there are some things to which we say, “That’s a no!”
1 Found in: Ron Rolheiser, Internet column, “Our inability to cast out demons,” October 2, 2005, http://ronrolheiser.com/our-inability-to-cast-out-demons/#.WLb8oeQizcs
2 Parker Palmer, “There Is a Season,” in Paul Loeb, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times, Basic Books, 2014, p.157.
3 In I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters, Michael G. Long, ed., City Lights Publishers, 2012, p. 2.
(Although Rustin attributes the quote to future ACLU president Patrick Malin, researches have found this was not Malin’s phrase.)
I’ll never forget one occasion when I went into a gift shop to buy a gift for someone (I don’t remember what or for whom). I do remember that I was admiring some gift I thought would be ideal. I decided to buy it and picked up one that was boxed, opening the box to make sure the gift was intact before purchasing it. At that, the owner of the store, an elderly gentleman, shouted at me from clear across the store, “That’s a no!” I turned and stared at him, wondering if he thought he were my father, or that I might be five years old. I simply put the box back and left the store, never to return.
I think something similar happened to Christian churches somewhere along the way. They got so caught up in purveying their lists of sins and saying to people, “That’s a no!” that a lot of folks just walked out and never looked back. So, churches like ours realized that the gospel is not about beating people over the head with all those “no-no’s”; we emphasize the positive side of the gospel, and celebrate diversity. In a “non-creedal” church like ours, “soul liberty” is cherished: each believer has the right and responsibility to work out his or her own faith without being told what to believe.
These principles are very dear to me, but when I read scriptural legends like those this morning of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden or Jesus being tempted by Satan, I realize they are there to make a point about faithfulness, and I am forced to ask myself, and all of you: Is there anything that we in this church say “No” to? I think these stories from Genesis and Matthew are instructive.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve’s attention was directed to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and were told, “That’s a no!” But this quaint little tale is about more than recognizing nakedness and putting on fig leaves. The temptation presented by the serpent was to be like gods and have a kind of ultimate, divine knowledge. It is a very common temptation. I succumb to it constantly. I catch myself believing that the way I see things, the “truth” that I know, is ultimate truth. Anyone who sees it differently is obviously ignorant, deluded, or simply ignoring the facts. It is this very temptation, and the degree to which people succumb to it that leads to ugly divisiveness, and in the extreme, to wars and crusades. It is perhaps the chief human failing throughout history: the tendency to assume ultimate authority – in essence, to try to be gods.
To that temptation this church says, “No!” Even as we find ourselves, like Adam and Eve, repeatedly succumbing to it, we nonetheless affirm that it is the spirit of soul liberty that causes us to value diversity, and in turn forces us into a posture of humility and rigorous self-questioning. We reject all forms of idolatry, and that includes placing our own minds on the throne of eternal truth.
If there were any regular human being on this planet who might be given right to a kind of divine authority, we could suppose it would have been Gandhi. But he was wise enough to know his own limitations. I love the story, whether apocryphal or not, of a troubled mother who had a daughter who was addicted to sweets. One day she approached Gandhi, explained the problem to him and asked whether he might talk to the young girl. “Bring your daughter to me in three weeks’ time and I will speak to her.” After three weeks, the mother brought her daughter to him. He took the young girl aside and spoke to her about the harmful effects of eating sweets excessively and urged her to abandon her bad habit. The mother thanked Gandhi for this advice and then asked him: “But why didn’t you speak to her three weeks ago?” Gandhi replied, “Because three weeks ago, I was still addicted to sweets.”
The tale of Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness is also instructive. His first temptation was to break his fast by making bread from a stone. This is the age old desire to get something for nothing, to win the lottery, to make it big. And in our world that usually means trampling on others to make one’s fortune – or, to paraphrase Jesus, trying to live only for one’s bread, and ignoring the truths embedded in the Gospel.
Parker Palmer has an excellent take on this particular temptation. He writes, “Human nature . . . seems to regard perpetual scarcity as the law of life. Daily I am astonished at how readily I believe that something I need is in short supply. If I hoard possessions, it is because I believe that there are not enough to go around. . . . The irony, often tragic, is that by embracing the scarcity assumption, we create the very scarcities we fear. If I hoard material goods, others will have too little and I will never have enough. . . . We create scarcity by fearfully accepting it as law, and by competing with others for resources as if we were stranded on the Sahara at the last oasis.
Palmer has put his finger on a fundamental distortion of the human condition. And to this we say, “No!” This church stands for love and for justice. That stance means that we will not give up on the ideal of equality in opportunity and in resources. It means that we are committed to giving of our own resources for the sake of others, and sharing in our abundance in scorn of the fears of scarcity.
The second temptation was for Jesus to throw himself off the temple tower to demonstrate that he would not perish. This is a temptation to which many young people succumb. You see them on the highways, driving as if they were invincible. But they are not entirely alone. It’s easy to begin taking our living for granted, until we become so careless or calloused that we fail to recognize the mortality of not only ourselves but of other people and of institutions. It is a simple mental trick to imagine that somehow everything’s in the hands of the Almmighty, so I don’t need to take responsibility – or, as Jesus put it, to put God to the test.
To this abandonment of responsibility for ourselves and for a world of brothers and sisters this church says, “No!” We take up the responsibility for the advancement of the kingdom. We say that the hands to do the work of divinity in this world are our hands, and so we strive to do Christ’s work in the world: to bring food to the hungry, and to work, and witness for peace.
