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This year, during Advent, I’ve decided to take a look with you at some of the characters in the story of Christ’s birth who are out of the spotlight – “bit-players,” if you will, in the drama of the Nativity. The characters that I intend to examine in these weeks have such unassuming roles that they are, in fact, not even mentioned in the Bible. Their existence is at best inferred, or in some cases just a flight of fancy.
Now, to begin with, I don’t want to spoil anyone’s Christmas, but I feel a responsibility to point out a problem with Luke’s account of the Birth of Jesus. The story begins, “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered.” Here’s the problem: Caesar Augustus ruled from 27 B.C. to 14 A.D. There is no evidence during this time of any census being taken of, as Luke says, “all the world” (which would have meant the entire Roman Empire). It is curious that the “first registration . . . taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria,” in Luke’s words, was a local census taken in A.D. 6 or 7 for the purpose of imposing a tax on the people – one, incidentally, that led to rioting in the streets. Additionally, Luke tells us earlier in the book that John the Baptist, and therefore Jesus also, were born during the reign of Herod the Great in Judea. The problem being that Quirinius was never governor during the reign of Herod, who died in 4 B.C.
But, all that having been said, let’s forgive Luke his little historical inaccuracies, and for convenience’s sake, think of this as the tax census taken by Quirinius in 6 A.D. Indeed, what matters about the story is not its fidelity to historical facts but its fidelity to timeless meaning. In that spirit, I’d like for us to consider for a time the role of that unnamed person in the account who was, on the day in question, simply going about his job, setting up shop to take the census.
When a road-weary man with the slightly harried look of an expectant father appeared before him and announced, “Joseph of Nazareth, in Galilee,” how could he have known who this was? How could he have known that standing there at his registration table was a central figure in perhaps the greatest drama in human history? Inscribing the name, and the names of his family in the role, I suspect our census taker glanced out the window at the sun to see how late in the day it was getting, and how much longer he would have to endure this tedious tallying, and the ceaseless stream of people, each one starting to look exactly like that last.
“Next,” he said with the indifferent air of one who sees no further than the tip of his pen. And that was that. A difficult journey with a bride nine months pregnant to a town with no vacancies. And not so much as a “How do you do?” Just a cold question, and a curt, “Next.”
It’s hard to blame the census taker. He’s so much like us. Life is, after all, mostly about getting by, doing our job, meeting our responsibilities, getting dinner ready, or any of the thousand things with which we fill our days – or, at least, it seems to us that’s what life is about. And how much time do we spend looking out the window, or glancing at our watch, wishing away the present moment, looking for something different, anticipating whatever on our agenda might be the next experience of any real interest?
There is a common malady loose in our world. It is the persistent desire to be someone we are not, to be somewhere or some-when we are not. We suffer from this disease frequently at Christmas time. I don’t know about you, but I find the burden of all the preparations for this holiday to be about as tedious as, say, writing down an endless list of names of people standing in line for a census. The gifts I have yet to think of, let alone buy, the notes and cards to be written – when am I going to find time to do those? To a large degree, I find myself just looking forward to getting it all over with, so all this won’t be hanging over my head any more. The radio and television tell us we are supposed to be happy and busy little shoppers, out there doing our best to keep the engine of the economy going, but instead I find myself with head down looking at the list of those for whom I need to buy gifts, and wanting to check another off so I can say, “Next.” Won’t it be nice when it’s January, and all this is over for another year? How’s that for a fine attitude about Christmas from a preacher?
In my better moments I know this is not what Christmas is all about. But I have to say the piped in “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in the shopping malls, and the four page holiday ads in the newspaper do seem to conspire to keep me from maintaining a good perspective on the season.
I think that what I need is to watch A Christmas Carol for the fifty sixth time. I think there is a certain Zen in the reborn Scrooge that is particularly important in this season. Integral to Scrooge’s Christmas morning transformation is his newly acquired ability to see deeply and appreciatively into every moment and everything that’s happening around him. He can’t get enough of each precious encounter, each treasured sight or sound or smell. He’s filled with joy at every little thing that comes his way. No longer is his face buried in the ledger, dispassionately waiting for the next opportunity to make a nickel. Now he is always looking, always laughing, always taking in and savoring the sweet moments of life with which he is blessed.
That’s what I need a heavy helping of this Christmas. I need someone to slap me in the face and say, pick up your head and look at the face of the person standing in front of you, look at the last leaf from the old oak tree floating to the ground, look at the list of names of people you are privileged to care about and to whom you want to express your love by remembering them at Christmas time. That’s what I need.
I think it’s what that census taker needed too. I don’t know if he ever found it. I’d like to think maybe he did. I like to imagine him finishing his day’s work and heading back to his room, head down, eyes weary, when suddenly, as he passes near the inn, he hears an odd sound – the cry of a baby, coming from out back, from the stables. I like to imagine him picking his head up, and turning aside to investigate, approaching the stable, and seeing something wondrous – a newborn baby, a common, lower-class family having a baby in a cow stall. I like to think of him picking his head up and looking into the face of the father, a warm, strong face, and recognizing him as a man who’d been at his census table earlier in the day. I like to think that he had something of an epiphany in that moment, that he suddenly knew that every star in the sky was announcing good tidings of great joy, every manger was filled with abundant new life, every face was an image of the face of God.
I love the sentiment of that great philosopher, John Lenin, who wrote, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” You and I have a lot of options this Christmas season: we can drag ourselves through the ordeal for yet another year, wishing away our moments, waiting for an easier time; we can occupy our minds with big plans and preparations for grand celebrations; we can bury our faces in the ledger, or the newspaper, or the report the boss is expecting tomorrow – the Good Lord of this Universe, I suspect, will be busy delivering a baby.
There are all kinds of interesting discussions I could enter into about this morning’s reading from the epistle to the Colossians. We could talk about authorship of the letter (it’s inscribed with the name of the apostle Paul, but the authenticity of its Pauline authorship has been questioned by several biblical scholars). We could delve into the circumstances in which it was written and the heretical teachings that engendered a controversy apparently raging in the church at Colossae. Or we could talk about the centrality of Christ that Paul was lifting up for the Colossians to embrace. But I’ve decided to preach a whole sermon instead on two words found in this passage. In the course of four sentences, Paul uses the phrase “all things” five times. I found that quite interesting. But the one that jumped off the page at me was the final time he used it. He writes, “. . .God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things . . . .” I’d like you to stop and consider that with me for a moment. It’s clear from the earlier sentences and use of the term that when Paul writes “all things” he means “all things.” That includes “things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things [that] have been created.” In other words, trees and stars and cucumbers and photons and wacky ideas and Honda Civics. “God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things.” Wouldn’t you have expected Paul to say, “God was pleased to reconcile to himself all people,” or “all believers,” or “all Christians?” What can it possibly mean for the Lord of Life to reconcile to himself “all things?”
As you might have guessed, I have some thoughts. First of all, it strikes me that you and I tend to live in a chopped up world – a place where “all things” are divided up and placed into their proper categories and those categories are set in an appropriate hierarchy. You and I, of course, are at the top of that hierarchy. After us comes people who are not like us, then people who are laughable, rude, or evil, then probably good food, then dogs, next, houses and other important buildings, followed by cars. Somewhere down at the bottom of the list are things like dirt, dead animals, garbage, and, of course, black flies. It certainly makes the task of moving through our days and navigating our complicated lives a lot easier if everything has its place, so to speak, and “all things” are in their places. But Paul seems to be suggesting that the Almighty is not much like us. If God is “pleased to reconcile to himself all things,” that throws you and me into the same pile with terrorists and tulips and earthworms. In other words, Paul is suggesting that in the eyes of the Lord all of creation, every tiny speck of it, is a unified whole. Wouldn’t it be something if humanity could finally grasp that notion? We may be getting there, but the jury is still out on whether we’ll get there soon enough. We’ve learned so far that the earth is round, and that everything in it is made out of the same stuff, atoms mined from primordial stars. We’re starting to figure out a few more things – that there is no such place as “away,” for instance, when we use the expression “to throw something away.” And it’s beginning to dawn on us that what we put into the atmosphere affects the whole planet, and has a critical impact on ourselves. And some folks are making the connection between the things that we humans build, grow, dispose of, and monkey with and the very food chain that keeps us alive. Who knows? Maybe in time we might come far enough to gain the level of wisdom about ourselves and our world attained by the native peoples who originally settled this land. My point? All of creation is a unity. It is not a collection of categories. Everything we do affects everyone and everything else.
