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One of the classic old jokes is about the guy who went to his doctor and said, “Hey, Doc, it hurts when I do this (bending his elbow a few times).” The doctor answers, “So, don’t do that.” Something like that happened to me once. I spoke to my doctor about a spot on my leg that frequently itched so badly that it drove me up a wall. This had been going on for several years in the same spot. The itching would come and go, but it was always in the same place. After relating this tale to the doctor, he said, “Yeah, I’ve had something like that too. It happens. It’s a real annoyance, isn’t it?” I just looked at him and didn’t say another word. I thought, “That’s it? For cryin’ out loud, isn’t he even going to examine me, or recommend some ointment, or take a biopsy, or give me a CAT scan? ‘These things happen.’ That’s all he’s got?”
I guess I know how Naaman felt when he went to see Elisha to be cured of his leprosy. The prophet didn’t even do him the courtesy of meeting with him face to face. He sent a messenger telling him to go wash in the river. Frankly, I don’t blame Naaman for being more than a little ticked. The guy travels all this way to see the famous miracle worker of Israel, and all he gets is a messenger telling him to take bath. He figured the guy ought to at least dance around a little and shake a magic stick at him, utter some long, mysterious incantation, smear sacred potions over his body, or have him walk through a blazing inferno to scare away the evil spirits – something, anything, that sounds like a cure.
His skepticism and frustration are very familiar. The brokenness and afflictions of our lives have often taken many years to develop. They come from multiple and complex sources, and we assume that they will require sophisticated, powerful, and, as yet incomprehensible, interventions to cope with. At times, the sheer weight of pain from our maladies and incapacities seems so enormous that it appears unlikely we will ever be free of it.
Such is often the case with alcoholism. The alcoholic frequently sees life as overwhelming, and the sources of his frustration so intransigent and beyond himself, that it seems virtually impossible to find any solutions. If someone suggests to him that his central problem is drinking, he scoffs in much the same way that Naaman must have when he was told to go take a bath in the river. “Alcohol is not my problem,” he’s likely to say, “It’s far more complex than that. I could stop drinking any time I wanted to. My problem is with my boss . . . my wife . . . my job . . . my friends (or any of a dozen other identifiable sources).” To think that going to AA and giving up drinking is going to make any huge improvement in his life is laughable.
It’s the same with many of our “inner demons.” We often become so used to our habits, hurts, and limitations that they become like old friends. In time, it’s easy to convince ourselves that we couldn’t live without them. Surely, we conclude, there’s no simple way to resolve such life-long patterns, so what’s the use in trying? We scoff at the idea of therapy, or of self-discipline, or any of a host of other possible solutions because we figure our problems aren’t likely to be resolved by anything so straightforward.
And the same is true of spiritual impairments. Those who feel unknowledgeable about the Bible or religious faith see themselves as hopelessly ignorant when it comes to theological or spiritual matters. The simple suggestion of actually studying the Bible is readily dismissed, because when one’s lack of knowledge seems so vast, certainly it would take a herculean effort to overcome it. The suggestion that a person is already an expert in the area of their own beliefs and perceptions about Divinity and humanity is scoffed at as though it were advice to take a bath in the river – “Of what value are my simple ideas when it comes to something so incomprehensible as Christian theology?”
And if a person feels hopelessly cut off from Divine grace because of an enormous weight of guilt – a feeling that they can never be good enough, or never forgiven – it’s virtually impossible to convince them that they are, indeed, loved and forgiven: “The answer to this overwhelming and unforgivable guilt is ‘you are forgiven?’ You’ve got to be kidding. I can’t accept that. It’s too simple.”
We want to be healed. We want to be whole. But when the path to wholeness is shown to us, we frequently turn away from it. I think that’s partly because we are so convinced that our problems are too big. They are simply too large to be dealt with by anything but a miracle. Well, here’s a news flash: miracles happen every day. They are virtually bursting out of the ground we walk on, and wafting through the air we breathe. The extraordinary thing about life is that it is basically inclined toward things “working out” in the end – and generally through very ordinary means. Miracles are not Divine intervention to overthrow the laws of nature, they are the power of the bias of grace that’s built into those very laws. Extraordinary, ordinary miracles are the standard fare of our lives.
Do we seek healing from the human disease of war? Peace will not prevail in our world through the impending peril of a stray asteroid threatening to blow us all to bits unless we cooperate to find a way to defend ourselves against it. Peace will not come as the result of an invasion from outer space, or any number of other grand science fiction scenarios. Peace will finally rule on our planet because overwhelming numbers of ordinary men and women around the globe will write letters, hold vigils and marches, keep their governments’ feet to the fire of justice, and demand that the architects of hatred and engineers of violence step aside. Peace will dawn upon us as an ordinary miracle of hard work and dedication.
There are broken bodies and broken spirits all over our world. There are countless African men and women dying of AIDS, way too many children going to bed with empty bellies, famines, droughts, and diseases regularly ravaging populations. We look at these realities and turn away because the problems are too large. Surely, we imagine, there’s nothing we can do. Surely the only hope lies in some miraculous new vaccine yet to be discovered, or in some amazing technological achievement that will give answers to questions we can’t begin to tackle now.
But bodies are healed, children are fed, and resources flow, when ordinary people like you and me and ordinary churches like ours give money to relief efforts like One Great Hour of Sharing or through Our Church’s Wider Mission, and other empowering ministries like Habitat for Humanity or Doctors Without Borders, when ordinary folks put pressure on governments and corporations to build the infrastructures of mercy, when ordinary citizens go to the polls and vote into office those who stand for something grander than protecting profits and narrowly defined national self-interest. Those things happen and will happen because the hearts of human beings, though often dark and greedy, are, in the aggregate, inclined toward love and justice and wholeness. And that’s a miracle!
It occurs to me that there is one great miracle at the base of everything: the universe is put together in such a way that, even though “bad things happen to good people” (as Rabbi Kushner was famous for saying), in the main, things are tilted in the direction of good things happening. Every morning that we get out of bed and take a breath of air, we’re beating the odds – because creation is designed for us to beat the odds more often than not. And even when the odds catch up with us, we human beings so frequently find a way to bring something of value and nobility out of disaster – that’s miraculous!
I was searching my mind for some way to illustrate this point. I thought of my marriage and how miraculous that kind of everyday love is. I thought of people I have known who have lived extraordinary lives even in the face of great adversity. While I was ruminating on all this, I almost absent-mindedly entered into the Yahoo web site the word “miracles.” In the screen that opened up, I saw some little advertising boxes off to the side. One of them said, “Miracles online. Shop Target.com.” That really fascinated me, so I clicked on it. What came up was a list of products, most of which were various versions of something called a “Boppy Bare Naked with Miracle Middle.” Out of curiosity, I clicked on one to find out what a “Boppy Bare Naked with Miracle Middle” was. I learned that it’s a special kind of horseshoe-shaped pillow that is used to put around a baby to help it sit up for feeding, playing, and so forth. I let out a sigh, and started to continue racking my brain for illustrations. Then it occurred to me: probably a lot of young mothers and their little ones have benefitted from that ingenious little pillow, a product of someone’s creative mind – someone who put to use the amazing powers that reside in these wondrous, infinitely complex brains of ours. And, as a result, some number of children sat up rather than toppling over onto their heads. Think about it. Isn’t that one of the most miraculous things you ever imagined?
Folks, if you’re coming to church on Sunday mornings looking for Divine inspiration, and not taking the time to recognize the work of providence in the mailing of a letter, or the divine hand of guidance in the boy on the street corner, you just might be passing over miracles while you’re looking for something more grand.
We live in a miraculous world. It has been made in such a way that answers to staggering questions are often right at our fingertips, opportunities for healing and growth frequently present themselves in the most unexpected ways, the prospect of justice, peace, and global community is not simply a distant dream, it’s a living possibility. And it’s all part of the here and now – the you and me.
In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy finds herself transported by a wondrous event to a mystical land where she and her companions find themselves on a quest against all odds for those things that might make them whole: compassion, intelligence, courage, home. Their brokenness appears to be irreparable, though, when the forces against which they battle seem overwhelming, and finally the great wizard who could work wonders to give them what they lack turns out to be a charlatan. In the end, Dorothy finds herself back in Kansas, and discovers that everything they had been looking for was right there all along. All that was required was to open her eyes and see the world in a new light.
Do you need a miracle? I’ve got extraordinary news for you. They’re ordinary occurrences. Do you need healing? I’ve got a hopeful word to share. You might find it in something as common as taking a bath. Do you want to see the world made new? I’ve got “tidings of great joy.” The world is being remade, and you are helping to do it.
For quite a while the poker game, Texas hold ‘em, was all the rage. I think it’s still popular on poker TV shows. I’ve never played it (I’m more of a seven card stud and five card draw man), but as I understand it the idea is to run your opponents out of the game by betting everything on one big hand. The play proceeds one hand at a time, with moderate stakes, and you win some hands and lose some. But when the person across the table puts all their chips in the pot, you’ve got to decide whether to put yours in or get out. Everything is on the line. When it comes to that point in the game, there’s no middle choice; you’re either all in or you fold your hand.