And Jesus’s final temptation was to worship Satan in order to gain temporal power over all the world. The lust for such power has ruled the hearts of men for millennia (and I do say “men” because we seem to have predominated in this one). And so often the avenue to gaining power is to, if not worshiping evil, at least give a wink and a nod to it. I love the scene in the TV series West Wing in which a campaign consultant is trying to convince the President in a meeting to abandon his principles on an issue in order to win votes. Toby, the Communications Director, looks at him and says, “I just figured out who you were.” The consultant jumps in, “He’s going to say Satan.” Toby replies, “No. You’re the guy that runs into 7-Eleven to get Satan a pack of cigarettes.”
To those who abandon fairness and compassion, or prostitute themselves to evil for the sake of gaining power over others, this church says, “No!” We will not run into the Seven Eleven to get Satan a pack of cigarettes. We will speak truth to power – or, in our case, at least the closest we feel capable of coming to truth. That phrase, “speak truth to power” was coined by civil rights leader Bayard Rustin in a 1942 letter to the New York Monthly Meeting. Offering his anti-war sentiments, he wrote: “the primary function of a religious society is to ‘speak the truth to power.’ . . . Let us avoid the possibilities of spiritual suicide.” Born in 1912 and living in an era of unbelievable repression, Rustin spent his life speaking truth to power as an activist for civil rights, nonviolence, and gay rights. In 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Medal of Freedom. For us, that speech to power may involve writing letters to congressional representatives, signing petitions, taking part in marches and protests, or contributing to causes we believe in.
This is a church that stands for tolerance, openness, dialog, and freedom of conscience. But, as we begin this season of Lenten soul-searching, if we are going to be honest in our allegiance to the gospel, we must acknowledge that there are some things to which we say, “That’s a no!”
Let me describe this scene for you, and see if it sounds familiar. You’re caught in a conversation you’d actually rather not be in, but you can’t find a graceful exit, so . . . there you are. The point of discussion is – let’s say – abortion, or gay rights, or birth control. And it is clearly a topic that your partner in conversation feels very strongly about. At some point this other person – let’s call her Martha – says, “Well, that’s not just my opinion, it’s God’s word. It says right there in Matthew twenty umptieth that those who disagree will be sent straight to H, E, double hockey sticks.” And before you can stop yourself, you say, “Well, that’s your interpretation.” Whereupon, Martha gets on her high horse and says, “Oh, I don’t interpret scripture. I just read the plain truth from the word of God. It’s not subject to interpretation, it’s right there in black and white in the Bible.” At this point you realize you’ve stumbled into a land where no growing thing can survive, so you beat a hasty retreat by either changing the subject, or looking at your watch and saying, “Oh, look at the time!” If you’ve never found yourself in such a predicament, consider yourself lucky. As for me? . . . Been there, done that.
But what about that claim – that scripture is not subject to interpretation, that it can and should be read literally, at face value, that its meanings are plainly obvious to all? What are we to say to people who hold such a position? Well, first of all, the best advice is: say nothing. Trust me, you’re not going to win.
But, beyond that, I think it is important for us know something about this process of biblical interpretation. Is there such a thing as “the plain literal meaning” of a passage of scripture? My years of experience in theological environments and church settings tell me, no; there’s rarely such a thing. There are groups of people who have come together in agreement on a certain interpretation, and therefore agree among themselves that theirs is the “plain, literal meaning,” but you will always find others who will dispute that interpretation. So who’s right, and how do we decide?
Unfortunately, for all too many people the decision is to be made by fiat: “I’m right, because I know God’s Word and so you have to be wrong.” The only problem with that approach is that it is idolatry. It puts one’s own self on a par with the Almighty, the inferred assumption being that one person is actually capable of knowing the mind of the Lord. That assumption means one of two things: your God is too small, or your head is too big.
At first blush, Peter seems to be saying much the same thing in this passage you heard this morning. Today is the Sunday that the transfiguration of Jesus is recalled by churches around the globe, and in this reading from 1 Peter, that transfiguration experience – witnessing Jesus drawn up into the air from the mountaintop – is offered by Peter as the proof positive for his theological argument about the second coming of Christ. He says, in essence, that since he was an eyewitness to this event, his perception of its meaning in the light of prophecy is unquestionable. I can relate to that. I had a very powerful and dramatic experience of calling into the ministry when I was a police officer over fifty years ago. I went off to seminary with the firm conviction that this dramatic experience is what gave my calling (and therefore my views) authenticity. I was quite the obnoxious know-it-all. I had to be knocked down a few pegs before I came to realize that my experience was only one of a thousand kinds, and my views were just as subject to error as anyone’s. So I’m sure you understand if I take the apostle’s argument here with a little grain of salt. At any rate, Peter follows all this with the amazing pronouncement, “. . . no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation . . . .”
One might think that Peter was taking the side of the biblical literalists. It sounds uncomfortably close to the kind of conversation I’d rather walk away from. But listen more closely: “no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” There is a tremendously subtle and terribly important nuance between saying that a prophetic utterance is inspired by God, and assuming that one person speaks for the mind of God. Peter is saying that when people speak a truly prophetic word (such as speaking truth to power as the old testament prophets did), it is the Lord Almighty who inspires them to do so. When Moses mustered the courage to stand before Pharaoh and demand that he let his people go, he was inspired by God. When Isaiah warned that corruption and idolatry would lead to the downfall of the kingdom, he was inspired by God. When Martin Luther King, Jr. led a march on Washington and proclaimed to the nation a vision of freedom and equality, he was inspired by God. When Nelson Mandela hammered out the agreement that established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, and Archbishop Tutu shed tears of pain and words of forgiveness, they were inspired by God. We know these things because we look back on them and see divine fingerprints all over them.