Secondly, when Paul says that God is “pleased to reconcile all things to himself,” I take that to mean that “all things” were not reconciled to God, and that the act of bringing all things into harmony, resolving them, making them consistent and congruous with Divine purposes is a pleasing thing. To me, that suggests movement over time toward a goal, and that the achievement of that end is a divinely delightful idea. Now, I know that a lot of religious folks are not big on evolution. It seems that some people think that science and biblical faith are somehow incompatible. But I think evolution is a very biblical idea. I think the entire record of scripture is the story of an evolving people, the people of God becoming very, very gradually what the Lord of All intends them to be. But more than that, it seems that all of creation – “all things” – are evolving in the direction of that divine design. That may not seem apparent when we look at the ways humanity has mangled our world, or when we see the bizarre side roads and dead ends that technology often takes, or when we notice how often our proclivity for violence rears its head and seems to send us two steps back for every one forward, but I’m convinced that somehow all of those experiences of failure, misdirection, and backsliding are part of the journey we are on together and that the journey has an objective, and that the Divine Power at the heart of existence is “pleased” – smiling on the progress . . . overall.
And, finally, I take note of how the apostle begins this portion of his letter. He writes, “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.” You and I have been given an inheritance by those saints who have advanced the ball ahead of us. And we have been given power to take up the challenge ourselves of sharing in the work of reconciling all things to God, and to those Divine purposes. With these great gifts how can we choose not to do as Paul suggests, and “joyfully give thanks to the Father?” That’s what this week’s celebration on Thursday is all about, after all, joyfully giving thanks. Sometimes thankfulness ducks around the corner and we lose sight of it. We can be seized by the enormity of social and global evils. Sixty-two years ago yesterday, we all remember how deeply we were grieved by one of those evils when our president was slain on national television. And it’s also easy to be overcome by our daily problems, so easy to lose perspective on life and to forget what we have to be thankful for.
I think I’ve told some of you before about “Charley,” but his story bears repeating. It was about thirty or more years ago, and I was senior pastor of the First Baptist Church in Beverly, Massachusetts. We had a number of homeless people in the city, and our church hired a social worker to counsel and support them in any way possible. “Charley” was one of the homeless men. He was mentally disabled, had no money, no job, no place to live, no family, no resources. Every morning he would come in off the street to the lobby of the church and walk over to the door of the office where the secretaries worked. We would always ask, “How are you this morning, Charley?” And he would invariably flash a giant grin and reply, “Could be worse!” Could be worse. I have never forgotten that phrase, and will never forget it as long as I live. How, in the name of all that is holy, I wondered, could it possibly be worse? How could a person be in a worse situation than this poor man? But I have taken that huge grin of his to be his way of expressing thankfulness. To this day, I’m a bit baffled about what exactly he was thankful for. But he was thankful. Every time I start to feel a little sorry for myself about something I remember “Charley,” and I remember, “Could be worse!”
So, we are reminded by Paul that this universe in which we reside is not a series of compartments, it is a grand unified whole in which we participate and for which we bear responsibility; we are reminded that the Lord of Life has intentions for it and for us to be reconciled to divine purposes; and we are admonished to remember to give thanks with joyful hearts.
I don’t know of a better way to illustrate all this than with a story related by the preacher, writer, and college chaplain, William Willimon. He wrote about a young woman he encountered several years ago at the college where he worked. “She had a miserable time the second semester of her Sophomore year,” Willimon writes. “She had unwisely signed up for a couple of killer courses. She was flunking both of them, in way over her head. Then, her mother had a heart attack and was reduced to being an invalid. To top it all off, her boyfriend of three years unceremoniously dumped her. ‘How on earth do you keep going?’” Willimon asked her. “’I think of May 14, 2012,’ she responded. ‘May 14, 2012? What’s that?’ I asked. ‘It’s the day of my graduation. Sometimes I picture myself in my cap and gown. I can hear the music of the orchestra. In my mind’s eye I can see myself processing down that long row of graduates, see myself receiving my diploma from the hands of the President. That dream, that vision of the future, keeps me going.’”1
It is the vision of a future to which we are gradually but inexorably growing, a future of wholeness and shared responsibility, a future worth investing in, that keeps us going, and keeps us thankful . . . for “all things.”
1 William Willimon, Pulpit Resource, Logos Productions, December 11, 2011.
In just the last couple of months we’ve seen typhoons and an earthquake in the Philippines, a landslide in Sudan that killed over a thousand people, more typhoons, flash floods and earthquakes throughout Asia and Europe. We’ve seen images on television and the Internet of neighborhoods and whole towns thoroughly destroyed. In recent days not one but two typhoons have hit the Phillippines. It seems that poor country is always getting slammed by these storms.
I had been watching coverage of a disaster in the Philippines, and I saw the face of a woman being interviewed after losing absolutely everything – her home, her family, her possessions. She had no place to live and nothing to eat or drink. And her face bore the most beatific aura. I don’t remember her exact words but it was something like this: “We just have to do the best we can and keep the faith.” I was stunned by her equanimity and what appeared to be a hopeful confidence in the face of overwhelming loss and grief. Sometime later I was putting recyclable items in our recycle bin and raised up banging my head on the bottom of a cabinet above. I jumped back, grabbed my head, and let go with a few choice, unrepeatable words at a high volume. Upon reflection, the contrast between my reaction to a minor “first world problem” and that woman’s reaction to an horrific third world nightmare struck me with what can only be described as the force of typhoon winds.
That amazing woman with the lovely, calm countenance was living in the midst of that with which the prophet Isaiah would have clearly identified. The “word of the Lord” we heard read this morning was offered as a prophecy by Isaiah in the sixth century B.C. It was given to a people standing in the midst of the ruins of their city. Not unlike Tacloban, Jerusalem had been laid waste. It wasn’t a superstorm that destroyed their city, it was the Babylonian army of King Nebuchadnezzar. The city was leveled, the temple was destroyed, and the leaders were carried off to Babylon in exile. Isaiah himself was one of the victims of that destruction, and his words about a time of peace, prosperity, and long life were spoken to a broken and devastated people looking at what seemed like the impossible task of rebuilding their lives and their nation. I can’t help hearing the echo of the prophet’s words in the voice of that hungry, bereaved, Filipina woman speaking with confidence about doing their best and keeping faith.
It makes me wonder if Isaiah’s prophecy is simply a prediction of future events, or if it may have more to do with now – with the eternal now. It leaves me thinking about those who heard his words over twenty five hundred years ago. Were they, perhaps, listening to a man who was living his hope – living his glorious new Jerusalem, new heaven and new earth – amidst the very ruins of the city? Was I, in my lovely, warm, well stocked, log home, swearing about bumping my head, living defeated in the ruins, while that Filipina woman I heard on television was living in a new heaven and a new earth?
It strikes me that no one on this planet has a carefree existence, free of loss, heartache, pain, and struggle. Some struggles are infinitely more devastating than others. But the lesson of Isaiah’s prophecy, and of that dear woman speaking after the storm, confirms for me that there are two ways to approach life: either as the victim of those struggles, wailing and swearing amidst the rubble of life’s injustice, or as one who lives on a different plain, who lives their hope, and who dwells in a new heaven and a new earth.
If my notions hold any water, then it all raises important questions about the meaning of prophecy. Most people tend to regard prophecy as fortune-telling – a kind of magical hocus-pocus in which future events are revealed. That’s certainly the language used in these pronouncements. Isaiah relates, “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth . . .” and Jesus says, “Days will come when not one stone will be left upon another . . . .” But could it be that, similar to the language of myth, what is being conveyed are not future facts, so much as present truth? Is it possible that by describing a future of wars, insurrections, persecutions and trials, Jesus is telling those who would follow him that faithfulness requires constancy, trust, and perseverance?
What I’m talking about here is the difference between truth and fact. Facts are helpful; they are descriptions of observable reality. But truth is more profound, and more capable of changing lives and shaking nations. It is the deeper reality of existence that deals with meaning; it is the bread and butter of the prophets, whose job it was (and is) to use their often bizarre images to open a window on human experience. Daniel Webster said, “There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange.”1
And so what are we to make of the prophets’ future predictions in which these nuggets of timeless truth are set? Do they, indeed, reveal something about the world that is yet to be? Does that future world already exist in the mind of the Almighty? Is it, in fact, inevitable? Well, not according to Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. When they came up with the movie Back to the Future, they hypothesized a kind of tabula rasa on which the future could be written and, if one went back in time, rewritten. Even minor changes in the course of events would have a profound impact on shaping, or reshaping, the world to be. I think that’s the general cultural mindset that you and I live with most of the time. It places a strong emphasis on individual responsibility. After all, if anything that one of us does or fails to do can end up having an outsized impact on the course of future events, it behooves us to act as responsibly as possible.