I think the Almighty plays a version of “Texas hold ‘em” with us. Each day of our lives involves a series of choices. We bet on relationships, and job interviews, and traffic allowing us to get to a meeting on time, and a thousand other things. Sometimes we win; sometimes we lose. We play the markets, spend dollars and save them; our stash goes up and it goes down. One day we’re dealt a hand full of missed opportunities, miserable circumstances, and misunderstandings. The next day our cards are all aces and kings. And so it goes, from week to week, year to year.
But sooner or later, early in life or late in life, it’s bound to happen. You’re sitting across the table from truth itself, the vast unknown staring you in the face, all of life’s blessings and all of life’s curses are slid in one pile toward you, and the voice of eternity asks, “Are you in?”
That’s what I think Jesus was trying to tell the disciples in this passage from the Gospel of Luke. Jesus had been at the table, and the divine hand of truth had pushed all the chips toward him: go to Jerusalem to fulfill your ministry, be killed, and make your message heard for all time, or turn back and save your hide. Are you in or out? Jesus had made his choice; he was all in. He had, as scripture says, “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Meanwhile, the disciples were caught up in a dispute about a group of people who wouldn’t let him stay in their town. Jesus would have none of it – no distractions now, the decision was made, the whole game was on the line.
He tried to make them understand: a man came up to him and wanted to join the disciples but he said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” In other words, this is no penny ante game here; my way is a hard choice; people who follow me are giving up home, comfort, everything. Another potential disciple wanted to go bury his father before joining them, and yet another wanted to go say goodbye to his family. Again, Jesus put all his chips on the table: follow me, or stay behind. This is one of those moments in life; there are no half choices, there are no compromises. I’m on my way to Jerusalem to die. Are you in, or are you out?
Jesus’ words echo the voice of Elijah who had in ancient times presented his protege, Elisha, with the same kind of ultimate choice: to take up the prophet’s mantle and lead the people. Elisha wanted to go home and say farewell to his parents before following the prophet, but Elijah offered a bit of scorn to impress on the young man the weight of his decision.
There are such moments. There are times when the usual loyalties and normal routines are dwarfed by an issue so profound, a decision so momentous that all of your spirit, all of your character, all of your strength of will are called upon, and the rest of your life holds its breath while you decide to act or not.
I have a hard story to share with you. It’s a story about that kind of decision – the painful, difficult decision to follow the way of Jesus, even when it hurts. The story comes from Rev. Susan Thomas who was, at the time, on the staff of the City Mission Society in Boston that was a ministry of our United Church of Christ, and who once served as interim sabbatical pastor at our church. Some of you may remember her. She tells of the murder of a young man, Jaewon Martin, who was in the City Mission Society Afterschool Program. You may remember reading about his death in the newspaper. He was killed just about fifteen years ago on the Saturday before Mother’s Day. An honor roll student in the eighth grade, Jaewon was playing basketball with his friends when some gang members mistook him for a rival and gunned him down.
Rev. Thomas said, “Jaewon was a wonderful young man, outgoing, engaging, really popular with everyone at our afterschool; he loved math, he loved basketball and football. You could always find him in the kitchen with us wanting to help out with cooking supper or baking. He talked about how he wanted to go to college and, as a lot of young people do, he wanted to be his own boss someday. He also loved his family and was often called on to babysit his younger cousins.”
The day after Jaewon was killed, his mother and grandmother, with their hearts freshly broken, nonetheless walked with some local pastors in the Mother’s Day Walk for Peace. They walked in a march to end the violence.
Rev. Thomas writes, “The staff of City Mission Society was counted among the hundreds and hundreds of people who jammed the overflowing church on the day of Jaewon’s funeral. His mother was not able to speak during the church service but she did write these very telling words that were printed in the bulletin for the funeral service:
I know I do not want revenge. I know my son is not the first teenager to be killed in a public place and I know my son was ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ We have to come together as a community because in the end we are all losing at both ends of the gun. We have to value and invest in all children and families equally.
We are in no way wishing this upon anyone else. Anyone who does anything different from what we are asking, let it be known this is not our wish. Please, stop this senseless killing.
I hope whoever did this will have the courage to come forward and seek forgiveness. Even though the pain will always be there I have a heart that can forgive. I hope that we do not lose more children. Have faith. Have trust in our Lord and Savior.
To my son’s friends – the best way to honor my son is to fulfill your dreams, get good grades, work hard, get along with each other, love each other. Unite in love together, and that’s what I want you to do until it’s over.”1
This message from the heart of a grieving mother was crystal clear. It could not be mistaken by a neighborhood full of angry young men bent on revenge. Jaewon’s mother was confronted by a greater moment of trial than any of us would care to face. And the choice she made, the choice to live for love, and for forgiveness, and for hope, a choice that shined forth from her words in that funeral bulletin like a beacon light, was most certainly a critical juncture in her life and in the lives of many in her community. But I suspect if you asked her, she might tell you that this decision was simply the culmination of choices that had come much earlier in life. You don’t get to such a point of grace in the face of unspeakable trauma without having already come to terms with the power of love and truth and beauty and goodness. You can bank on it: Jaewon’s mother had been living for these things for many years. But a bullet changed things; now it was clear that pleasant smiles and Sunday school platitudes were no longer at stake; the greatest loss, the deepest hurt, the most profound issue at the heart of life were all on the table, and the challenge to live for love and forgiveness in league with the brutal realities of cruel fate had stared her in the face and put it to her directly: “Are you in, or are you out?”
I pray that none of you will be faced with such a public and traumatic crisis. But sooner or later, the world being what it is, the exigencies and fortunes of life will conspire to present you with a powerful and possibly painful decision. The eddies and tides of emotional stress will pull you one way and then another, fears and desires will clash, and a momentous choice for good or for ill will stare you in the face.
When that moment comes, what kind of hand will you be holding? What will you have accumulated in your storehouse of resources? What will you have been nurturing in your heart? What will you have been studying, or sharing and hearing about with your fellow travelers? Let me assure you, in that instant of truth, half-hearted commitments and hedged bets are insufficient. When the chips are down, half a heart is not enough; the bet is all or nothing.
It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture when so many things are going on in your life. It’s easy to fall into routines, and see church as just another such routine. It’s not. This is part of a high stakes game we’re playing here. On Sunday mornings we read scripture verses, we sing hymns and say prayers, we hear a few hopefully coherent words from the pulpit; in this fellowship there are opportunities for group sharing, there are times of conversation and times of working together to accomplish tasks. These are not casual exercises in social niceties. All of this contributes to your own personal growth, to your spiritual development, to “strengthening your hand,” if you will. You participate in this community of faith, this laboratory of the Spirit, for this: so that when the moment arrives, good and evil, hope and despair, grace and greed are in the balance, and time and all eternity are pushing a huge pile of chips your way, staring you eyeball to eyeball, and asking the fateful question, asking if you will take the gospel seriously when the stakes are sky high, you will have the spiritual maturity, the nerve, and strength of character to calmly reply, “I’m in.”
1 From a sermon by Rev. Susan Thomas, June 13, 2010.
This is a sermon that has evolved. I had originally intended today to focus on same gender and transgender issues. But when I realized that Juneteenth was being celebrated this past Thursday I decided to expand this message and reflect on the issues behind what has been referred to as DEI (diversity, equality, and inclusion). I was urged to do so by the Apostle Paul, when he wrote, only about two thousand years ahead of his time, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
First, let’s talk about the “no longer slave or free” part. The Emancipation Proclamation, the presidential proclamation and executive order declaring that all slaves were now free issued by President Abraham Lincoln, was issued on January 1, 1863. But it wasn’t until June 19th of that year that U.S. Major General Gordon Granger arrived to take charge of the soldiers stationed in Texas and issued General Order Number 3, defeating the last bastion of slavery. That’s the occasion that we celebrate as “Juneteenth.”
But you and I know that the end of slavery was not the end of discrimination and lack of opportunity for many African-Americans, not to mention Native Americans, Latinos, and others. The equal and compassionate treatment of others echoes the teachings of Christ, and is therefore our marching orders as his followers. And equality of opportunity must be a primary value in this “land of the free.” It is that equality that makes our nation more diverse and inclusive, and enriches our culture.
And, Paul says, “There is no longer male and female.” Ten years ago, on June 26, 2015, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the case of Obergefell vs. Hodges that the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same gender. But now, current members of the Supreme Court are calling for revisiting that decision. And on Wednesday that same Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming healthcare for minors.
These are not simply political issues. Gay marriage obviously deals with an institution that has been, for a very long time, an important concern for the church. It is also for many people a question of morality, of biblical interpretation, or of justice.
Ours is an Open and Affirming congregation of the United Church of Christ. That means that we have put ourselves on record as being open to and affirming of all people regardless of their sexual orientation. On the 4th of July in 2005, the General Synod of the UCC passed a resolution affirming “equal marriage rights for couples regardless of gender.” So, our denomination is on record in support of same sex marriage. I know that there is not a unanimity of opinion, however, about gay marriage, perhaps even in this congregation. I know that some will disagree with my interpretation of scripture, my definition of justice and equality, and my position on this issue. That is everyone’s prerogative in a “free church” such as ours.