But where is the Lord of Life at work now? That we will only discern with any sense of confidence as we look back on this time from the vantage point of tomorrow. And so the most we can hope to do is learn what we can about where that Lord has been, and keep our eyes open for hints and signs of the Spirit’s leading. And that, my friends, requires an open mind and heart – the kind of openness that only comes from humility. The one who believes he already has the mind of God figured out is far more likely to be blinded to the real work of the Spirit.
All of this is a long way around the barn of saying that not only must scripture be interpreted, processed, sifted, and reinterpreted, but we have a solemn responsibility to do so in the context of the living of our days. Our constant and humble prayer is that our interpretation will be guided and inspired by the Spirit and blessed by the prayers and reflections of tomorrow.
Finally, let me offer what I believe is the “nail in the coffin” of biblical literalism. To those who claim such a position, you only have to ask them if they believe the world is round and that space is vast. Because once you accept that the globe is a sphere set in orbit around the sun, you are already interpreting scripture. It’s true. In the Genesis creation story, we are told that “In the beginning the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.” The picture is of a watery chaos – everywhere you look, nothing but water. Then, we are told, God put a “firmament in the heavens to separate the waters that were above from the waters that were below.” Have you ever wondered what that meant? Well, let’s take a cue from the biblical literalists, and just read it at face value. The Hebrew word that is translated “firmament” is raqiah. I don’t know where the translators ever came up with the word “firmament” because raqiah is a Hebrew word that means simply “a hammered out bowl.” You got it. There’s water everywhere, and God put an upside down bowl in the sky to separate the waters above from the waters below. That’s what allowed the dry land to appear. Thus is completed the picture of ancient near eastern cosmology. The earth is like a pancake. Sitting on top of it is a kind of translucent bowl to protect us, and all around, below the earth and above the bowl, is water. You know that’s the case because your senses tell you so. You can see the blue water shining through the upside-down bowl above, and sometimes, God opens doors in that bowl (what the Bible calls the “vaults of heaven”) and lets some of the water fall down on us. I mean, water couldn’t fall down from the sky if it wasn’t up there to begin with. And if you poke a stick in the ground in some places, water bubbles up from there too, in springs. It all made perfect sense to those folks a few thousand years ago. And it’s all quite clearly their perception based on a literal reading of the scripture. The only problem with it is that it’s simply not the way the world is actually put together.
So, what are we to do with the creation story, dismiss it as irrelevant folk lore? No. This story in Genesis is theology, not history. It is telling us truth about creation, which is far more important than telling us facts about creation. It is telling us that Almighty Lord of this Universe is at the heart of all that is, and that it is all very, very good. To get there from the story about a raqiah separating the waters requires an interpretive process. The only way to read and accept the creation story as literal fact is to believe that the universe is filled with water instead of space and that the observations of astronomers and evidence from spacecraft are all a grand hoax.
So, as soon as you admit that the world is round and space is vast, you are interpreting scripture. What then are we to do as thinking people with rational, twenty-first century minds, and a modern, scientific world-view? What are we to do with this ancient book? The interpretive task we face is formidable. It’s no wonder that some folks would rather run away from it into a supposed biblical literalism. We face a very large problem, because once you begin to interpret scripture you are on quite a slippery slope indeed. It’s a fast bobsled run from “the world is round” to “all this stuff in here can mean whatever I want it to.”
Hence, Peter’s caution. It is somehow, in some way we don’t understand, the Holy Spirit that discloses eternal truth to us through scripture. So we have a responsibility to be careful – and prayerful. We approach scripture with humility and reverence, or we approach it as fools.
So, the next time you find yourself in a conversation and someone begins to tell you what “the Bible says about that” with the certainty of someone who can read the mind of the Almighty, you might try asking them if they think the world is round. Or, you might just thank them for their opinion and then glance at your watch. But then, go home and get out your Bible, and while you’re at it, pray.
I want to begin by sharing with you two wonderful quotes, both of which have been widely, and falsely, attributed to great historical figures. The first is everywhere ascribed to Plato, though I find absolutely no evidence that it appears in any of his writings. It goes like this: “One can easily understand a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when grown men and women are afraid of the light.” I don’t think Plato ever wrote that, but I love it anyway.
The second is often attributed to Galileo. In fact I have seen a striking poster someone produced of a hand with stars that offers the quote in Galileo’s name. This one goes: “I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” This one is actually the concluding line of a poem by Sarah Williams. I am particularly fond of these words. They come to me at times when I’m out under a black velvet sky punctuated with tiny lights.
Both of these misattributed quotes speak metaphorically of darkness and light. And both speak of conquering fear. In both, the darkness is the night, but the difference comes in the lights they refer to. The pseudo-Platonic line alludes to the light of day, while the words never spoken by Galileo are about the starlit night. I’d like to speak to you this morning about fear and confidence, and about the light of day and the lights of the night.