When I look back at the course of my life I can’t help identifying key moments when I made choices and decisions that I wish I could change. But when I consider the potential impact of correcting those mistakes, it would seem to send me on a completely different trajectory in life, and I realize I would have missed out on so much that I truly love and value. Then, I think I wouldn’t want to change a thing, for fear that it would change everything.
There’s a cosmological theory that has grown out of quantum physics called the multiple universes theory. It holds that everything that can happen does happen, and at the juncture between two possible outcomes both results occur and the universe splits in two at that instant, with the one outcome occurring in one universe and the second in the other universe. At every instance in which such multiple possibilities arise, another universe is spawned. Hence there are an infinite number of universes all following their own course of events, and an infinite number of universes constantly branching off of those universes. According to this notion, there is a universe out there somewhere in which I didn’t hit the brake soon enough once a few years ago and was killed in an auto accident, and perhaps another in which I became a nationally recognized best-selling author. I like that one. This theory is, I suppose, the ultimate extension of the Back to the Future conception of time.
Strict Calvinists would shudder at all this. John Calvin was one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation in Europe in the sixteenth century. Among other things, he was a powerful promoter of the notion of predestination – that everything that happens is destined by God to happen, and nothing can change any of it. The Divine power and control of events is absolute. Calvin’s ideas were highly influential in the development of Protestantism, and certainly among our forebears here in New England, the Puritans. The whole premise of Back to the Future would be anathema to Calvin. The future cannot be altered, he would say; it is etched in stone by the Lord of the universe.
What does this do to personal responsibility? That’s a subject that was hotly debated by those among the Puritans who had the courage to offer dissent. They argued that, if everything that happens is predestined and some people are irrevocably consigned to be among the elect and others are inalterably slated to burn in hell, then why bother to try to change one’s behavior? Why bother to try to accomplish anything, for that matter? The notion of free-will becomes meaningless.
So how are we to resolve this dilemma? I have a few suggestions. First of all, as I indicated earlier, biblical prophecy is not merely a matter of predicting the future, it is most importantly a window on human experience that allows us to see more deeply into the meaning of existence. On the other hand, the hope that is offered by the prophets and by Jesus and his followers (and the hope offered by modern day dreamers and people of vision) is essential. And it cannot hold power if it’s not real. The new heaven and new earth might not turn out to be exactly as described in Isaiah’s vision (it was Woody Allen who said, “The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won’t get much sleep.”2). But the substance of Isaiah’s hope, that humanity will ultimately become all that we are intended to be, must seize us and empower us. The alternative, especially in this world of darkening clouds of destruction, is to yield to the powerlessness and hopelessness of despair. And that is not who we are called to be. I have to turn no further than the face of that Filipina woman to know the power of living with such faith.
Do you and I have free-will to make the future what we will? I tend to believe that. Is the future already written? Are we in the hands of fate? I don’t know, but I am confident that we are in the hands of the Lord of Life.
1 Daniel Webster, The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, vol. 11 (1903), Cornell University Library, 2009, p.68.
2 Woody Allen, Without Feathers, Ballantine Books, 1986, p. 28.
Let me begin by saying that there is much about this sermon I do not want to preach, and much that I don’t want to hear. It is not a sermon that has welled up from my most treasured inner convictions; it has, rather, leapt out of the lectionary grabbing me by the shirt collar and forcing me to pay attention. It is the unmistakable message of Jesus, heard time and again, that the Almighty’s vision is revolutionary — the Divine future is a “whole new ball game.”
I’m uncomfortable with that because I like the present — at least quite a bit of it. I don’t care to have my world turned upside down by anyone — not even the Lord Almighty. I am pretty content with things just the way they are, thank you. And I’m not alone. I think the ancient Egyptians, and not a few of the foreign slaves, were quite content under the rule of the Pharaoh, until Moses started his rabble-rousing. I suspect the Israelites were happy with the collusion of the Temple priesthood and the Roman governors before Jesus came along and stirred up trouble. I rather think that many, many people sat in their pews quite contentedly and listened to the delegates from the Holy See appeal for indulgence money, before Martin Luther and John Calvin started stirring up the common folk to bring on the “calamity” of the Reformation. I know for a fact that millions of Americans were happy with what seemed like the “natural order” of things, until trouble-makers like Martin Luther King, Jr. started calling for marches and sit-ins. Mostly, folks would like to just keep enjoying things the way they are. Is that too much to ask?
But, apparently, that same Lord Almighty isn’t interested in accommodating our desire for stability, but always seems to be doing a new thing. Isn’t that annoying? In fact, when really pushed by the Sadducees (the religious conservatives of his day), Jesus revealed that the ultimate Divine plan was nothing less than the total remaking of the world, in a way that would be absolutely unrecognizable to people of the present day. The Lord’s hidden agenda (which, ever since Jesus, is not quite so hidden) is to refashion absolutely everything from the ground up, and make the world all over again in a whole new way. I really wish there were some other plan in the offing, but I guess that’s just not in the cards
Take church, for instance. I happen to absolutely love this church. I love everything about it. I love that we are a bunch of open-minded, good-natured, kind, caring people who enjoy each other’s company. I love our building. I love its history and it’s simple New England charm. I love the commitment demonstrated by our trustees and everyone else here to keeping this building as enduringly beautiful and functional as it is. I love our worship, and how comfortable it is, because so much is so familiar — we sing our Amen and “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow,” and say the Lord’s Prayer, and pretty much each week we stand up at the same times and sit down at the same times. I like that. I love our organ and our piano. I love sharing in our music each week here. I love the commitment and dedication of all of you in this church family — the way people can always be counted on to do whatever needs to be done to help out people in need, and to keep our church programs going year after year. I love all of you. I love how close we have become in these years together, and how happy it is to be in relationship with people you care about. I love everything about this place — just the way it is.
And I become a little troubled when I see young people and families in our community or in other communities drawn to these “new kinds of churches.” You know what I mean. There are a few of them around. They’re designed from the ground up based on all the research done by the church growth movement. They are carefully tailored to speak the language, play the music, and offer the look and feel of the newest generation of white, middle-class Americans. They tend to offer a theologically conservative (if not fundamentalist) message. They place a huge emphasis on the creation of small groups. And they have totally changed worship music. It’s all contemporary; largely gone are the familiar old hymns of the church; long gone are the beloved old pipe organs. Now it’s all guitars, drums, bands, and what has come to be known as “praise music.” And they are succeeding monumentally in drawing hundreds and even thousands of people to their services, in communities all over this land.
What are we to say about this? That thousands of people are being unfortunately duped by modern snake-oil salesmen hawking nothing more than a shallow, feel good, watered down version of the gospel? It’s tempting. But it wouldn’t be entirely accurate. People are being drawn to such churches because those churches are meeting a need. They are responding to a dramatically changed society by presenting at least a version of the gospel in a form that resonates with a new generation of people, hungry for an experience of alive, engaging worship. In many cases, it turns out to be a version of the gospel that I don’t subscribe to, but that’s hardly the point. The point is that they, and I suspect the Lord of Hosts, are doing a new thing in our midst.
What does this mean, that we should throw out our hymnals, dismantle our pipe organ, buy some electric guitars, and “get jiggy with it?” Somehow, I think not. But does it all have something to say to us? Is there a message in it about the deep and pervasive spirit of reformation that lies at the heart of the Gospel? Is it possible that we could become so happy and so content with “things the way they are” that we might miss out on the Divine plan for this world? Is it just possible that, if we are to keep up with the Spirit of transformation, we will need to move outside our comfort zones, and become more discoverers of meaning than purveyors of tradition?
I’m not going to offer my own ideas here for what we might be called to. I know you all have within you the capacity to “Stir one another up,” in Paul’s words, “to love and good works.” We sit around tables downstairs and talk about everything from the weather to our fond memories of days gone by, but we could also share with each other some of our own visions for the days and years ahead. What I’m talking about is a spirit – an approach to life and to our life together.