I feel it is important, however, to offer my own reflections on the biblical, moral, and social questions involved, and to explain to you why I wholeheartedly support same sex marriage, as well as the recognition and equality of transgender people and the whole alphabet of LGBTQ+, just as I support racial equality.
Let me begin by saying that I believe movement in the direction of marriage equality in our society is not a fluke or passing fad. I believe it is the wave of the future. For the emerging generation of young people, it is simply a non-issue; by and large they see no reason that gay people should not be allowed to marry. In time this will, I am convinced, be regarded in the same way we now regard bi-racial marriages, which were once also illegal across America. In 1967, in the case of Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that inter-racial marriage could not be outlawed.
We tend to think of marriage as a bedrock institution, established by Divine decree and unchangeable over the course of human history. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Marriage, like other social institutions, has undergone constant change and revision across many years and many cultures. All one need do is read the Bible to know that polygamy was once the norm. It took centuries for that to change, and in some cultures it never has. The early Christians disagreed about even the value of marriage. Many in the early church taught that celibacy was the only option for followers of Christ. After a long fight, the issue was resolved by allowing marriage, but declaring that celibacy was the superior choice. But the argument persisted for centuries. Catholic priests weren’t actually forbidden to marry until the 12th century. Romantic love, in fact, had little to do with marriage for centuries. Arranged marriages were the norm up until the 18th century, and still are the norm in many cultures.
All of which is simply to say that if there is an objection to same sex marriage, let it not be that there is something sacred about the form of the institution, or that it is fixed and unchangeable.
Some folks argue that scripture makes it clear that marriage is between and man and a woman, or support their sense of racial superiority by saying that in the Bible slavery was common and accepted. They often quote Paul in his letter to the Ephesians. He writes, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.” And in the book of Romans we find these words, “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.” But scriptural interpretation is never, in my mind, solely an issue of finding specific texts to support a position. The larger issue has to do with what principles and methodologies one uses to understand biblical truth. I think the safest ground for undertaking such tricky business is to examine the broad sweep of biblical themes and weigh specific perhaps time and culture-bound texts against those themes. In an interview about this issue one of the great biblical scholars and theologians of our time, Walter Brueggemann, put it this way: “Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said that the arc of history is bent toward justice. And the parallel statement that I want to make is that the arc of the Gospel is bent toward inclusiveness. And I think that’s a kind of elemental conviction through which I then read the text.”
I’m on board with Brueggemann. I believe it is necessary at times to allow the Bible to critique itself. In other words, I think it is biblical to weigh time-bound and culture-bound practices and institutions that are reflected in scripture against the broad moral imperatives of the gospel. James Nelson relates a valuable instance of this dynamic from the Bible itself. He says, “scripture tells us that after Pentecost there was an important first test case for this new faith community of Jesus people. The question was whether a person, regarded by tradition as sexually abnormal could be part of the body of Christ. It was the highly controversial baptism of the
Ethiopian eunuch by Philip. And while his critics screamed that this baptism was in clear violation of the holy scriptures, Philip set aside even the prejudices of the Bible in favor of the Gospel of Christ.”
I would suggest for your consideration that the broad biblical principle of inclusiveness, of acceptance of those who are different – a principle that Jesus spoke of persistently – helps us to look at the cultural practices of the time in which the scriptures were written in a different light – including the place of foreigners, or people who seem different, or the practice of marriage.
So, anyone may legitimately argue that they interpret scripture differently, that they use a different biblical hermeneutic. But I would suggest to them simply this: do not try to claim that it is the only way to read scripture.
This leaves us with one final objection to same sex marriage and gender and transgender equality: “it just doesn’t seem right. It makes me uncomfortable.” At the bottom of it all, I think this is probably the real issue for many (if not most) folks who oppose gay marriage or recognition of transgender students, athletes, etc. It’s just too different from what we’ve known all our lives, and somehow that makes it seem threatening. And so, claims are made that it’s not good for children, or that it somehow erodes or weakens traditional marriages and norms. I would suggest that many traditional marriages do an adequate job themselves of damaging children and contributing to their own erosion of norms without the assistance of a same sex couple down the street.
It is understandable that people find this difficult, that they feel a strong inner resistance to accepting something that goes against what they have learned from childhood. No one can argue that such feelings are unnatural or inexplicable. They are reflected in our instinctive response to other races as well. I entirely understand them; I have known those feelings myself.
But gender, same-gender, transgender acceptance and racial equality are, in the final analysis, all a matter of justice. It’s about people – people we know, people in our families, our friends. Regardless of peoples’ discomfort about being in close contact with those who don’t look like them, or act like them, separate is not equal. Separate schools are not equal schools, separate institutions are not equal institutions, and separate opportunities are not equal opportunity. That makes this simply a matter of equal rights under the law. And here is my thesis: justice trumps feelings of discomfort.
So, the ongoing efforts to integrate diversity, equality and inclusion, or DEI, into our workplaces, schools, and other institutions has been recently under fire. And it’s true that in some instances, policies put in place under these initiatives have been less than effective. But the impetus behind them is simply this: to make America live out its high ideals of freedom and equality for all its people. And I think the Apostle Paul gave us a pretty good starting point for that.
Well, I may not have changed any minds, but I hope I have at least caused all of you to think, and perhaps raised a few questions. It is for the sake of those thoughts and questions that I invite all of you to come and join in further discussion of all this, if you choose, over coffee at the tables. After all, we are, as Paul says, all “one in Christ Jesus.”
If you found this morning’s sermon title a little shocking, don’t worry, you’re not alone. People have been scandalized by the phrase “sin boldly” for the better part of five hundred years. It was advice first contained in a letter, written by none other than the father of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther. The letter was written to fellow reformer, Philip Melanchthon, on August 1, 1521. In it, Luther writes:
“If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world.”1
For generations, people have been trying to come to terms with this language. Luther has been cursed by many for seeming to give free license to “evil-doers” and “fornicators.” But he’s been largely misunderstood. The words in his famous letter are really only a restatement (albeit in rather extreme language) of the words of the Apostle Paul in letters he wrote to the churches in Rome, Galatia, and Ephesus – words like those we encountered this morning in the fifth chapter of Romans. Paul writes, “since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand.”
Luther was struck by this notion of “justification by faith.” It wasn’t what he was being told by the preachers and theologians and church potentates around him. And it’s not what many of us hear from some of our brothers and sisters in the faith today. What Luther heard the church saying, and what you and I glean from those well-intentioned Sunday School teachers of our youth, is: “if you’re good, and behave yourself, God will love you; and if you’re truly sorry for the bad things you’ve done, God will forgive you, but only if you stop doing bad things and be good from then on.” When Luther read Paul’s letters, he was struck by this notion: being set right with the Lord has nothing to do with being good; it was a free gift of Divine grace, dependent on nothing but the faith to receive it. Martin Luther was scandalized himself. The implications of what he encountered are staggering. Going to confession and being told to fast for a year, or to say three Hail Mary’s, or to make an offering of indulgence were no longer, in Luther’s mind, a requirement for getting back on good terms with the Lord.
Even more than that, Luther caught the scandalous flavor of Paul’s words later in verse six, “Christ died for the ungodly.” It occurred to Luther that Jesus didn’t die on the cross, as I once heard it said, “so that nice people could be nicer.” Christ died for sinners, not for righteous people. In fact, there isn’t any such thing as a righteous person. That was Luther’s point. He writes to Melanchthon:
“As long as we are here [in this world] we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness . . .” Luther saw that those who convince themselves that they are righteous, those who look down on others because they don’t measure up to their high standards, those who always point the finger at others instead of themselves, are the truly dangerous ones. It is they who are living in a delusional state, and wrecking their own lives by trying to be something they cannot truly be.
So, he wrote to Melanchthon, “Sin boldly!” He wasn’t advising riotous and licentious behavior; he was using a rather extreme and attention-getting phrase to make a point. The point is that because you are human, you are flawed, inclined to error and capable of all manner of evil. You will do the greatest harm by trying to claim your goodness and rightness; so be bold enough to embrace the truth about yourself; any other starting point is living a lie.
This I love about Luther. He gives the lie to the Puritan myth – the notion that people can live by such a strict moral code that it will make their lives or their society nearly perfect. That myth inevitably leads to the demonization of others. It was just such a mythology that ended in the burning and hanging of many young women in our land who were branded as “witches.” That danger is not only a memory, it is ever present for those who see themselves as righteous enough to be divinely charged to bring God’s truth to the unenlightened world. We’ve seen the results of such a passion in virtually countless acts of terror in past years. God save us from such a zeal to set the world straight.
The psalm we read this morning presents a different view. The Psalmist is in awe of creation, and especially of the crowning achievement, humanity. He writes, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet.” “A little lower than God?” Is that how we see ourselves?
What is a self, anyway? Perhaps what distinguishes us from other animals is the ability of our minds to transform images and represent them symbolically. This gives us the capacity for storytelling. Accordingly, a self is simply a story. It is the story we tell ourselves, and it defines us.