Jesus gives us our starting point. In the scripture you heard this morning from Matthew, he says, “You are the light of the world.” But in the eighth chapter of John he says, “I am the light of the world.” So which is it? Is he the light, or are we the light? To get a handle on that, let’s talk a little astronomy. Here’s something that Galileo didn’t know, although he might have guessed it. There are about thirty times as many stars in our galaxy as there are currently people on the earth, but at most you can only see about nine thousand of them on a dark night. Those points of light in the black sky are what give us such a sense of wonder when the world around us is asleep. We see them, as everyone knows, at those times that the earth rotates in such a way that the sun is facing the other side of the planet from us. As the earth turns, the stars disappear, lost in the glare of sunlight diffused through an atmosphere of mostly nitrogen, oxygen, and argon. The only light we can see then is the sun. This seems to set up a dichotomy between night and day that has inspired poetry, literature, visual arts, and mythology. But each of us knows intellectually, if not viscerally, that our sun is simply another of the pinpoints of light that we call stars. The only difference is how close we are to this one. So, in our daily language, we might speak of two opposites as being “like night and day.” But is there truly such a difference? It’s all stars; the perception of difference is only a matter of distance.
Which takes us back to Jesus. What is the difference between him and us? We might say it’s like “night and day.” And I would say: yes it is. Each human being is like a glowing center of creative power; each one has the “atomic structure,” if you will, to bring light into places of cold, empty darkness; each one bears with that light the power to vanquish fear. And what is the difference between us and Jesus? I suggest that it is simply a matter of perspective. In him we were able to see more closely, more fully, more powerfully, the force of love that burns at the core of creation and transforms lives and worlds. He is the light of the world, and so are you.
That’s more than a little frightening. Truth be known, I’m not sure I want to be the light of the world. It sounds like an unbelievably burdensome responsibility. It would be so much easier to simply mind my own business, take care of my needs and wants, and not take a lot of risks. But with gratitude to whomever came up with the words and called them Plato’s, I have to concur. “One can easily understand a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when grown men and women are afraid of the light.”
Dick Sparrow was an Associate Conference Minister for the Massachusetts United Church of Christ when I was pastoring a church in his area. I must tell you that Dick was one whose light shined in a lot of dark places. When I was in the hospital with a heart attack, Dick came to see me every day until I was out of the woods. At any rate, Dick told of an incident that I can’t resist sharing with you (since pitchers and catchers report for spring training on Tuesday and this is kind of a baseball story): “At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning-disabled children, the father of one of the school’s students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question. ‘Everything God does is done with perfection. Yet, my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as the other children do. Where is God’s plan reflected in my son?’
“The audience was stilled by the query. The father continued. ‘I believe that when God brings a child like Shay into the world, an opportunity to realize the Divine Plan presents itself. And it comes in the way people treat that child.’ Then, he told the following story: ‘Shay and I walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, “Do you think they will let me play?” I knew that most boys would not want him on their team but I understood that if Shay were allowed to play it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging. I approached one of the boys on the field and asked if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance from his teammates. Getting none, he took matters into his own hands and said, “We’re losing by six runs, and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we’ll try to put him up to bat in the ninth inning.”
“‘In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay’s team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. At the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the outfield. Although no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be on the field, grinning from ear to ear as I waved to him from the stands. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay’s team scored again. Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base. Shay was scheduled to be the next at-bat. Would the team actually let Shay bat at this juncture and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball. However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved a few steps closer to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least be able to make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly toward Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball to the pitcher. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could easily have thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have ended the game. Instead, the pitcher took the ball and threw it on a high arc to right field, far beyond reach of the first baseman. Everyone started yelling, “Shay, run to first. Run to first.” Never in his life had Shay ever made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled. Everyone yelled, “Run to second, run to second!” By the time Shay was rounding first base, the right fielder had the ball. He could have thrown the ball to the second baseman for a tag. But the right fielder understood what the pitcher’s intentions had been, so he threw the ball high and far over the third baseman’s head. Shay ran towards second base as the runners ahead of him deliriously circled the bases towards home. As Shay reached second base, the opposing shortstop ran to him, turned him in the direction of third base, and shouted, “Run to third!” As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams were screaming, “Shay! Run home!” Shay ran home, stepped on home plate and was cheered as the hero, for hitting a “grand slam” and winning the game for the team.
“‘That day,’ said the father softly, with tears in his eyes, ‘the boys from both teams helped bring a [little] of the Divine [light] into this world.’”
That story of Dick’s always gets to me, not because Shay got to be a hero, but because seventeen other kids got to be heroes that day – each one of them shining with their own light on a warm summer afternoon under the light of a star, a big, yellow star, close enough to share it’s energy with all of them.
You are the light of the world. And every minute of every day you are presented with opportunities to let that light shine in small ways and large. Sometimes it seems easier to content ourselves with our own hurts and fears. Sometimes it feels like a burden to come up with creative ways of emitting love into seemingly hopeless, dark corners. Sometimes our own way ahead is obscured in the twilight of a setting sun, but lift your head and take notice of the many flaming hearts around you, and say with me, “I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
I have lately been watching Ken Burns documentaries: The American Revolution, The Roosevelts, Benjamin Franklin, America and the Holocaust. They are wonderfully made excursions into our history. And what has really struck me is how our beloved America was built on hubris, wasteful indifference, blood-lust, greed, and self-interest just as much as it was built on courage, self-sacrifice, compassion, and foresight. And all it takes is a look at the evening news to realize that the same dichotomy still defines us. And all it takes is an honest look into our own souls and personal histories to see it, at least to some degree, in ourselves.
There is a great lesson buried somewhere in that. In order to ferret out that lesson, I’ve taken the unusual step this morning of choosing two gospel readings, and both from the gospel of Matthew.