Jesus gave us a glimpse of that spirit in the encounter we read about this morning from the gospel of Luke. The Sadducees came to Jesus and tried to trick him by putting a question to him about who’s married to whom in the hereafter. Jesus’ answer, in short, was: what is in store for all of you is so far beyond your grasp, so foreign to your experience, that your little question about marriage is absolutely irrelevant. Well, folks, that’s not just an observation about the hereafter, it’s a comment about the intentions and directions and plans of the Lord of Hosts. Jesus said “the kingdom of heaven is upon you/within you.” He prayed, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The Lord’s plans are for the remaking of this very world, and they are for right now, not just some distant time into the future. And if we are going to be part of that unfolding plan, we’d better be on board before the train leaves the station.
Many of us may be very happy with this community of faith. But we have not found here the ultimate expression of Divine will for all time. There is more yet to be disclosed about what community can be, what faith can be, what worship can be, what service and love and commitment can be. The same is true for the rest of life. You may have a good marriage, but I’ll bet it could be better. You may have a job you love, but you likely have not discovered all that you are called to in life. You may have a circle of friends that give you support and pleasure, but I know that there are people yet to meet, hearts to win, discoveries of relationship to be made. The Holy Spirit is an entrepreneur — a spirit of innovation. And we are called to be innovators. This I believe: the Good Lord has got plans in store for us that would blow our minds if we could conceive of them.
If that’s true for whatever awaits us on the other side of death’s door, how about for what goes on on this side of that door. I believe it’s true for your own life. Consider those who have been transformed, remade by an encounter with the holy. In the words of Frederick Buechner, “Henry Ward Beecher cheats on his wife, his God, himself, but manages to keep on bringing the Gospel to life for people anyway, maybe even for himself. . . . Zaccheus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul sets out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ.”
I don’t like to think of things changing. I’m really pretty happy with my life, and my world. I’m happy with the church; I’m happy with my role here. But there’s something calling to me from the pages of this Bible asking if my contentedness is the last word. There’s something gnawing at my gut that answers, no.
So, against my will, I challenge you this morning to think of ways that things might change in the church, and to be bold enough to bring your ideas before others, and before appropriate leaders or boards. I challenge you to think of ways that things might change in your family life, and bring your thoughts into the family conversations. I challenge you to think of ways things might change at your job, at your club, with your friends, and act upon those thoughts. I challenge you to look for what the Spirit is doing within you, and around you.
If you’re wondering what lies ahead, what’s in store for us, let me assure you, it’s a whole new ball game. So keep your eyes open and your heart ready. There’s no question, the Good Lord is doing a new thing. Watch for it, wait for it, work for it. The best is yet to come!
Sometimes our coffee hour becomes a time of enjoying just desserts (with two s’s). But, of course, there’s a play on words at work here. It has to do with people getting what they deserve – their “just deserts” (with one s) – in other words, justice. I suppose if you carry the pun far enough it comes ’round to the idea that you all will get, on those dessert coffee hours, just your just desserts (with two s’s) – the desserts you deserve. Well, before I get too carried away, let’s move on.
Justice. That’s what people getting their “just deserts” means. I’ll never forget the great preacher Sandy Ray telling all of us liberal Protestant preachers at a conference that we keep crying for justice. He said, “You don’t really want justice, because justice means getting what you deserve, and, trust me, you don’t want what you deserve. You don’t want justice; you want mercy.” Well, I suppose he was right. But if we take a moment to listen to Jesus as he spoke to the disciples in our reading from Luke, it turns out that justice and mercy are pretty much the same thing. He said, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” I think he’s saying that doing justice means showing mercy. I love the comment I heard a while back from an author who was being interviewed on television (I don’t remember who) he was talking about this “golden rule” of Jesus’s and he said, “I don’t get this ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Instead of assuming that they want to be treated the way you would, why not just ask them how they wish to be treated?” A good point, I suppose. It’s really just a further statement of the underlying principle, though: that if we wish to be just in our dealings with others, we must be ready to show mercy.
So, what’s all that got to do with our everyday lives? Just this: treating others as we would be treated, going the extra mile, turning the other cheek, giving of our resources for the nurture, growth, and well-being of others are all part of one basic approach to life. It is the kind of living that Jesus spent his entire ministry trying to get across. And in many quarters the message has yet to sink in.
One clear example has to do with food stamps (known as the SNAP program). I’m sure you all have read lately about the cut in food stamp funding due to the government shut-down. But even if the shut-down gets resolved, under the current legislation Millions of people who receive food stamps could soon see smaller benefits or even get kicked out of the program, according to several analyses from the federal government and public policy think tanks. About 2.4 million people could lose access to food stamps in an average month, because of the new law’s changes, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimation. Millions more will see their monthly benefit amounts shrink because of other changes mandated by the law. The total pool of people who will either be cut off from SNAP or see smaller monthly benefits could reach 22.3 million U.S. families, according to a July analysis from the Urban Institute.
It’s argued that some folks out there are taking unfair advantage of the food stamp program – not getting their just deserts, so to speak; maybe they’re just getting desserts. So, the obvious solution is to cut the legs out from under families in need. But the budget shows they’re not prepared to cut government subsidies to oil companies (the richest corporations on the planet); that’s referred to as “bad policy.” In other words, it’s the same old story of trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.
And what has “do unto others” got to do with this? I would be interested to see the golden rule applied to Congress. I would be interested to see how any of those congressional representatives and senators would feel about these decisions if they were unemployed for two or three years, went through all their assets, and it were their own families who ended up subsisting on food stamps. I wonder if they would consider government subsidies to oil companies to be a higher priority than food stamps.
But it’s not just Congress, is it? You and I are part of a whole culture that is driven by a “me first” principle, an ethos that says if everyone seeks his or her own good, the whole society will benefit, and those who fall through the cracks are either unworthy or regrettable but acceptable collateral damage in the battle for economic progress. That doctrine is pounded into our heads from the time we are born, and is reinforced night after night on the television. And it takes weekly, and sometimes daily, reminders to keep bringing us back to Jesus, and helping us remember that we are part of a counter-cultural movement, that our loyalty is to a larger kingdom, and our fidelity to a higher cause. To a large degree, that’s what we do when we write letters to our congressional representatives urging them not to cut food stamps; that’s what we do when we bring our boxes of Wheaties and cans of soup for the food pantry; and that’s what we do when we offer our pledges and our weekly offerings. They provide that reminder to ourselves of who we are in this world. And the more sacrificial the gift, the more powerful the message.
But in the words of Jesus we heard this morning there is also a caution for us as individuals and as a church. He plainly and boldly says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled,” and “. . . woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.” In other words, we need to be aware that having our cake and eating it too (that is, having just desserts) is likely to lead to receiving our “just deserts.” And the church needs to be aware that it is not here to get rich either. I for one don’t think Jesus would be impressed with crystal cathedrals. Richard Halverson put it well. He wrote, “When the Greeks got the gospel, they turned it into a philosophy; when the Romans got it, they turned it into a government; when the Europeans got it, they turned it into a culture; and when the Americans got it, they turned it into a business.”1 If the church is to remain faithful to our calling, our resources must be used humbly, thoughtfully, and with justice and mercy always our priorities.
So, the Trustees are currently planning a church pledge campaign. And it isn’t just about raising money to sustain the ministries and missions of this church, as important as that is. It’s also about raising awareness. It is an annual ritual in which we all tell ourselves and one another that there are more important things in life than storing up treasures for ourselves, more important things than finding personal comfort and security, more important things than even (I hate to admit it) the Red Sox.
As I mentioned, yesterday was All Saints Day. So, today we can celebrate an All Saints Sunday. And as we remember today all those beloved ones who have gone before us, we take a moment to consider what they have bequeathed to us: a church, a ministry, a spirit, and a message – a message that consistently reminds us how pleasing it is sometimes to have just desserts, but how much more pleasing it is when we help all of the world’s children get their just deserts.
1 Church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America, Edited by George R. Hunsberger and Craig Van Gelder, Eerdmans, 1996, p. 77.
Early in the year 1756, a musician in the Salzburg court orchestra wrote a note to a friend in his hometown of Augsburg: “I must inform you that on 27 January, at 8 p.m., my dear wife was happily delivered of a boy; but the placenta had to be removed. She was therefore astonishingly weak. Now, however (God be praised) both child and mother are well. She sends her regards to you both. The boy is called Joannes Chrisostomos, Wolfgang, Gotlieb.” That father’s name was Leopold Mozart. And the boy would be called by the name Wolfgang, but would himself shun the German name of “Gotlieb” which means “beloved of God” in favor of the Latin translation, “Amadeus.” Three months from now, we will mark the 270th birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Three days before his 5th birthday, Wolfgang learned to play his first piece of music on the clavier; it was a scherzo by Georg Wagenseil. It took the four-year-old a half hour to learn to play it. In short order, Wolfgang and his sister, Anna, were performing for important audiences. When Wolfgang was six years old, he and his sister played in a public concert in Linz. Their reputation as child prodigies spread so fast that within days they were playing for royalty in Vienna. From there, the family went on tour, making considerable money off of twice daily concerts by these “miracle children.”