Maybe it’s the capacity to create images and tell stories that makes us “a little lower than God.” We can create amazing things in our minds. I personally have traveled to Jupiter and Neptune, and on to strange planets in the solar systems of unimaginably distant galaxies. I have defied the laws of physics and sat on the edge of a black hole, poked my head inside and seen the remarkable results of a quantum singularity. And now, because I have shared these things with you in words, you too have visited those places. Every one of us is capable of creating things that simply don’t exist in nature, like a three-headed, purple toad with wings. All it takes is a moment of idle reflection.
We also have the capacity to see into the future, and to envision things that might be. It was Leucippus, and then his student Democratus who came up with the fantastical idea that all of nature, all material existence is made up of tiny particles separated by empty space. These were called atoms. What a strange flight of fancy to engage in four hundred years before the birth of Christ.
This capacity for imagination is an amazingly powerful ability, and it allows us to craft a story that defines the self in pretty much any way we wish. And that power can transform lives for the good. That happens when a person sees (more or less) the truth about himself and envisions a path to betterment. It’s also a power that is frequently abused for evil, when the story that one tells creates a corrupted self-image that confers the power to discount or abuse others. Those I’ve been most disappointed in over the years are those who stand in judgment of others based on a sense of their own righteous superiority. So, we are “a little less than God,” and we are most certainly flawed, capable of evil, and in need of grace.
Every one of us is tied to every other human being by an unbreakable bond. We all fail, we all do wrong, and we are all embraced by unflinching grace and incomprehensible Divine love. That was Luther’s point, and it was Paul’s point. Luther wrote to Melanchthon, “No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small?” Paul put it this way, “For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
I’ve often said there should be a sign over the front door of a church building; “Sinners only. The righteous need not apply.” We are not set right by our goodness, or our rightness, or our purity. We are redeemed and transformed by the pure grace of the Lord of Life who loves us even though we fail each other, and fail the world, and fail that Lord. That’s the only message we’ve got to deliver. And if someone is looking instead to be justified in their holiness and superiority, they might as well go somewhere else. The church is for sinners. “Christ died for the ungodly.”
“Sin boldly,” Luther said, “and yet more boldly, still believe.” Luther was not giving us license to live in debauchery, nor was Paul. They were grabbing us by the shirt collar and saying, “See yourself as you are. Know that you are flawed and weak and insufficient. And know that you are joined to every other person by Divine love and mercy.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it this way: “If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”2
I’m reminded of all this at this time of huge demonstrations, national guard troops putting them down, and great divisions over immigration and government policies. But the story that America, at its best, tells itself is one of a flawed nation, and of sometimes mistaken policies and decisions, but a nation that is, nonetheless, always trying to grow and live up to its ideals. A clear and honest sense of who we are dissuades us from high-fives and fingers poked in the air proclaiming, “USA, number one!” We have too much respect for those who have paid the ultimate price to turn their sacrifice into a jingoistic distortion.
What we are left with is a great joy. It is the knowledge that the capacity to be honest about ourselves is perhaps our mostly Godly trait, and that our shortcomings and failures cannot, in the end, succeed in cutting us off either from that Lord of Life or from one another, because those very weaknesses reveal to us the boundless love, grace and forgiveness of the Lord – something we all share. Luther summed up his advice to Melanchthon in these words: “Pray boldly – you too are a mighty sinner.”
In the year 1529 Luther wrote a hymn that has become one of the most cherished in all Christendom: “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Let’s sing it together.
1 Luther’s Works, Letters I, Volume 48, Fortress Press, 1963, pp. 281-282.
2 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in Fred E. Katz’s Ordinary People and Extraordinary Evil: A Report on the Beginnings of Evil, New York State University Press, 1993, p.vii.
In 1785, Friedrich van Schiller wrote a poem titled Ode to Joy. Thirty-nine years later, Ludwig van Beethoven used the poem as the basis for the final movement of his last, and perhaps greatest symphony, the ninth. The music is familiar to almost everyone. The lyrics? Not so much. For one thing, it’s all in German. A number of years ago I set out to translate Schiller’s words into English maintaining the same rhyme scheme and meter, to fit the music. One of the things that made the task daunting is Schiller’s creative use of language. One line in particular I found fascinating. It is “Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum.” It translates, “We trespass, drunk with fire, on heaven your sanctuary.” That word, feuertrunken, is, as far as I can tell, one among many that Schiller invented. Literally, it is “fire-drunk.” Schiller was addressing Joy personified, and in essence apologizing for the way we tend to barge into its holy realms, trampling on its sacred territory, because we get confused; we become intoxicated by that which we think is joyful, but which is not really joy at all. He says that joy is the “daughter of Elysium.” That’s a rather esoteric reference that, for most of us requires some unpacking. Elysium was the mythological paradise of the ancient Greeks, the place where demigods, heroes, and virtuous souls went after death and experienced the joy of beautiful open fields and athletic competitions – sort of like Fenway Park. So joy, according to Schiller, is that offspring, that product of virtue’s reward. He also says that joy holds a great magical power that binds people together and makes us all brothers and sisters, while the patterns and habits of our lives tend to keep tearing us apart from each other. There is, in this amazing poem, profound truth to be mined. Joy is a powerful, even magical, sacred thing – something that rewards us and binds us together; something to be sought, nurtured, and touched with care and respect. And yet, we so frequently miss it, even trample on it like a bunch of hooligans at the ballpark who’ve had too many beers, throwing trash onto the field – drunk with fire.
I can’t reflect on all this without being put in mind of the story of Pentecost. When the early followers of Christ were gathered with a huge crowd of folks from all nations and backgrounds something magical happened to them: a kind of fire that filled them with an amazing spirit and allowed everyone to be connected by a clear understanding of each other’s languages. Bystanders saw all of this and decided they were drunk – drunk with fire, if you will. They leapt to that conclusion because they didn’t have any experience to relate it to. They didn’t have any concept of what real joy was about. They thought joy had to do with the kind of blind recklessness that is characteristic of drunks.
So Peter tried to straighten them out. “Indeed,” he said, “these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit . . . .” Peter was trying to tell them that this Spirit they were observing was not that which trespasses, drunk with fire, onto heaven, the sanctuary of joy; it is a spirit of clarity and unity; it is clear communication (even across the barriers of language); it is the ability to increase one’s vision, and to craft bold dreams; it is a uniting force that binds together people of many cultures, and even slaves, and men, and women.
One of the chief ways, in our post-modern, American world, that we mistake carelessness for joy is by following too literally the advice of the song: “Don’t Worry; Be Happy.” Sometimes we’re scared away from abiding joy by thinking of it as an escape. But the kind of joy that ignited the atmosphere when the apostles gathered in Jerusalem was not a mindless, happy feeling. There was none of that tendency we’ve seen in days gone by to say that God will take care of everything so we can just relax and let go of any responsibility. Peter made it clear that what they were about was just the opposite of turning a blind eye to the realities of the world, it was about vision, and about having the courage to dream big. Issues like global warming seem overwhelming, and it’s easy to stop trying to make a difference however slight, or to write letters, or organize for change. It’s easy to let it all go and just give up. But Pentecostal joy isn’t about yielding to despair, and it isn’t about “Don’t Worry; Be Happy,” it’s about finding hope in vision, and clarity, and common purpose. Joy is the “daughter of Elysium,” that ancient place of heroes who fought the good fight.
Which leads us directly to another way we get blinded about joy: by making our religious experience into an obsessively personal, inward, spiritual thing. We so psychologize the gospel that we see every lesson of scripture in terms of a sort of self-help program. Before you know it, we’ve put ourselves in a kind of spiritual cocoon and turned Jesus’ message of reaching out and sacrificing one’s self for the sake of others into something that’s all about me. I’m as guilty of that as anyone, and, sadly, a number of my sermons might even lead you down that perilous path. But, trust me, that road is indeed full of peril. Yes, each of us needs to spend some time in reflection, prayer, and self-discovery; the journey of spiritual growth is deeply important, but that journey is far more than an inward thing. Intense and consistent absorption with self soon leads to blindness, a special kind of blindness that no longer sees the reality of other people, their needs, hopes, and hurts, a blindness to the true joy of relationship – that bonding with others that is not predicated on self-interest. And when we become so blinded, that’s when we can begin to stumble around carelessly in the dark of our own tiny worlds and wind up trespassing on the sacred sanctuary of joy, smashing its tender beauties. That’s when we get easily confused and think that joy has to do with momentary self-gratification. That’s when we fail to recognize the mystical power of true joy – that spirit of clarity, and vision, and openness to others that binds us together as brothers and sisters.
C. S. Lewis, in the ironic humor of his Screwtape Letters, has Screwtape advising the novice devil about how to keep his subject focused on himself so that he misses that vision and uniting spirit:
“Keep his mind on the inner life,” advises Screwtape. “He thinks his conversion is something inside him and his attention is therefore chiefly turned at present to the states of his own mind – or rather to that very expurgated version of them which is all you should allow him to see. Encourage this. Keep his mind off the most elementary duties by directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones. Aggravate that most useful human characteristic, the horror and neglect of the obvious. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practice self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office.