I begin with the reading from Matthew five, the Sermon on the Mount. That passage provides a series of answers to the question every parent is familiar with. The family is in the car going to grandma’s, or to the zoo, or on a vacation, and inevitably, from the back seat comes the plaintive cry, “Are we there yet?” For the fourteenth time the weary parent conjures an image of how many miles still lie ahead and somehow musters the patience to simply say, “No. Not yet.”
So too with the journey that you and I are on – the journey of humanity from who we once were to who we will be. We are anxious to see ourselves as the highest and finest within the created order. Each nation, each religion, each culture views itself as the embodiment of the best of humanity. It only takes a proud moment in an Olympic hockey game to get a crowd of Americans chanting, “We’re number one!” But to quote the patient parent behind the wheel, “No. We’re not there yet.”
What Jesus offers us in this beginning of a sermon he preached from a hillside is an elegant glimpse of where we are going. Throughout these words that we call the Beatitudes, he uses the future tense to describe what awaits those who are blessed: those who mourn will be comforted; the meek will inherit the earth; those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled; the merciful will receive mercy; the pure in heart will see God; the peacemakers will be called children of God.
Clearly this is not a description of us, or of how things are now. The “poor in spirit,” Jesus said, will possess the kingdom of heaven. Our kingdoms are not possessed by the poor in spirit. Many of our political leaders seem to possess a poverty of imagination, a poverty of intellect, a poverty of ideas, a poverty of character. But none of them can be accused of a poverty of spirit. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world indeed if those who were poor in spirit, those who were meek and humble, the peacemakers, the merciful, pure in heart, who hunger and thirst for righteousness were those who were entrusted with our kingdoms. But, no, we’re not there yet.
Jesus spoke of the destination of this journey we’re on and said, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Wouldn’t it truly be a revolution in human experience if the meek took possession of the earth? In our world, it’s the strong and belligerent, the savvy and aggressive who hold title to the planet’s resources. It seems the worst blunder a nation can make in this age of competition for oil, wealth, and military power is to appear weak. After all, as we keep hearing on the nightly news, if we are to stand up against evil, we must demonstrate to our enemies that we’re ready to throw our weight around. A “world power” or an international corporation cannot be meek – at least not according to our present standards.
But you and I live by much the same code. A basic operational principle in our society is: “don’t let others see your weaknesses; they might take advantage of you.” We men are particularly inclined to believe that we remain in control by demonstrating our strength and superiority. One of the quickest ways to become disenfranchised in the corporate world, so we believe, is to appear – well – “meek.” What a truly extraordinary thing it would be if the meek among us held the reins of power. No, we’re not there yet.
Jesus said that those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, and whom people revile, and against whom folks falsely utter all kinds of evil will find that their reward is great. That’s clearly not a description of the world we live in. One of the worst, most painful things is to have people “reviling” you, slandering you, falsely accusing you of terrible things. Who among us would not rise up in rage, and quietly come to pieces behind closed doors in the face of such an onslaught. Wouldn’t it be amazing if those who were slandered and persecuted on account of their convictions or their appearance, instead of being shunned and humiliated or even shot down in the street were greatly rewarded? No, we’re not there yet.
In the beatitudes, Jesus sets before us a vision of where, by the grace of the good Lord, we are headed. He describes a world that’s upside-down from the one we live in – a world where the poor in spirit, the pure in heart, the meek, the peacemakers are running the show. I must say, it’s a stunningly compelling vision. Our job, as I see it, is to keep that vision before us so that we have a clear sense of where we are going, and so that we can be confident we’re on the right road. There’s an image of perfection that lies in the great beyond for which human beings can strive.
In our second reading from the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, Jesus puts a much finer point on it. He takes the basic theme of the sermon on the mount and makes it explicit. Striving for that perfect goal, doesn’t mean being better, grander, more laudable than everyone else. In other words, it doesn’t mean being venerated as a “saint.” It means, well, being a servant. He says, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” In other words, he’s leveling the playing field; “the mountains brought low and the valleys lifted up” sort of thing. We all get thrown in together.
Carne Ross in his book, The Leaderless Revolution, refers to the world in which we live as “ . . . a vastly interconnected age, where billions of people are interacting constantly, a wholly unprecedented phenomenon which we are only beginning to understand.”1 The subtitle of his book is: How Ordinary People Will Take Power and Change Politics in the Twenty-first Century. I’d like to raise a hand in support of Mr. Ross’s contention. No we’re not there yet, but I believe humanity is moving. albeit in fits and starts, toward a true leveling of the playing field. The widening gap between the fabulously wealthy and the rest of us notwithstanding, the elite rule of power, wealth, and position is living on borrowed time. It reminds me of the story of the tower of Babel. When people all spoke one language there seemed to be nothing beyond the grasp of the masses. It was only when they could no longer communicate with one another that such phenomenal, broad-based facility broke down. In this age of global interconnectedness human beings are recapturing the genius of Babel. We are in the process of discovering how alike we are even as we bump up against our differences, and the playing field is, I believe, eventually going to be dramatically leveled.
So I have a suggestion or two for all of us. First of all, don’t opt out. This journey we’re on is terribly important, and we can’t get anywhere if we don’t show up. So be engaged with the world around, and involved in its directions and choices.