When he was eight years old, he wrote four sonatas and a symphony. By the time he reached his tenth birthday he had written fifteen pieces of music. He wrote his first four movement symphony at the age of eleven. He died a young man, only thirty five years old, but in his short life he wrote over six hundred compositions, many of which are today considered among the greatest masterpieces of all time and are the standard fare of the finest orchestras in the world.
He was a strangely compelling figure. His almost superhuman gift of music was combined with a spendthrift lifestyle of partying and lavishing food and drink and gifts on his friends – a lifestyle that left him frequently penniless. It’s little wonder that he has been the subject of legends, myths, and dramatic exaggerations (the wildly popular film, Amadeus, among them). But there can be little doubt that, in this quirky and rare human being, something special was going on.
Reactions to his life and to his gift are varied. Some would say it’s entirely unfair that such monumental talent would be conferred on someone who turned out to be such a roguish twit. Others simply celebrate that talent, and that a body of work like his ever came into being at all. Some of you might be asking this morning why we are bothering to take so much time to talk about a composer. What, you may ask, has Mozart’s life got to do with our worship?
Well, I hear you. Wolferl, as he was affectionately known by his family, was no saint. He was a Catholic Freemason who wrote a tremendous amount of religious music, and converted his own father to the faith before his death. But he was also an irreverent and rebellious soul. He wrote a canon for six voices on the words, “Leck mich im Arsch” (I apologize to any of you who speak German for having repeated that phrase in the pulpit). We might politely paraphrase it as “kiss my rear-end,” but, trust me, it’s far more graphic and base than that. He wrote another one – a party song for his friends – that takes the image even further (we won’t even go there). So, no, we’re not lifting up Mozart this morning as an exemplar of virtue or religious piety.
Here’s the thing that gets to me about Mozart. Have you ever been driving down the road, and come over a hill to where a valley full of wondrous sights stretches out before you so that you have to catch your breath? Have you ever been walking in the woods and come upon a massive, towering tree rising so high in the air you can’t see the sky, to which the only appropriate response is to stand and gape in reverential silence? Have you ever been outside at night and looked up to see the edge-on view of our galaxy in brilliant detail, set in a sea of vivid distant lights, and found yourself simply exhaling softly the words, “O, my God?” Or, perhaps another way of saying that is: “Bless the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great. You are clothed with honor and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment. You stretch out the heavens like a tent . . .” Those are the words the psalmist used to convey that feeling. In fact, in this 104th Psalm, portions of which we heard this morning, the author goes on for 35 verses exuberantly listing one awe-inspiring image after another of the glorious things the Lord of Majesty does in pouring gifts upon the earth. So many of these gifts of the Lord are listed that I think those who came up with the lectionary just got tired, and decided to truncate the lectionary reading so it wouldn’t take up half a worship service just to read it all.
These gifts land on each of us, and we are often found living as though we are not so gifted. We might compare ourselves to someone else and think, “O, I wish I were more like him or her. One might shy away from something saying, “O, I’m no good at that.” We might waste our time and our lives focusing on the things that make us feel unfortunate, or unable. You might live with remorse thinking you are not gifted at all, but you are. Many of us have the gift of humor. I have sat with you and found myself laughing out loud at the funny things you come up with. Some of you, like our young pianist, Wyatt, and our occasional soloist, Pat, are showered with the gift of music. Some are gifted in the ability to write, Like our brilliant moderator, Nowell. Some are a wiz with finances and numbers. But every one of you, I know from experience has been blessed with the gift of compassion and love. The gifts just keep pouring forth and filling our little community of Christ’s followers with blessings abounding.
The gifts of the Almighty are showered on us like the October rains we had this week (finally). They land everywhere; they fill up the hollows; they puddle here, and run wild down the canyon there. We live in a world of gifts, from the brilliant, glowing colors of autumn to the lovely sound of birds chirping in the trees. We are surrounded by such gifts.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an outrageous spendthrift on whom fell an overabundance of gifts from the Great Spendthrift Giver. That’s what I love about Mozart. He wasn’t perfect. Like you and me he was flawed, and like any of us at times, even straying over the line. But that’s the thing about Divine grace; it’s there for every undeserving one of us. And listening to the brilliant music from that gifted mind of Mozart is like beholding the Milky Way; it can take your breath away, and it can, in that breathless moment, leave you with nothing to express but awe – awe at the majestic wonder of creativity, awe at the whole of creation itself, awe at the creator, the wildly extravagant Giver who lavishes gifts on us, the undeserving.
So, here’s to you, Wolferl. And in the words of the Lacrymosa “on that tearful day, when from the ashes shall rise again sinful man to be judged,” may you, the outrageous spendthrift party animal, be counted among the most treasured of gifts from the Spendthrift Giver.
My father used to whip us with a razor strap. He would double the strap over so that when it smacked our rear ends, the sides would slap together, and the sound of that strap snapping was far more terrifying than the actual pain from the smack on our bottoms. To this very day, when I fear (or know) that I have done something wrong, I can feel my buttocks tighten up in dread anticipation. I think my dad did that because his father had done it to him. I vowed that I wouldn’t do that to my children. So I just smacked their butts with my bare hand. I wish for all I’m worth that I had never done that. One more example of the way in which the Bible is a great book. It tells us that the sins of the parents are visited upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.1
I suppose that’s partly why my response to this morning’s reading from Jeremiah was so personal. Jeremiah says that days are coming when “they shall no longer say: ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.” In other words, the time will come when the parents’ sins will reside only with themselves and not be visited upon their children and grandchildren. It will be a time of individual accountability. And then Jeremiah goes on to describe this age to come as the day of “a new covenant.” And this is the covenant that God will make with God’s people: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” So, this age to come will be a time of personal responsibility, when the lessons of the ancestors will no longer be crucial, and there will be no need for teachers, or for scriptures or laws, because all people will have the very law of God imprinted on their hearts.
In our second scripture reading today, we have what seems to be the polar opposite. The Apostle Paul, writing to his young protégé, Timothy, also says that “Days are coming . . .” The coming days that Paul speaks of are similar to Jeremiah’s, but Paul is not so enamored of them as is the ancient prophet. He says that when people follow their own hearts instead of turning to the sacred writings and the sound doctrine and teaching that begins in childhood they will end up turning “away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.”
So, these days that are coming, which will they be: no need for scripture or teaching because every person, taking individual responsibility, will have the law of God written on the heart, or a rejection of scripture and sound teaching while each person follows personal desires and “wanders away” from the truth? I think it’s both. In fact, I think those days that are coming are already here, on both scores.
Let’s start with Jeremiah’s utopian future. It’s really a lovely image, but I have a hard time thinking it’s to be taken literally. And here’s why: If Jeremiah were serious about this time when there would be no need to teach one another, he would have to be envisioning a time when people stopped having babies. Because a child needs to learn; a child needs to be taught, and guided by parents and others; a child needs to read an encounter and struggle and grow. In human culture there is no such thing as stasis – as a time when all tradition and learning grinds to a halt. So I take Jeremiah’s prophecy here (I’m sure you won’t be surprised) as a metaphor. I think we are being given a picture of something divine, something to be treasured. I think that treasure is the very way in which Divine law is, in fact, written on our hearts, and has been since this world got “Let there be’d” or “Big Banged” into existence.
The author of the book of Genesis offers another metaphor that makes the point eloquently. He writes, “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” So, the central affirmation at the very beginning of the Bible is that you and I at the most basic core of our being are the very image of God. Our hearts are indeed etched with the very outlines of divinity. The great Protestant reformer, John Calvin, agrees. He wrote, “since there has never been a country or family, from the beginning of the world, totally destitute of religion, it is a tacit confession that some sense of the Divinity is inscribed on every heart.”2
And early Christians certainly regarded this New Covenant of Jeremiah’s as already having come into fruition in Christ. What we call the “New Testament” is simply another word for “New Covenant.” And the words of Jesus at the last supper seal the deal. He said, “This cup is a new covenant in my blood.” Jeremiah’s vision is not a future possibility it is a present reality. We are inheritors of a covenant of love “written on our hearts.” You know that from your own experience. We all have that “little voice” inside that we have learned to trust. It’s an intuitive sense that I have found if I disregard I will live to regret it. Freud may say it’s our “superego.” I think it’s part of how Divine law is written on our hearts.