“It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very ‘spiritual’, that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism. Two advantages will follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards as her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining.”
My message today is for all of us – including, of course, me. Life is full of joy. It is joy to be had for the taking. But our world and our culture are full of false gods, if you will, the things that can be so easily mistaken for paths to joy. They are put in front of you like a smorgasbord: self-absorption, chemical escape, materialism, apathetic withdrawal into the hyped world of media and entertainment. This morning I implore each of us to reject such blinding diversions, to not trespass, drunk with fire, on heaven, the sanctuary of the true joy we seek. That joy is found in community – not the superficial, social exchanges about the weather with polite, artificial niceties shared by people hiding behind masks that so often passes for community, but a real place of encounter, where clear communication happens and our truest selves are known, a place where sins are forgiven and growth and maturity is allowed to flourish, a place where barriers are broken down and cultures and histories are shared and respected, where people of different classes and genders find common ground. When that kind of community emerges from whatever mystical power it is that allows it to happen, the result is a kind of sacred terrain, a holy ground, that calls for us to nurture, honor, and respect it’s inestimable worth. That’s what we’re trying to be here: a place of joy.
Over two hundred years ago, Friedrich Schiller figured a lot of that out. I think he had to have been inspired, and I think Beethoven recognized that.
Let’s sing it together.
So, the Apostle Paul gets arrested for, well, essentially being a Jew in public. The real reason, I suppose, is that he ruined some guy’s livelihood and everybody’s fun by disabusing a slave girl of the idea that she had the power to tell fortunes. Anyway, he and his buddy Silas get beaten within an inch of their lives and thrown in the poky (only one among many times, by the way, that Paul spends time in the slammer). So, let me paint this picture for you (and hear it all as if it were happening to you). You’re arrested on trumped up charges (what we police officers used to call “aggravated existence”). You’re beaten with rods until your back is running with blood from the open wounds. You’re thrown in prison. Then, in the middle of the night, there’s an earthquake and the whole place practically comes down on your head. This is not a very good day you’re having. And how does Paul respond to all this? What’s he doing? Nothing. That’s right. He’s perfectly fine sitting in what’s left of his prison cell, with the doors flung open, and the blood caking on his back. The prison guard, who was apparently cold-cocked by a piece of falling debris, finally woke up and saw the place in a shambles and the doors open. He figures he’s going to be blamed for the prisoners escaping and decides to off himself. That’s when Paul speaks up: “Don’t harm yourself; we’re all here.” Can you get your head around that? The humiliation, the torture, the pain, the blood, the confinement, the earthquake, and Paul is sitting amidst the rubble of the day’s disaster, comforting his jailer with the assurance that it’s all good; they’re all just hanging out. And I want to know, where does someone like that come from?
It’s not me. All it takes to send me into a tizzy is for one minor plan to get disrupted, one thing to go wrong, one disappointment to come my way. A case in point: a few years ago, I left home without my sermon. Now, in the days of living in a parsonage next door to the church building, that sort of thing was never a problem. I might just walk across the driveway and retrieve the sermon before worship. But when you’re living forty-five minutes away, it’s a bit more of a problem. I didn’t realize what had happened until I got into the office and reached into my briefcase for the sermon. I panicked. I told everyone to leave me the heck alone, and I went into overdrive sitting at my computer trying to piece back together whatever I could of what I had written. I was still trying to do this when the ten o’clock hour arrived. People sat in the sanctuary waiting. It was like a very bad dream. When I finally decided I had to stop writing and go with what I had, I printed it out, grabbed it and ran for the stairs. I got to the back of the sanctuary breathless and an emotional wreck, beating myself up for being so stupid. And before I started charging down the aisle, a dear, beloved woman of that congregation said to me, “Relax, Mike; It’s OK.” God bless her. I’m not sure she will ever know how important those few words were in that moment. So, my point in telling all this? It’s simply that the hooley I blew happened because of one silly sermon manuscript left at home. Can you imagine how I would cope with being beaten, arrested, thrown in jail, and then surviving an earthquake? I’d be apoplectic!
“Don’t harm yourself. We’re all here.” Do those words hit you as hard as they do me? Do you find them extraordinary under the circumstances? I’d like to take a few minutes with you to nose around in this story and try to figure out what a guy like Paul had going on, and how you and I might come by an ounce of whatever it is.
First of all, it’s worth noting that the Apostle Paul was radically and dramatically transformed. He was the reinvention of Saul, the passionate and unrelenting persecutor of Christians. Suddenly, he finds himself in Philippi with the shoe on the other foot. Now, he is the persecuted Christian. He is the one being abused and beaten by “the man.” He knows how this drama plays out because he’s so often been the one handing out the lashes. And it makes me wonder if it takes a transgressor to be the one to come to terms with transgression, if it takes someone who is “acquainted with grief” to be the one who gains perspective on that grief. Maybe Paul had to recognize how he himself was wounded, damaged, by his own hostility and rage before he could accept with the proper perspective the wounds inflicted on him by the rage of others.
It makes me think of guys I have known who were gang members or who spent time in prison for assault, and then later in life, after getting kicked around by the system, beaten up by other thugs, enduring the kinds of hard knocks that only guys in that world know, they have emerged as gentle, even sensitive men, who have an amazing degree of patience and a kind of mellow humor that puts people at ease. Obviously, it doesn’t happen to everyone, but I’ve seen it more than once. There’s something about real hardship and trial that can make one come to terms with oneself and find a degree of wisdom.
You and I could learn from that. What if we took the real struggles of our lives not simply as obstacles to our dreams or disasters to be endured, but as opportunities to see ourselves more clearly, to knock off some of the rough edges, and to gain some valuable perspective?
The second thing that jumps out at me from this story is the prison guard, who has a kind of stunning turnaround himself. He is at his post, dutifully guarding his prisoners. And he’s more than a functionary earning his daily wage; he is so dedicated to his duty that when it appears his prisoners have escaped, he is ready to take his own life. In the very next moment, he pleads with Paul and Silas, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” How do we account for this amazing about-face? We know that before the earthquake Paul and Silas were spending their night in prison praying and singing hymns, and that other prisoners were moved by this. Maybe the jailer was as well. But that doesn’t account for his flip-flop. He was still a loyal soldier right up until the moment he discovered that the prisoners were still in their cells. Here’s what I think: I think he was blown out of his socks by the spirit and presence of Paul, this man who could endure all he had and with the blood crusted on his back, sitting in the rubble of his cell, calmly telling him to take it easy; they were all still there. I think he simply had the same response I have in reading the story: I want a piece of that, whatever it is. The prison guard is me, and he is you.
We find ourselves devoted to our routines and obligations, pulling on the oars of whatever vessel is driving us through the rough waters of our days, dedicated to the values and norms that define us. But there is a secret part of our hearts that yearns to be more, to see more deeply into the essence of life, and to be motivated and sustained by higher principles that give us the grace of a certain peace and power. I think that’s what this jailer saw when he looked into the eyes of Paul, and I think he was prepared to do anything to gain some of that for himself.
Which brings us to the question of just what it was that kept Paul in that prison cell and inspired that guard. I think Paul was one of those rare individuals who not only had visions, but who had a vision. He had a clear sense of what the gospel was calling him to do and be, and he had a dogged determination to live into that awareness. Such vision gives one a sense of what matters and what does not, and it affords an assurance in one’s soul that can’t be swayed by the tides of trauma and trial. It is a special sort of power. For want of a better term, I choose to call it the power of being. For Paul, the stripes of running blood on his back, the prison bars, the earthquake, all were incidental to his central mission, and to the bedrock foundation of his faith. It didn’t really matter to him whether the prison doors were open or locked shut. He was where he was, and he was there for a reason. More than anything, perhaps, he was gifted with the ability to see himself and his world clearly, and to see the divine wonder that lived in every opportunity, even an opportunity born of adversity.
I read some time ago the old classic by Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop. In the very last scene, the Bishop Jean Marie Latour, is speaking to his friend, Father Joseph Vaillant about miracles. “One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love,” he says. “I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from far off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eye can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”1
The good Bishop says what I believe is at the heart of Paul’s power, a power that led him to convert other prisoners, a power that allowed him to endure suffering with grace, a power that his jailer wanted for himself, a power that ultimately cowed the magistrate who had jailed him. It was the power of seeing, with perception heightened by the love and grace of the Lord, “what is there about us always.” It is the power of being fully in the place and time that one finds oneself, but with the perspective of a motivating vision.
So, if I leave my sermon at home next week, will I blow a hooley again? Probably. But I think, like you, I’m trying to find a better way through life. I’d like to use the struggles and misfortunes I’ve endured, and those to come, as opportunities for self-discovery. I’d like to wake up to a deeper reality than the routines, tasks, and worries that fill most of my days. I’d like to have my life touched by Divine grace and love in a way that allows me to see what’s there around us all the time. I’d like to expand my vision and embody some of the power that takes whatever circumstance I find myself in and affords me the peace and presence to see it as part of a larger and more profound truth. I’d like to harness the power of being.