Secondly, when we have a decision to make, a direction to take, let’s not simply make it instinctively, as we are most inclined to do, thinking about what you or I personally like the most, or what will benefit us the most. Instead, let’s make it on the basis of how likely it is to move all of us further down the road toward the destination that Jesus describes. Admittedly, it may often seem that the choices we face are so far removed from anything resembling the vision of Jesus or the kingdom of heaven that it’s hard to see any connection at all. But, in truth, every small decision made, every choice between alternatives, every step taken, is a small step in one direction or another. We need to make sure that direction is as close the destination as possible. Each one of us is a member of the great human family, and of the body of Christ. So, our lives are a small but not insignificant contribution to the whole journey of humanity, and so we must act not on the basis of narrow self-interest, but on the basis of grander visions and larger dreams, like that put before us in today’s remarkable words of Jesus.
No, we’re not there yet. But one choice at a time, one step at a time, one small decision at a time, we will, with the Lord’s help, move further down the road. And in some day yet to be seen, we just may, by that eternal grace, get there.
1 Carne Ross. The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Will Take Power and Change Politics in the Twenty-first Century, Simon & Schuster, 2012, p.6.
A couple of years ago Dadgie and I took advantage of the low mortgage interest rates and refinanced our home loan. It turned out to be a good move, but the process was mind-bending. I cannot begin to tell you how many forms we had to try to comprehend, fill out, sign, and get to the lender. It was a stack measured not in pages but in inches. In order to accept us they needed to know virtually everything about us: all of our present and past loans, our credit history, our income, our tax statements for the last couple of years, and on, and on. They were concerned, of course, that they could be taking a risk on us – that we wouldn’t be able to pay off the loan, or that we might disappear, I suppose. All of that came flooding back to me when I read this story from Matthew about Jesus calling his disciples. I think I’ve always been a bit amazed at the spontaneous response of these men who dropped their nets immediately and took off after him. But this time something else hit me. There is absolutely no indication in this passage that Jesus had known any of these men, or that he knew anything about them. I suppose it’s possible that he did, but the story doesn’t suggest it. I have this image in my head of Jesus seeing some men out fishing, and calling out to them, “Hey, you! Come be my disciple; share my life and my ministry; let my own credibility and the success or failure of all my future plans rest with you!” That’s the picture that twisted my mind in a knot and caused me to remember all those forms we had to fill out and sign to refinance our mortgage.
“Hey, you!” Jesus didn’t know whether any of these guys had any brains, or creativity, or political or social prowess. For all he knew they could be complete losers. They might have no clue what he would be doing or saying or how to deal with people they encountered. And, truth be known, it turns out they really didn’t have a clue. Jesus was always trying to explain to them what he was talking about, and most of the time they didn’t quite get it even after the explanation. But somehow, these regular guys, these fishermen, became the bearers of his message and the founders of the Church of Jesus Christ.
“Hey, you!” Jesus would have no idea about the financial situation of these men, other than to assume that since they were fishermen they were probably not very well-heeled. That runs contrary to any consultant’s advice about starting a new venture. The first thing you do is line up financial backers. You put the people with the deepest pockets on your board or in your inner financial campaign circle. They are going to provide you with the biggest initial boost to your plans. Jesus grabbed some fishermen who immediately gave up their jobs. Not a very auspicious beginning. But, roaming around the countryside with him – no income, no guaranteed lodgings, no budget – they managed to start something that changed the world.
“Hey, you!” Were any of these guys devout Jews? Did they know any of the Hebrew Scriptures? Were they regular attendees at Temple? How in the world would Jesus know? In fact, this was all taking place in (as scripture says) “Galilee of the Gentiles,” or, as Isaiah puts it in the passage that Luke is quoting, “Galilee of the nations.” What that phrase refers to is the remarkable racial, religious, and cultural diversity of this region. The majority of its population was, in fact, Gentile. So, who were these men out in their fishing boats? Were they men of faith, any kind of faith? Could they pass the litmus test for proper beliefs and doctrine? They were just some guys out fishing. And yet, they became bearers of the gospel. What did they have in common, other than being fishermen? They all said “yes.”
“Hey, you!” That knocks my socks off.
And what does it have to say to us? For one thing I believe it’s a cautionary tale about putting too many hurdles in front of people. The institution of the church, by and large, has for generations been among the most stridently exclusive clubs in human experience. I think that’s one of the reasons we have, to our embarrassment, so many branches of Christianity and Protestant denominations. Each little group of believers sets up their criteria for participation and fellowship. And those who refuse to adhere to their list of beliefs and practices are excluded, and those who disagree are “disfellowshipped.” You may have noticed that when we share in communion on the first Sunday of each month I make some sort of statement about the inclusiveness of our table – that everyone is invited, regardless of membership, baptism, belief or disbelief. I say that because I think it’s a disgrace to put any sort of barrier between a person and this table of grace. Dadgie and I had a professor in seminary who wrote a paper that was only partly tongue-in-cheek advocating communion for dogs. He was going to the extreme to make the point of the need for utter and boundless inclusion at the Lord’s table. Maybe I should introduce our communion service each week by simply saying, “Hey, you!”
Secondly, from the way Jesus called his disciples, I think we can learn something about pride. It is remarkably arrogant to believe that one has the intellect, the moral standing, the wisdom, the acumen, the grasp of infinite variables to stand in judgment of another person. I have to admit, when Dadgie and I were answering all those questions and filling out all those forms for our mortgage refi, there was a part of me that wanted to say to the bank’s representative, “Just who do you people think you are?” But I didn’t. After all, it’s their money, and I’m the beggar. But for any of us to assume we know better than another person, that we have a clearer sense of right and wrong, or a firmer grasp of truth, strikes me as akin to idolatry. It’s placing one’s own mind up on a sacred pedestal. It’s assuming for one’s self something of the omniscience of the divine creator. Jesus made no prejudgments; he just saw the fishermen and said, “Hey, you!”