So why do we often seem to be such little devils? That’s where Paul’s letter to Timothy comes in. It’s the flip-side of the same coin as Jeremiah’s vision. It’s the truth of the garden of Eden; that, even though we have that image of God in our hearts, we nonetheless seem to crave the forbidden fruit. We “accumulate for [ourselves],” as Paul put it, “teachers to suit [our] own desires.” In other words, we start with our prejudices and hurts and needs, and find proof texts, statistics, and people around us who will reinforce them. And so, we need correction. We need the lessons of history, the counterbalancing influence of others, and the guidance of scripture.
That’s where this whole thing gets tricky. Paul writes to Timothy, “. . . continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” And then he talks about those who follow teachers who will “suit their own desires.” We are immediately reminded of those among our Christian brothers and sisters who seem to find in scripture little more than a way of condemning and shunning the unworthy. And we find ourselves wondering how they can be so convinced that they are not finding teachers to suit their own desires. And we wonder the same thing about ourselves. What is that which Paul calls, “sound doctrine,” and what is that which he calls “wandering away into myths?” Which is which and how do you know?
I once posed just that question to a group Bible study and got a wonderful response that has stuck with me. I asked, “How do you know if what you have internalized and trust in your own heart is in accord with Divine intentions for yourself, or for the world?” And the answer came in the form of another question: “Why do you have to know?” The light dawned. I realized at once that the impulse to know that you are right, that your interpretations are in accord with the Lord’s will is the very root of our problem. It is, in fact, terribly important to not know! The only way to keep from falling into the same kind of misguided self-assurance that leads to suicide bombing jihadists and hate-driven Christians and others is to be resolutely and vigilantly uncertain. That means constantly checking your perspectives against the themes and emphases of scripture, repeatedly bouncing your thoughts off of other trusted people (even people who disagree with you), continually asking yourself if what you do and what you profess jibes with that deep inner voice that somehow knows the difference between right and wrong. And it means never yielding to the temptation to be finally satisfied with your answers to those questions.
But don’t begin to think that this means all religious thought is relative and it doesn’t matter what you believe or what you do. That’s the farthest thing from either Jeremiah or Paul. The great novelist Flannery O’Conner expressed her frustration with what she saw happening in modern Protestantism. She wrote, “One of the effects of modern liberal Protestantism has been gradually to turn religion into poetry and therapy, to make truth vaguer and vaguer and more and more relative, to banish intellectual distinctions, to depend on feeling instead of thought and gradually to come to believe that God has no power, that he cannot communicate with us, cannot reveal himself to us, indeed has not done so, and that religion is our own sweet invention.”3 O’Conner makes good point. The point is not to find some wishy-washy place where there are only questions and therefore never an answer. The point is to be clear and earnest in listening to the law that is written on your heart, pursuing sound teaching, and following your beliefs with committed action – but to never stop questioning yourself, correcting yourself, searching for more light, more truth. It is by that means that we grow and become more than we are, a process that never ends. T.S. Elliot, in his poem, Little Gidding, captured poignantly the power of this transformation expressed in remorse. He wrote:
. . . the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others’ harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Those lines strike home with me. When I think back to the father’s sins I visited upon my own children, I find some gratification in knowing that, for me and for them, there is such as thing as becoming.
The long and short of it is that both Jeremiah’s New Covenant of a law written on our hearts and Paul’s admonition about not following our own hearts (and “itching ears”) into a place of error, are the two wings that can keep us flying on course. And in the end, how can you tell if you are anywhere close to staying on course? Well, it’s simple. It’s written on your heart.
1 See Exodus 34:7.
2 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 3, Section 1.
3 Quoted in The Life You Save May Be Your Own, by Paul Elie, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.
Today is Access Sunday, and the beginning of Disability Awareness Week. It’s a date on the calendar that doesn’t exactly jump out at you like Halloween or Thanksgiving. I have to confess, my eyes initially just skipped along without it even registering. But, the more I turned it over in my head, the more I realized this day isn’t about someone else; it’s about me. And that cast our lectionary readings for this morning in a whole different hue.
The first thing I encountered was this passage from Luke, where Jesus heals the ten lepers, but only one returns to offer praise for the miracle. It occurred to me that the nine who didn’t return probably wrote it all off as just another happenstance, and maybe that’s what we do all the time. Maybe we don’t notice the miracles that can happen every day.
One happened to my brother, Bill. As many of you know, Bill, a retired Navy commander, died of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) some years ago. In the course of his illness he became unable to walk, speak, eat, or talk. But then he was presented with a miracle; it’s a contraption that attached to his head with a laser beam on it that he could manipulate with tiny head movements to point at characters on a special pad, which then take the information and through a computer translate it into audible speech. You may not consider that a miracle, but I do.
There was the story of Joey McIntyre’s son, Rhys, who was born with a profound hearing loss. Joey is a member of the band “New Kids on the Block” (a group which has been around long enough that they are neither “new” nor “kids;” Joey is fifty two). At any rate, Rhys had a bright future ahead of him, with parents that loved him and, more than that, electronically enhanced hearing devices, such as advanced technology hearing aids and Cochlear implants, surgically implanted electronic devices that can help profoundly deaf people hear sounds. Those may not seem like miracles to you, but they do to me.
And there are support groups for disabled people of all sorts, advocacy organizations working to change access policies and public opinions, research facilities engaged in finding new cures, new aids, new resources, groups like the Special Olympics that offer opportunities for social engagement, achievement and recognition, and educational institutions working with hearing and vision impaired people, and physically and intellectually disabled people. Miracles all.
But there’s still plenty to be done. There are minds and hearts to change all over this world – to stop stigmatizing those with disabilities and treating them like, well, like lepers. There are still battles to be fought for access equality. One of those was the “Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act” passed in 2010, one of the few significant pieces of legislation the United States Congress has managed to pass on a totally bipartisan basis. This bill required greater accessibility for things like remote controls, telecommunications equipment, smartphones, television program guides, and closed captioning, and it provided funds for low income deaf and blind people to buy Internet access equipment. Little victories keep being won. There is an update to this legislation currently pending in Congress called “The Communications, Video, Technology Accessibility Act.” There could be more to come.
Then, I read again this remarkable old story from the book of 2 Kings about the army commander Naaman who suffered from leprosy. He turned to the great prophet Elisha for a cure. And Elisha’s answer? “Go wash seven times in the river Jordan.” Naaman was incensed; he didn’t want to be directed to some everyday, routine thing like taking a bath in the river. He wanted something exceptional – an extraordinary, headline-grabbing kind of cure. But Elisha knew best. Indeed, a dip in the river was all it took to make Naaman whole again.
It occurs to me that wholeness is always available in the routine, mundane things of life. We may not have a special serum developed tomorrow that will allow a person with a spinal chord injury to jump up out of the wheelchair, but we do have sunsets, and loving hands of comfort, and majestic music, and inner resources of spirit and strength. Wholeness is more than legs that work, or eyes that see, or ears that hear. Wholeness is a state of being that is accessible in all circumstances of life to every broken one of us.
Which leads me to my final revelation, from the book of Jeremiah. Here, the great prophet has a word from the Lord to the people of Israel carried off into exile in Babylon by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar. He offers these staggering words: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
In part, I think the message is: you’ve been exiled to this city; that’s where you are. Do not lament your fate, but live where you are, seek the welfare of that city. That message ties in with something I’ve been working on in my own life. It has to do with an old song. You might remember it:
“When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, ‘What will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be rich? Here’s what she said to me: ‘Don’t bother me right now, I’m busy!'”
No, in all seriousness, I’ve been expanding on the message: “Que sera, sera” (what will be, will be). I’ve added: Que fue, fue and Que es, es. What was, was; what is, is. Mourning a lost past is just as much a waste of time and emotional energy as dreaming of a hopeful future. Cherish the moment in which you live.
But there’s another message in this word from the Lord: In the welfare of your enemy you will find your welfare! Can you get your mind around that? The word of the Lord to Jeremiah is that your people and their Babylonian captors are intimately bound to one another. Their success is your success; they’re failure is your failure. You cannot separate yourself from them by claiming that their actions and ways make them unlovable, undeserving, disconnected.