1 Willa Cather, Death Comes to the Archbishop, Vintage, 1990, p. 49.
At a Kirkridge conference a number of years ago, I heard the late, great preacher and teacher, Fred Craddock, relate an experience he had once on an airplane (back in the days when they served meals to everyone on the flight). During boarding a man sat down next to Fred – sixty-ish, very well dressed, and rather imperious in manner – and immediately rang for the flight attendant. When she came the man told her his name and said, “I want to remind you that I am to have a special meal for lunch. When I made my reservation I gave specific instructions about that.” The attendant politely assured him his special meal had indeed been ordered and that, in fact, his would be the first tray served just as soon as they got underway. He seemed content with that, and before long she brought his healthful-looking special meal, a piece of baked chicken, a pear and cottage cheese salad, and whole wheat roll on the side, just as he had ordered. The man was half finished eating by the time the attendant brought a tray to Fred which had on it a piece of baked chicken, pear and cottage cheese salad, and a whole wheat roll on the side. The man looked at Fred’s lunch and with obvious annoyance said, “Well, you seem to have gotten the special meal that I ordered.” Whereupon Fred, looking all around, observed to the man that his meal looked to him like all the other meals that were being served. Flustered and upset, the man began pushing the call button over and over until the attendant appeared. He berated her loudly, “I told you that I had ordered a special meal and you assured me that the order had been received.” She answered, “Yes, sir, I did. You ordered baked chicken, cottage cheese and pear salad, and a whole wheat roll. Isn’t that what you wanted, sir?” To answer that question honestly, of course, the man would have had to understand the difference between the menu he said he wanted, and the special attention and position of privilege he really wanted.
And therein lies my thesis for this morning: Do you really know what you want? That’s the essence of Jesus’ question to a man in our scripture reading for today. Jesus’ dealings with the man by the pool at Bethzatha were so extraordinary that the incident is probably more deserving of a book than a sermon. I’ll try not to preach a book this morning though.
The scene for this drama is set by the description of a sick man (we don’t know the nature of his illness) lying by the pool. This pool is curious enough. There’s something magic and mystical about it. The name of the pool is given by some textual sources as Bethesda, by others as Bethsaida, and yet others as Bethzatha. Archeology has yet to yield any conclusive evidence for it’s location, and the legend of it’s special healing power is murky; one explanitory verse that shows up in some texts is, as most authorities agree, a later addition (in that verse, the pool is said to have been regularly visited by an angel who troubled the water – whoever first stepped into the pool when the waters were troubled was healed of whatever disease he had.)
So, get your mind around this scene if you can. Here is a man, in some undisclosed way terribly ill, who has been essentially living beside this pool, living with this illness, for thirty-eight years. He has waited in the sun and slapped mosquitoes. He has learned the faces and the daily routines and the personality quirks of all his companions. He has begged for bread and learned the complex rules of the small society around the pool, its pecking order and its rituals of interaction. This place has, in many respects become his life. It is a prison for the diseased, but like the long-term prisoner who knows no other life, here he remains, clinging to the legend of the pool, clinging to the hope of a magical cure, clinging perhaps to far more than that.
Any of us who have lived long years with some disease of the heart, or some secret ugliness in our lives or our families, or some character flaw, or persistent failing, knows the truth. We know that such things can become our most familiar companions. We know that, in time, like it or not, our lives are shaped by such things, and we cease to have any concept of who we would be without them. We know the astounding and confounding truth: that, in time, we find ourselves not only clinging to the hope for healing, but clinging to the disease itself. Years spent in therapy can often times seem like little more than the sad but comfortable ritual of lying next to the miracle pool, struggling to get in the water, and never quite making it.
But our condition is far from hopeless. In fact, there may even be something in our comfortable and cherished rituals of infirmity that bears the very hope of our healing.
This man by the pool at Bethzatha was caught in a familiar cycle of helplessness, dependency and disease. Jesus knew it. The scriptural account says, “When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’” That is the most astonishing question perhaps in all the gospels. Between the lines of that question lie countless volumes about human consciousness and psychology. Jesus knew the man was ill. He perceived that he had been there by the miracle pool for a long time, suffering with this chronic disease. He looked into his eyes and knew him. He somehow discerned this man’s attachment to his suffering, and to his little world of struggle by the pool. His question is the last one we expect, but the one most revealing.
Notably, he does not say, “How can I help you? What can I do for you? Could I give you a hand, helping you into the pool?” He does not check his vital signs, and ask if he has had headaches or nausea. He does not ask if he’s been to a doctor, or if maybe he could give him a ride to the hospital or pay his cab fare. He fixes his gaze upon him and speaks directly to the man’s soul, and to ours: “Do you want to be made well?”
Do you want to be made well, or do want to continue clinging to your dysfunction? Do you want to be made well, or do want to stay here with your familiar circle of friends and enemies and competitors. He gazes upon the man’s life, and upon our own, with the intensity of one who has the power to transform, and asks, “What do you really want?”
Do we know what we want? Do we want to be healed? Do we want to be made whole? Do we want to grow? Or is it more comfortable to live within the safety of our limitations?
The man’s response is very familiar. It is often our answer to the challenging voice of eternal insight. He can’t muster the courage to answer the question. Instead, he stammers and whines about extenuating circumstances. “It’s not my fault. I’ve tried. Nobody will help me. Somebody always manages to jump in ahead of me. Life’s out to get me. I can’t afford it. My car broke down. The sun got in my eyes.”
That’s when the miracle happens. By whatever powers Jesus possessed, he could see through the excuses and the avoidance, and he knew this man was ready. He knew that he had been going around in the same circles long enough to be ripe for a breakthrough. And so he broke through. He broke through the myth of the pool; he broke through the pattern of dependency; he broke through the clinging to the disease, and all the rest. He held the man in his gaze and said, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”
And he was right. The man was ready. He offered no more excuses. He didn’t respond with, “Oh, I can’t do that. I’m sick. I haven’t walked in so long, I’ve forgotten how. If I tried to walk, I’d fall down and hurt myself even more. Everyone would laugh at me for believing I could, and falling on my face.” No, he simply rose to his feet, then and there. And that was that.
He didn’t really know what he wanted. At some level he wanted to be healed. But at another level, he wanted to cling to his excuses for not being healed, and to his disease. He was so like us. It is, after all, such a comfortable thing to live with our diseases of spirit, of mind, and of relationship. It’s comfortable because it’s familiar. We wouldn’t know who we were without the old friends of our inadequacies and the reassuring patterns of our dysfunctional relationships. At some level, we would like to be free of those chains, but life outside the prison of our patterned existence is all too often more frightening than we can bear.
But here’s where the hope lies. There is something within us that keeps us searching for the healing moment. There is something divine in the core of our being that keeps us coming to the pool, even for thirty-eight years, at some level knowing that one day the time will be right, the gaze from our companion will be steady, the voice will be true, and the chains will be broken.
The very circles of our dysfunctional patterns and diseases are themselves a form of searching, of groping in the darkness for the hand of Christ. That’s true for us as individuals. I believe it’s also true for our culture. We may keep clinging to our wasteful patterns, polluting the earth and falling into mindless conflicts, but each time around that marry-go-round, humanity comes a little closer to the moment of casting off our carelessness and animosity to be healed and to become healers.
David Perata, in his book, The Orchards of Perseverance, relates the story of the monk, brother Adam, who complained to his superior that he didn’t seem to be making any progress. He would start in the morning with good intentions, but by night time he would wind up exactly where he was at the beginning of the day. His superior, Dom Frederick Dunne answered, “Well, it might seem that way to you. But actually it isn’t. No, you start out and make the silly little circles and you come back to where you were. But there’s a difference. You’re a little bit higher than you were previously. What you’re doing is spiraling, and you’re goin’ a little bit higher and a little bit higher.”
It may seem that we remain forever conflicted, unable to finally decide or know just what it is we truly want in life, but we are, in working out our patterns and circles, growing ever closer, step by step to finally choosing to be healed. A psychologist friend, the late Merle Jordan, once said he believes people tend to marry the one they can continue to rehearse and relive the key themes and dysfunctions of their lives with, only with a twist. This person offers the hope of finally breaking the old patterns and leading us into a new world.
At the source of it all, however, it is not simply our mate or our own determination that bring us to the point of healing. It is a powerful force at the heart of being, the divine response to the hand stretched out in the darkness, the Spirit of Life urging and calling us on. It is the voice of One whose words thunder down through the generations and encounter us after years of going around in the same old circles, ambushing us at just the right moment, breaking through our excuses and complaints, asking us, “Do you want to be healed?”
If you are ready, “Stand up, and walk.”
If you approached ten people at random walking down the street and asked them to tell you what it meant to be a good Christian, what do you think you’d hear? I’ll bet dollars to donuts that at least eight or nine of them would say things like: Good Christians don’t use swear words, they don’t lie, they don’t cheat on their spouses, they don’t treat people badly.” Let’s face it, most people’s idea of Christianity is basically the Ten Commandments. It’s a whole list of “Thou shalt not’s.” People’s idea of clergy is generally that they’re people who don’t use cuss words (I have to confess that the present party does not qualify in that regard).