And finally, and perhaps most importantly, when Jesus grabbed these guys at random to follow him, he gave us a powerful example of trust. It is an astonishing, spendthrift kind of trust, throwing caution to the wind (or in this case to the waves). How unlike us he is! You and I won’t make a move without weighing the options, considering all the ramifications, permutations, and combinations, testing the waters, getting our ducks in a row. I generally don’t buy anything without first checking out Consumer Reports. And we all carry that caution over to our relationships. We feel people out carefully before we trust them; we check out their positions and test their motives. This has gone to an extreme in this electronic age where now young people don’t go out to a movie without Googling their date in advance.
This morning, after worship and our luncheon, we will be gathering for our annual meeting. Among the business before us will be the election of church officers and board members. We have folks who work on our behalf to find people in our midst to fill those roles, and we are very grateful to them. Sometimes church folks worry about whether a certain individual is right for a board or an office. But if we followed the example of Jesus we might just as well fill our positions by saying to any person in the congregation, or I daresay any person walking down the street, “Hey, you!”
I remember in a previous pastorate, we had a board of deacons with no chair. No one on the board considered himself or herself up to the role of chairing the board of deacons. Finally, in desperation, two women who each felt wholly inadequate agreed to co-chair, thinking if they split the job maybe neither could fail too miserably. They worked at it, learned and led. In the end they wound up being two of the best deacons chairs I’ve ever seen in a church (incidentally, our current deacons chair, Joanne, has also done a terrific job).
I think there resides somewhere deep within each human soul great potential. I believe that, if folks trust that potential and it is tapped, remarkable things can happen. I’m convinced that it is the very image of God in which we were created (the imago dei) spoken of in Genesis that burns within our hearts and creates that potential. And I think Jesus had such unwavering confidence in that divine spark in each human breast that he knew something amazing could emerge out of a fairly random collection of people. So he saw some fishermen at work and said, “Hey, you!”
You may not consider yourself capable of taking on a responsibility that you are unaccustomed to. You may have questions about someone else and their competence to handle a given role. You may feel that a certain collection of people is woefully inadequate to the task set before them. My advice to you is: chill out. You may have no idea what can happen when you, or another person, or a group of people find that inner spark ignited and the result far exceeds the sum of the parts or any prior expectations.
We could take a clue from Jesus and the remarkable way he went about setting up his “A-team.” “Hey, you!” What a concept! I’m impressed by, and deeply committed to, this church’s tradition of openness, of humility, and trust, and I pray that as we set out together to find our way forward, we will do so believing in ourselves, believing in one another, and believing in those around us – even those we’ve never met – ones to whom we might extend an invitation: “Hey, you!”
Well, strap yourselves in. I have a message today that would get me thrown out of most churches (I thank the Lord, incidentally, that I’m here with all of you, because I don’t think you’ll expel me for this). Here it is: Christianity is not the one and only true religion. In fact, I believe all religions have a comparable claim to truth.
Some folks from a Baptist convention I attended a number of years ago would disagree intensely. I heard a speech at that convention in which the elevation of “inclusiveness” to a supreme virtue was railed against. The speaker said that those who promote “inclusiveness” are sending us on a whole new direction that is the antithesis of the Gospel. According to him, the message of Christ was not one of inclusion, but exclusion. I’ll never forget him saying, to the applause and affirming smiles of many in the crowd, that Jesus drew firm lines between the saved and the unsaved, the righteous and the sinners. And it was our job to make sure we didn’t blur that line, but continued to cast out the evil-doers from our midst.
His take on the gospel is not new. In fact, it’s pretty standard fare not only in Christianity but in most world religions. One cynical but disturbingly accurate take on the institution of religion is that it’s all about preserving and promoting its beliefs and moral codes by excluding those who don’t adhere to them, thereby elevating to a special status its own adherents. Christianity, through the centuries, has maintained those high walls, identifying itself largely by those it excludes. Much the same could be said of Judaism as well as Islam.
But the reason I can make such an outrageous claim as I have this morning is that I’m in pretty good company. In the passage you heard read this morning from Ephesians, the Apostle Paul, in one sudden, broad gesture, simply swept away the long-standing division between Jews and Gentiles. He said in very plain language, “. . . the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” It is interesting to pay close attention to these words, and specifically to what Paul did not say. He did not say that the Gentiles remain outside of the grace of God because they don’t follow the laws and commandments of sacred scripture contained in the books of Moses and the prophets. He did not say that the Gentiles have been given a new way – God’s true and righteous path – and therefore have left the Jews behind to follow their old, godless myths. He did not say that the Jews and Gentiles had both better shape up and learn a whole new set of religious doctrines or they’ll all miss out on God’s salvation. No, astonishingly, he called the Gentiles and Jews “fellow heirs, members of the same body.” Contrary to what you may hear at any given Baptist convention, Christianity was founded as a religion of inclusiveness.