Here’s the plain and simple truth: all of us on this planet are part of one another. All people of all backgrounds, and all abilities and disabilities are completely intertwined. In the welfare of others we will find our welfare. Here’s the plain and simple truth: every single one of us is disabled in some way. It’s all simply a matter of type or degree. Some of us need glasses, some of us don’t hear quite as acutely as others, some of our brains don’t work as quickly as others, some of us have arthritis, or bad knees, or old football injuries, or any of a thousand other things. Here’s the plain and simple truth: the “disabled” are not “them” they are us. The fact of being human means living within the bounds of these human bodies and minds, each of which is limited; all are simply limited in different ways and to different degrees.
I saw a plaque on the wall next to a chairlift that said, “So that all may come.” That “all” doesn’t just mean someone else, it means you and me. “In their welfare you will find your welfare.” There are still barriers to be brought down. There is still work to do. Another bill that was signed into law along with the original access bill changed the wording of all health, education and labor laws. It replaced the words “mentally retarded” with “intellectual disability.” That may seem like a trivial matter; it’s just words. But it’s reflective of a larger issue. How we speak about people reflects how we think of them. And how we think of them impacts how we treat them. I think I for one could stand to think through not only the language used, but the attitudes and actions that I project.
So, when the ten lepers were healed, only one returned rejoicing. Jesus said, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?” I think that’s a message directed at us. Each one of us is broken in some way. Each one of us has access to wholeness because of the Holy Spirit that pervades our lives and dwells in our hearts. Each one of us can love and be loved, which is the surest and most direct route to wholeness. Each one of us has the capacity to work for equality and greater access for all. And each one of us is given the opportunity to live like the tenth leper, with joyful, thankful hearts, giving praise to the Lord for wholeness and hope.
So here’s my word of advice for today: when you see someone with a twisted or distorted face, an unusual gate, a withered hand, seated in a wheelchair, or walking a seeing eye dog, showing evidence of mental impairment, or having a computer speak for them, don’t pity, don’t cringe, don’t withdraw, don’t stare. Simply see yourself in them, as you may with any other person you meet. See your own brokenness, and see the opportunities for wholeness that you share with them. Indeed, we are all broken, we can all be made whole, and we might all be found rejoicing.
In today’s scripture reading, Jesus relates a bizarre parable about a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus who both die, and when the rich man discovers his fate in the fires of Hades, he wants an emissary sent back from the dead to warn his five brothers not fall into the same careless ways and suffer in eternal anguish as he is. He is told that even if someone rises from the dead to warn them, they won’t listen. I don’t think it’s intended to be an accurate description of the afterlife; I think Jesus was simply using a popular fiction to make a point. Well, I can’t help it, the darn story makes me think of Marley in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol coming back from the grave to warn old Scrooge to mend his ways so he won’t end up like him, forever dragging the chains of his misdeeds around with him.
Both tales make basically the same point, but I have to confess I like Dickens’s version better. I think it’s because the scriptural story ends with a negative judgment: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” Dickens, on the other hand, ends on a positive note: Scrooge is redeemed by his visitations from beyond, and, as Dickens writes, “It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.” But there is one brief phrase in Jesus’ parable that knocks me out. It’s when the rich man is wailing from the depths of Hades and looks up to heaven begging Father Abraham for some relief from his torment. The answer begins with these haunting words: “Child, remember . . . .” Both Jesus’s parable and Dickens’s tale are told for our sake. Both are cautionary tales to remind us how terribly important it is to remember – to remember our own histories and take lessons from them – to remember who we are.
Robert Douglas Fairhurst, in his editorial notes to Dickens’ yarn relates that, “In April 1842, just over a year before he described Marley’s ghost dragging his heavy chains across the floor, [Dickens] had visited the shackled prisoners in the Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and wrote to John Forester of being haunted by ‘a horrible thought’: ‘What if ghosts be one of the terrors of these jails? . . . The utter solitude by day and night; the hours of darkness; the silence of death; the mind for ever brooding on melancholy themes, and having no relief . . . The more I think of it, the more certain I feel that not a few of these men . . . are nightly visited by spectres.'” Fairhurst comments, “Perhaps it is not surprising that Dickens was troubled by the idea that prisoners were haunted by the ghosts of the past.”
There is something terribly important about remembering, whether it is, as Scrooge was forced to do, remembering the missed opportunities, careless adventures, and failures of love, or remembering the best in who we once were and could be again, who we were created to be, and might become.
I understand that experts about brain function are learning that memories are not as dependable as we often think. It seems that each time we bring up a past incident we reconstruct that memory bit by bit. And each time it’s recalled, the memory is subject to some minor revision, so that something recollected in our minds numerous times might seem as if it’s etched in stone up there somewhere, but our memory might actually be quite a distortion of what actually took place.
Consequently, remembering is a tricky thing. We may think we are remembering clearly and accurately, and we may simply be fooling ourselves. I’ve come to see this in my own experience. Just a few days ago I had intended to plug in the chord that recharges the generator battery in the basement. I wanted to plug it in at night before bedtime and then unplug it in the morning. So, I left a note to myself on the kitchen counter about the generator battery. In the morning, when I got up and went into the kitchen, I saw the note on the counter and beat myself up for being so stupid as to forget to plug in the chord when there was a note sitting there plain as day. So, I decided to leave the note there and go down and plug in the chord and then unplug it in the afternoon. So, I went down to the basement and behold the chord was plugged in. And try as I might, I could not remember plugging that darned thing in. I searched my memory and there was none there. I have more and more of these kind of episodes, and suspect that many of you do as well.
There was an old Earth, Wind and Fire song that went “Do you remember the 21st night of September? . . . While chasing the clouds away.” Well, the 21st night of September was just one week ago. How many of you remember what you were doing last Sunday night? I’ll bet if a husband and wife tried answering that question they might get into a significant disagreement: “We just watched TV and went to bed.” “No, that was the night the Joneses came over.” “No that was Saturday night.” “No, I’m sure it was Sunday because we went to church that morning.” . . .and on, and on.
So the same is true of remembering our past selves. I think you and I are inclined to unknowingly edit those memories, sometimes to make them a bit rosier, and sometimes to make them even more heinous. Maybe that’s why it took the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future to point out to old Scrooge what his past was truly like and what that might mean for him, and maybe that’s why Father Abraham told the rich man in Hades that people needed Moses and the prophets to make it all clear to them, and that if they didn’t listen to them they wouldn’t see the truth even if someone rose from the dead. It seems that you and I can’t remember ourselves on our own. We need help.
I have a confession to make: Die Hard is my favorite movie of all time. I’ve seen it so many times that I think I know all the lines by heart. But it never ceases to amaze me that lines I think I have down pat, I discover I’ve remembered incorrectly. Having the movie on DVD allows me to watch it over and over and to thereby keep correcting my memory (Dadgie has always loved that).
I think that’s a lot like what we do here in this place. We gather every week and sing some of the same hymns, hear passages of scripture read that we’ve heard time and again throughout our lives, and listen to a preacher say some of the same things over and over – we had a professor in seminary who said that every preacher has only three basic sermons, and if he’s lucky, one original idea. So why do we do it? Why do we keep coming here, offering similar prayers, going back time and again to the same Bible that tells the same stories. I’ll tell you why. It’s so that we can remember. It’s so that we can remember who we are, who we were created to be, and who we are intended to be. We need this Bible, and these same old stories told in the same ways for thousands of years, because it’s all too easy to fool ourselves into thinking we know – thinking that our picture of Divine reality, and our place in it is clear and etched in stone. We need to keep getting jolted by things in the Bible that surprise us because they remind us of a part of ourselves that we may have conveniently forgotten or inadvertently distorted.
G. K. Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, said that some things, indeed, get repeated over and over but God just might be involved in what seems to us like monotonous ritual: “It might be true that the sun rises regularly because God never gets tired of raising the sun,” Chesterton says. “Its routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen . . . in children, when they find some name or joke that they especially enjoy. The child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore, they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again,’ and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But,” Chesterton goes on, “perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again,’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike, it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but is never tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy. . . .”
Chesterton may be speaking a bit tongue in cheek, but he’s onto a profound truth. It is the repetition of goodness that helps us to remember what it is to be good. It is the weekly repetition of bringing our offerings that helps us remember what it is to be giving. It is the repeated embrace, and same genuine, forgiving smile that reminds us what it is to love. It is the same Bible stories retold until we think we have memorized every line (even though we keep getting surprised) that helps us remember who we are, and whose we are.
So, in case you’ve forgotten, a little reminder of who you are: You are a rare and precious gift. And you are gifted – each of us in different ways. You carry within you the very divine image of the creator. You hold the capacity for great love, and great forgiveness, and great blessing. There is no other you in all the universe, and so you have been given the grace to use yourself wisely and generously.