I’ve heard arguments for having monuments of the ten commandments up in public places, and for teaching the ten commandments in public schools, and even for replacing our federal laws with the ten commandments, all usually based on the notion that those commandments are the core of Christianity and all one needs in order to live as righteous children of God.
“Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s whatever . . .” It’s as if, by not doing anything awful, you can put up a fence of righteousness around yourself and pitch a claim to blamelessness.
It’s essentially what is behind a simple thing like eye-drops. Most of you may not know that many years ago I had a case of the shingles above my right eye. I wound up with post herpetic neuralgia that, among other things, causes my eye to have difficulty tearing. So, I have for many years been using a certain brand of eye-drops. I recently bought a new bottle and discovered a “new and improved” dispenser bottle. The main improvement seems to be that you can no longer get just one drop in your eye. Hard as you try to do that, you can’t keep from getting two or three drops. It’s a great idea. We consumers go through two or three times as much, wasting a lot of it, but they sell two or three times as much product. Their argument, I’m sure, is basically this: “Hey, we’re not our customers’ priest. It’s not our job to protect them from themselves. We’re in the business of providing eye-drops. It’s not our concern that they are buying more product. It’s good business. There’s nothing in the law that says: Thou shalt not sell products to people that they want to buy. We didn’t break any laws.”
It’s emblematic of a larger issue in our culture. It started, I think, with our economic allegiance to free-market capitalism that sanctified the profit motive and convinced corporate America that when everyone is exclusively pursuing their own interests, then the interests of the society at large will a priori be served. I see every morning when I need an eye-drop just how well that theory has worked out.
But the concept evolved from economics to all areas of life. Somewhere along the way we decided that freedom means: I get to do whatever I want, and so long as I don’t break any laws, it’s all good. We can use and abuse our employees, giving them part-time jobs with low pay and no benefits, so long as we don’t break any labor laws; we can yell and honk at people on the highway and flip them the bird if they get in our way, so long as we don’t run into them; we can give people extreme opinions on TV shows to rile them up and call it “news,” so long as we don’t run afoul of the FCC.
I think our grandparents would be ashamed – those who took great pride in their work, who knew that serving the community and the best interests of your customers was, in the long run, good business, and who lived by notions like “what goes around comes around.” I think they would be appalled at what’s happening in America today.
Those who justify themselves by claiming to never break the ten commandments are missing the point. You can pile up all the “Thou shalt not’s” you want; eventually, you’re going to bump up against a “Thou shalt!”
That’s the message of Jesus in this passage from the gospel of John. It was delivered at the most sacred and intimate moment he shared with his disciples: the last supper in the upper room. And before the weight of the religious authorities and the Roman army would come crashing down on him, he left them with these hallowed words. He said, in essence, that following the ten commandments wasn’t enough. Protecting one’s sense of righteousness by hedging yourself in with obedience to a bunch of “Thou shalt not’s” was not what would define them. He gave them what he said was a “new commandment.” It was not something to avoid in order to maintain ritual purity. It superceded every “Thou shalt not” that had gone before with one enormous “Thou shalt.” It was a requirement to extend yourself, to reach beyond the law, to go further than anyone had ever imagined in caring about and caring for others. He said, “Love one another.” And more than that, he said, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Now that’s a pretty tall order!
His love for us was to be our model. He didn’t love us by not cussing, or not cheating, or not stealing from us. He loved us by giving his very life just to teach us what riches and greatness can be achieved in life by giving of yourself.
And apparently the New Testament writers took him seriously. The commandment to “love one another” is spoken or referred to fourteen times in the New Testament. For example in the first epistle of John: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”
Christianity, according to Jesus is not measured by the ten commandments. It’s not a list of “Thou shalt not’s.” It is one “Thou shalt.”
There is a marvelous allegory for the devotion to which we are called in an account by Dr. Richard Selzer, the former surgeon and professor at Yale School of Medicine. He tells of a husband and wife he encountered after surgery. Dr. Selzer writes, “I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut the little nerve.
“Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wrymouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks.
“‘Will my mouth always be like this?’ she asks.
“‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it will. It is because the nerve was cut.’
“She nods, and is silent. But the young man smiles.
“‘I like it,’ he says. ‘It is kind of cute.’
“All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with [the holy]. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.”1
Jesus does not call us to cover our tracks, and make sure we can be held blameless when things go wrong. He does not call us to a timid, half-hearted commitment to follow the rules. He calls us to be nothing less than the kind of spend-thrift lover that he is. He said there is only one measure by which people will know you are one of his followers. It is whether you go beyond what is expected of you, do more than is required by the law, seek out ways to be concerned for the well-being of your brothers and sisters – your neighbors, even the ones who are your enemies.
Some folks object to the notion that Christians are distinguished by the demonstration of such love. Anyone can be a good and loving person, they suggest. You don’t need to be a follower of Christ to be kind and generous. Well, that’s true. But you also don’t have to be an American to believe in freedom. It’s simply that America is, or at least has been, the greatest promoter of freedom on the planet, so it has always been something of a distinguishing characteristic.
The Church of Jesus Christ leads the way in generosity, in compassion, in offering hope and help, time after time, in every corner of the world, in all circumstances of need and want. Every time there is a disaster, money pours out from our churches around the globe. Every time there is an injustice, there are Christians standing up and speaking truth to power. Every time the forces of greed, hatred, and carelessness rear their heads, there are blessed good people in congregations of faith raising their voices, lifting up prayers, contending with the principalities and powers, offering sanctuary, and putting their lives and resources on the line. That is our calling, that is our identity, and that’s how they will know who we are.
Let’s sing it together.
1 Richard Selzer, Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery, Harcourt Brace, 1996
This morning I’m going to look with you into two passages of scripture that may surprise you. The first is this story of Peter raising the woman Tabitha from the dead. There are a couple of odd things about this tale to begin with. One is that when Peter arrives on the scene and assesses the situation, he orders everyone out of the room. I find that rather peculiar. What is it that he didn’t want anyone to see? Was he somehow aware of medical techniques that today we would recognize as cardiac message, or mouth to mouth resuscitation, and thought others might not understand? For whatever reason, I find it also curious that we are given a thorough account in scripture of what he did in that room all by himself. Does that mean that he told others what he did, after shutting them out so they wouldn’t know? Or are we afforded the omniscient perspective that fiction authors often give their readers? In the balance I take this as a tale related by Luke (who was, by the way, the author of Acts) to encourage the early Christians and bolster their faith. It certainly can be based on some historical experience, but Luke is afforded the right to some degree of embellishment.
What strikes me most, however, is my perception that this story is not so much about Peter performing a miraculous act, as it is about the woman, Tabitha. In this account she is referred to as both Tabitha and Dorcas. Tabitha is the Aramaic and Dorcas is the Greek, both of which mean Gazelle. I find that name significant. In much of the ancient world, and even up to modern times, the gazelle has been a richly symbolic creature. A small antelope with fine features and extraordinary speed (some are able to run at bursts as fast as 60 miles an hour), gazelles have captured the imagination of countless writers. In the Song of Songs the beloved of both a man and a woman are compared to gazelles. Doris Behrens-Abouseif relates that Walid ibn Yazid, an eighth century Umayyad caliph who was also a poet, “dedicated most of his poetry to wine and love. In one poem about a hunting excursion, Walid pursued an antelope, but stopping short of killing her he looked at her neck and her eyes which reminded him of his beloved Salma.” Walid’s poem goes like this:
We caught and would have killed an antelope
That ran auspiciously to the right.
But then it gently turned its eyes and looked –
The very image of your look!
We let it go. Were it not for our love
For you, it surely would have died.
Now, little antelope, you’re free and safe.
So off you go,
Happy among the other antelopes.1
She relates similar accounts of hunters in ancient poetry each sparing a gazelle because of its reflection of his loved one. In short, the gazelle, perhaps the most graceful and lovely of all the antelopes, has for ages been a symbolic object of love; and literature through the ages abounds with stories like this one of gazelles being released from the fate of death because of the profound love they engendered.
So this woman named Gazelle is deeply loved by those around her and they desperately seek help when death overtakes her. Luke makes it clear in his story. He says that the disciples immediately sent for Peter when she died, and writes, “All the widows stood . . . weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them.” And here’s the kicker: the woman “Dorcas, Tabitha, Gazelle” is referred to as a “disciple”. In that patriarchal culture, doesn’t it strike you as remarkable that among the disciples, there was a woman? She was only about two thousand years ahead of her time. But why is she so prominent, so beloved, so highly honored as to be regarded among the disciples? I think the answer is given right off the bat. Luke says, “She was devoted to good works and acts of charity.” Tabitha, Dorcas, Gazelle, was deeply loved, highly valued, and greatly honored for her deeds.
Which brings us to the other remarkable story, the one about Jesus defending himself against accusations of blasphemy. Also a curious thing or two arise here. John writes that it was “the Jews” who gathered around Jesus and started to grill him. Here’s the thing: pretty much everyone in the story was a Jew, including Jesus. So why would John go out of his way to label the antagonists in the story as “the Jews”? Again, I wonder if it’s because this gospel is written to early Christians, and there’s already a separation emerging between the faiths, all of which gives us a signal that we should be looking for a basic lesson in Christian practice here.