Paul knew full well what he was doing. He knew that he was speaking heresy, and that his words were so far beyond everyone’s concept of “religion” that he may as well have been speaking Swahili. It’s clear that Paul knew just how revolutionary all this was, because he explained it in such grandiose terms. He called it an ageless “mystery,” and said, “In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.” He referred to it as a “plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”
This is the mystery: that in Christ we discover an unexpected intention for us. It is not exclusiveness but inclusiveness; it is not a high wall constructed to protect the pure from the ungodly, it is an expansive embrace of our brothers and sisters whose names and faces we have forgotten in our haste to divide the sheep from the goats. The mystery of Christ is that, in him, religion is counterintuitive.
That’s the same counterintuitive message that Martin Luther King, Jr. preached in Birmingham and Selma and Memphis, the message he thundered down from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. He preached it in churches, he preached it on television, he preached it from jail houses. He preached it until it got him shot. They could kill the man, but no one can kill the message.
The trend among many people of faith in our time is toward the closing of ranks, perhaps because people feel insecure or threatened by the future, I don’t know. But we’ve seen the consequences of this tendency in its most extreme, defining all those who are outside the circle of salvation as infidels, and waging holy war on them with righteous passion. In its more genteel form, this kind of religion quietly sanctions discrimination, and subtly promotes intolerance and hatred.
And the “outsiders,” the “unrighteous ones” are readily identified. For liberals, it’s conservatives; for Christians it’s Muslims; for Jews it’s Palestinians; for Protestants, Catholics; for straights, gays; for Arabs, Americans; and on it goes. If our purpose in religious practice is to draw ever more circles around ourselves to define the infidels, we will have no shortage of targets. Doing so doesn’t open up an enlightened new path through the world, it’s simply following the oldest and most common of human tendencies.
If the Lord is disclosing to us through scripture a whole new way of being human, a spiritual life that transforms our baser and meaner motives, then Paul must be right. The path of faith must not be the way that comes most naturally to us, the way of judgement, condemnation and separation. A more challenging way is revealed to us: that we are one as children of the Lord of All, and that we are to reach out to one another, find and secure the ties that bind us together.
This is not as easy as it seems. It means facing the most basic and instinctive kinds of judgements and negative feelings that each of us has inside. I know for a fact how difficult that is. My blood has a low boiling point when it comes to dealing with certain kinds of folks. My biggest hangup is trying to connect on a human level with Christian fundamentalists (as you might have guessed from time to time). I have been in more heated theological discussions that have elevated my heart rate than I care to confess. And when the passions start to flare, the most natural thing in the world is to conclude that the other person is somehow simply “blinded” to the truth by some form of ignorance, voodoo, or brainwashing that makes them, at least for the purposes of the argument, a little less human.
You see, my challenge is rather complicated. If I believe in inclusiveness, how am I supposed to treat those who promote exclusiveness – exclude them? Seems rather inconsistent, doesn’t it? What I have to keep working on is this: when I start to lock horns with someone, I need to find a way to listen, and if I ultimately disagree, to do so with the gentle respect and humility that acknowledges our common share in the heritage of eternal truth. I’m still a pretty good distance from being able to do that. But Paul points me in the right direction. And I suggest he’s pointing all of us in that direction.
So, if we truly opened ourselves to learning from others, what might we discover? I’d like to suggest just a few of the things I believe we could learn from other religions if we were open to doing so.
Judaism is centered around a powerfully beautiful elevation of the individual and the family. There are rabbis and synagogues and rites and services of worship, but in many respects, the focus of Jewish life is not the worshiping community so much as the family and the individual within it. There are prayers, rituals, important lessons that are taught around the family dining table, and there are solemn spiritual and ethical expectations of each person that are learned from an early age and carried through each day’s activities. We could learn something from them about “decentralizing” our faith, taking it out of our Sunday sanctuaries and making it live in our homes and lives.
Buddhism emphasizes the oneness of all of creation, and the inner peace and depth of understanding that one can attain by letting go of the superficial anxieties that consume us and living deeply into that oneness of the universe. We could learn from them something about the surpassing value of a deep life of prayer and meditation, and how lives can be transformed one at a time by such a process of awakening.
Islam is an all-encompassing system of religious belief and practice. Muslim adherents take very seriously their spiritual and ethical responsibilities. Their lives are centered on the worship and praise of Allah with repeated daily prayers, and the “five pillars” of the faith are at the foundation of their lives. We could learn from them about not having such a casual, “I’ll show up on Sunday morning if I feel like it,” “take-it-or-leave-it” approach to the almighty Lord of this universe.
Yes there are extremists. There are Christian extremists who gun down abortion doctors in cold blood, Jewish extremists who want to keep taking Palestinian land and squeezing them into an ever tinier pressure cooker, and Muslim extremists who want to blow up airliners. But unless the great majority of us in all religions who love the Lord and love one another can start learning from each other, we may be headed down a very dark road indeed.
What social or political body, what ideological niche, what cultural or religious group do you most readily cast into the outer circle, disregard, and even dehumanize a little? You will find the task of discovering common bonds with those people as fellow children of promise to be your greatest challenge. And I would submit that it is also the place in your life where the transforming power of the Spirit is most likely to be at work.
So, does our religion open us to certain beliefs, does it offer us ethical and theological norms? Of course. But is it the primary purpose of our faith to separate ourselves from one another because of our adherence to those beliefs and norms? I would submit that it is just the opposite. All over this world, we are sisters and brothers, because we are all inheritors of the Divine promise of creation. One of the central purposes of our faith is to help us cut through the “theological twaddle” and sift through the nonsense so that we can comprehend that truth more fully, and so that, as Paul says, “the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known.” And that is a “mystery hidden for ages.”
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