“Child, remember . . . .” Father Abraham told the rich man to remember what he did in life and how, in his wealth and comfort, he never noticed the beggar Lazarus in his misery. And when the Ghost of Christmas Past led Scrooge to his boyhood home, he asked if Scrooge remembered the way. Scrooge replied, “‘Remember it? . . . I could walk it blindfold.’ ‘Strange to have forgotten it for so many years,’ observed the ghost.”
Maybe not so strange after all, it turns out. You and I are very good at distorting our memories, losing track of what truly matters, and convincing ourselves of the certainty of things that are merely ephemeral shadows of eternal truth. I for one thank the Lord for old hymns, familiar scripture, repetitious greetings, and hugs that are as comfortable as an old shoe. I am grateful for this table around which we gather once each month to remember with bread and wine the same Christ over and over. I am grateful because in these rituals of faithfulness, these patterns of being, these circles of love, we receive the rare gift of remembering who we are.
The parable you heard read this morning is perhaps the most bizarre and hotly debated utterance said to have emanated from the mouth of Jesus. It’s been called the “parable of the dishonest steward.” You weren’t imagining it; you heard it right. Jesus described a guy – a financial manager for a wealthy individual – who realized he was about to be sacked, so he engaged in a little graft on the side with his employer’s finances to make some friends and try to set himself up for the lean times ahead. And this scoundrel was commended by his employer, and by Jesus, who went on to say to his disciples: “I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” Wouldn’t you like to have been able to go up to Jesus at that moment, tap him on the shoulder, and say, “What?” Well, I guess I kind of did that, at least in my own mind. And I got a surprising and potentially life changing answer.
I think I have to start at the beginning – at least the beginning for me around this issue of wealth and the gospel. It was my very first pastorate (in fact I was still in seminary, and working at a church part-time). A doctor in that congregation spoke to me after a sermon in which I talked about my usual bill of fare: Jesus’ affinity for the poor, and money as the root of all evil, etc., etc. He said something that shocked me, but got me thinking, and I guess I’ve never quite stopped thinking about it. He said, “I think I have a gospel responsibility to make as much money as I possibly can.” After I picked my jaw up off the floor, he continued: “Because the more money and the more resources I have, the more I have to do good with, and to help those who are less advantaged.” I’ve been scratching my head over that ever since. It’s pretty hard logic to argue against.
In fact, when I look at Bill and Melinda Gates, and all they have done and continue to do with their tens of billions of dollars to save lives, improve living conditions, advance educational opportunities, and bring hope to hopeless people around this globe, as well as all they’ve done to encourage others among the uber-wealthy to do the same, I find myself saying, “God bless you both.”
Now, I don’t know exactly how every dollar was acquired that Bill Gates made at Microsoft and through other investments, or how Warren Buffet who has contributed billions himself to the foundation has come by every dollar of his fortune. There is no reason whatsoever to assume any dishonesty from either of them. On the other hand, for anyone to make that kind of money in this kind of world, they have to be at least pretty savvy about working the system to their advantage.
Which brings us ‘round full circle to Jesus. When I tapped him on the shoulder in my mind he seemed to confirm my thinking. He turned and said to me, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.” Not surprising, really, because that’s exactly what he said to his disciples. But he went on to say, both to them and to me: “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” At which point in my mind I tapped him on the shoulder again and said, “What?” Doesn’t it sound to you like he’s arguing both sides of the debate?
That’s when it came to me. The central question is: what is money? Is it slave or master? On that question hangs a moral truth that destroys and redeems individuals and nations. To “serve wealth,” in Jesus’ words, is to make it your master. It is to acquire for the sake of acquisition, to hoard for the purpose of self-gratification, comfort, and power. It is to be addicted to the accumulation of wealth and to the efforts that go into possessing it. If, on the other hand, wealth is your slave, it is simply a powerful tool used to accomplish other purposes. In the hands of a person of generous heart, great wealth can be a source of great blessing.
So, Jesus makes the cryptic statement, “If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?” I think he’s saying that, by whatever means one acquires a fortune, if it becomes your master instead of your slave, how can you expect to have your priorities straightened out? If you can’t let go of your money in order to use it for just and worthy ends, then how can you expect to recognize and seize those things in life that truly matter – what he calls “true riches?”
So what are “true riches?” He doesn’t spell it out in so many words, but it’s in there, written between the lines. First of all, Jesus shocks his listeners, and he shocks us with a story about a dishonest manager. But when you think about it, that was Jesus’s style. He spent his time with the tax collectors and sinners. He had dinner with those he himself reviled. He spoke to disreputable women and walked among lepers. Why wouldn’t he talk about a rogue in loving terms? After all, you and I are rogues too. I think true riches have to do with recognizing who we are and to whom we are related in the family of faith. I think of Mother Teresa as being one of the richest women who ever walked on this earth.
William Willimon remembers “Miles Tomlin of Holy Trinity Brompton, in London, [saying] that when he was at theological college he had an old wise tutor who often greeted the seminarians, at the beginning of class, with the question, ‘Good morning, how are the prostitutes?’ He was not making a negative judgment on the morals of the seminarians. Rather,” says Willimon, “he was reminding them, teaching them, that, as Christians, their concern was to be for the poor, the downtrodden, the needy, the sinful, and yes, the prostitutes. That was the supreme test for how they were doing as future Christian leaders. Christianity may be seen as lifetime training in how to care more for the well-being of those outside the circumscribed realm of the faithful (the neighbor) than we do for those of us who presume to be on the inside.”1 Willimon had it right. “True riches” are found in reaching beyond one’s self to touch the hand of one of “the least of these” and to recognize in that touch an inseparable bond.
Secondly, Jesus says, “And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?” I think he’s suggesting that “true riches” are something that we actually already possess; mostly, we just don’t know it. I think it has to do with an awakening of the heart, a stirring inside that sees all people and all Being as One. It is a mindset of peacefulness and joy that can be heightened in the recognition of nature’s beauty, or the compassionate face of a friend. Jesus was always pointing us in this direction. He said, “the kingdom of God is within you,” and “consider the lilies,” and “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.” True riches are the gifts of perspective that allow us to see ourselves and one another through larger eyes and with larger hearts. And it lives within us; it is already ours. It is the capacity to feel deeply and love fully. I think it’s what Tennyson was getting at in his verses written upon the death of Arthur Henry Hallam. He wrote:
That which we dare invoke to bless;
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;
He, They, One, All; within, without;
The power in darkness whom we guess.
I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;
Nor through the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun.
If e’er when faith had fallen asleep,
I heard a voice “Believe no more”
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason’s colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer’d “I have felt.”2
“True riches” are the whole and centered heart’s instinctive answer to the storms and trials of life.
And finally, again, Jesus said, “You cannot serve God and wealth.” “True riches” have to do with being in communion with Divinity. To be truly rich is to know one’s self as embraced by the arms of eternity. But that embrace is not necessarily all cozy and warm. The riches of the Divine Spirit of Holiness in one’s life are often expensive. You can be led into places and called upon for challenges that can turn your world inside out. Don Juel, who used to teach New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, related a story of once leading some junior high students in a Bible study. He told the kids that when Jesus was baptized the heavens were ripped open and we could see into heaven. He said to them, “‘Do you know what that means, kids? That means we can see God because of the baptism of Jesus, we can actually get to God.’
“The kid on the end, the kid who did not want to be there, squirmed in his seat. He turned and said, ‘That isn’t what it means.’
“Juel, a little irritated, looked at him and said, ‘Oh, yeah, what does it mean?’
“‘It doesn’t mean that we can get to God,’ the kid said. ‘It means that God can get to us. And the world isn’t safe anymore.’”3
That kid got it. “True riches” involve serving the Lord with one’s life and one’s resources. And that’s not a prescription for indifference or for safety.
So, forty-six years later, how would I answer the guy in my old church who said he had a gospel responsibility to earn as much money as he could? I guess I’d say, it all depends on who’s the master and who’s the servant in his relationship with wealth, and on whether he is prepared to take up his “true riches.”
1 William Willimon in Pulpit Resource, October 23, 2011, “The Whole Gospel – In Two Sentences.”
2 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892, from “In Memoriam.”
3 Quoted by Tom Long in Awakened to a Calling: Reflections on the Vocation of Ministry, edited by Ann M. Svennungsen and Melissa Wiginton, Abingdon Press, 2005, pp. 40-41.
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