But there’s another interesting reference at the beginning of the story. John relates that, “It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon.” This is a lovely image, and a detail that is worthy of note. The portico of Solomon was a high up, double colonnade, with rows of columns supporting a roof (which makes it a better place to walk in the winter). It was on the eastern-most side of the Temple grounds and standing in the portico one could look inward directly at the front entrance of the Temple proper, and turning around the other direction one could look out toward the Mount of Olives and the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus therefore finds himself, both literally and figuratively, standing between the “Holy of Holies” and the place of his most human anguish. It is here that this business of his humanity and divinity is addressed directly. He is confronted with the blunt challenge: “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” He tries his best to make sense for them of his calling and his birthright, but they end up accusing him of blasphemy (which seems to have been their intention from the start) and are about to stone him to death. Here’s where it really gets interesting. Jesus offers the following defense against the charge of blasphemy: “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If those to whom the word of God came were called ‘gods’ – and the scripture cannot be annulled – can you say that the one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world is blaspheming because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’?” That’s an amazing passage of scripture. Jesus is quoting Psalm 82, verse 6 which reads, “I say, ‘You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince.” Jesus is here employing a common technique of the rabbis which was to take a verse of scripture (not infrequently entirely out of context) and use it to develop a more elaborate argument. But even though Jesus may be abusing the original context of the psalm, the point he’s making with it is extraordinary. In essence, he is saying that scripture calls regular people “gods”, so why are they complaining when he says he’s God’s son? In short, Jesus is here giving tremendous support to the Christology of those of us who tend to think that the divinity in Jesus is the same thing as the divinity in all the rest of us – maybe he just happened to have a lot more of it. In other words, in a way, we’re all gods.
Well this was not at all satisfactory to his inquisitors, and Jesus offers the ultimate answer to their challenge. He tells them to look at his deeds. And if he’s doing the Lord’s work, then, once again, what’s the beef? Here we have the parallel with the story of Tabitha, the Gazelle. She was loved and lifted up as a disciple because of her devotion to “good works and acts of charity.” She was doing the Lord’s work. That’s what made her great. And if you don’t mind, on behalf of Jesus, let me say, that’s what made her divine – a god, if you will.
You and I are not afforded an aura of holiness because we show up in church once a week. We do not have halos around our heads because we say beautiful prayers. We do not reflect the divinity of Christ because we believe the right things, or talk about the right things. It is our deeds that make us divine. So, if Jesus contends that scripture says to people, “You are gods”, and he demonstrates his divinity by his works, then this church is full of gods; it is full of Gazelles. I have seen you quietly going to visit those who are alone or in need, quietly caring for one another by clearing walkways and steps, bringing food for the food pantry or donations for refugees, being generous with your financial support of our ministry and mission, showing remarkable kindness and generosity of spirit to others in times of stress or conflict.
Does this mean that you are all perfect, or that we’ve arrived at some state of absolute holiness? Obviously not. We’re all works in progress. And, in fact, whatever divinity resides within us is always a work in progress. But the point is that, so long as that work is going on – the work of Divine ministries of love, and healing, and justice, and goodness – then divinity is alive among us and, I daresay, within us. Look deep into your own heart. I tell you that if you look deep enough you will not see a hopeless failure, a lost soul, a wasted life, an unworthy screw-up; you will see the very image-of-God in which you were created. That image shines from you more and more, as your deeds, like those of Tabitha the Gazelle, like those of Jesus, reflect divine intentions.
No, you are not perfect; you are not a finished product; you are not insignificant; you are not a lost cause. You are – gods.
1Doris Behrens-Abouseif, “The Lion-Gazelle Mosaic at Khirbat al-Mafjar”, in the journal Muqarnas, volume 14, p. 15.
I had an epiphany of sorts one morning. I happened to notice out the window an enormous crow come flapping down onto the garage roof. He probably measured twenty inches from beak to tail — it was an awesome sight. He was perched on the roof ridge with his back to me, black feathers glistening in the morning light, as though he were, from a lofty mountain, surveying his realm. He stood for a long minute, then gently glided off the roof and swept out toward the field behind our house, making a slow, imperious turn before moving on to another corner of his kingdom. I thought to myself, “He must have no natural predators. He’s fast and strong; he can soar up to the heights and quickly dive down on his prey. What could be more powerful than such a huge, intimidating bird?”
Just then my gaze wandered up and I spotted a lone blue jay perched higher up on a small bare tree limb. He had been quietly observing the crow from his superior vantage point. Although Jays can be quite noisy and very aggressive when it comes to smaller birds, this one, in the presence of the crow, was silent. I thought, “No wonder he’s minding his tongue. I would too with a great glistening monster like that gliding around.” Just then, the jay hopped along the branch and back behind a tree trunk. In a moment he re-emerged flying on a beeline towards the back yard, followed immediately by his companion, another jay that had been sitting just out of view behind the tree. I’m not sure that the one jay had been keeping quiet to avoid provoking the crow, or, even more fancifully, had been remaining conspicuous to protect his hidden mate, but it seemed that way. And it was that fleeting fancy that brought to mind a very dependable if often tired truth: It is love – love is the thing more powerful than brute force. But if love has power, what is the nature of that power, and from where is it derived?
Jesus knew a thing or two about the power of love. In fact, you could say that his entire life, all of his ministry, the sum total of his teaching, was about the power of love. He demonstrated that power in his active compassion for those around him — his many acts of healing and feeding and forgiveness. He demonstrated that power in his uncompromising insistence on speaking truth — even when that truth was angry or painful — because he knew that truth is liberating. He demonstrated the power of love when he absorbed all the hatred and slander and abuse that could be thrown at him, and carried it with non-reactive strength and compassionate forgiveness to the cross, so that we could get a taste of divine love — the real thing.
There’s an entire lifetime of lessons and examples and stories about the power of love to be mined from the gospels, but they all seem to be summed up in this account of Jesus and the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias. It’s a warm and wonderful narrative of a miraculous resurrection appearance. It has the disciples bobbing around in the water all night trying to fish, Jesus appearing as a stranger on the shore at daybreak, cooking breakfast for them over an open fire. It’s the kind of tale that leaves you feeling all toasty and cozy inside.
And in the afterglow of that magical breakfast of fish and bread, Jesus seized the moment to teach them something about love. Three times he asked Peter, “Do you love me?” Three times Peter said, “Yes, of course!” And three times, as if to drive the point home, he reminded him that love is more than words. “If you love me, you’ll feed my sheep.” “If you love me, you won’t just say so, you’ll do something about it.”
“If you love me, don’t just send a Hallmark card on my birthday. If you love me, don’t just tell me you’re my best friend. If you love me, don’t just whisper sweet nothings in my ear” — because love is not just talk, it’s power! And the power of love lies in what it does to people — how it changes lives — how it transforms, redeems and nourishes.
The Apostle Paul got the message. Writing to the Christians in Corinth, he admonished them about throwing words around unsupported by actions. He said “the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power.”
How easy it is to say all the right things. How readily the words come to our lips when we want to impress, or to win someone’s favor. What a simple matter it is to talk as if our hearts were in the right place, and our souls were overflowing with goodness, and our hands were clean. I know, because I’m good with words. But I stand convicted along with everyone else in this room of not always living up to the rhetoric.
Speaking as a man, I can tell you this “I love you” stuff is sometimes a real problem. There are those men who just can’t bring themselves to say it at all. So that, if they ever did, their wives might faint dead away. Like the story of the husband who came home from work with a dozen red roses, hugged his wife, and said, “Honey, I love you!” His wife burst into tears. “What a day!” she lamented. “The washer broke down. Junior fell out of his highchair. And now you’ve come home drunk!”
But it’s really not that bad for most of us. For any of us, especially in moments of intense feeling, the words slip off our tongues like butter from a knife: “I love you.” “Of course, I love you.” “Why, you know I love you.” Wasn’t it Telly Savalis who used to say, “Who loves ya, baby?” And we felt the depth of his sincerity, didn’t we?
How often we human beings find it easier to profess our love than to demonstrate it in ways that are meaningful to the person we love. How easy it can be to walk into church on Sunday morning and profess our love of the Lord, our love for all the earth’s children, our love for creation, and then go home to self-absorbed lives, hoarding more possessions, and squandering the earth’s natural resources.
I don’t think many of us are being deceitful when we so easily profess our love, I think we’re mostly just oblivious. We’ve got things all mixed up. We think that love is a feeling — it’s a feeling you have if you’re “in love” with someone, a feeling you develop about a friend, or a feeling you should have toward everyone if you’re a “good” person.
I hope I don’t upset too many applecarts if I say that I don’t think love is a feeling. Love isn’t something you feel; love is something you do.
A wonderful phrase has emerged from the civil rights movement, and it’s been taken over by society at large. It’s the difference between those who “talk the talk,” and those who “walk the walk.” And we all know that each one of us, at one time or another, is guilty of talking the talk we’re not walking.
But we also have our moments, don’t we? There are times when, by the grace of the Almighty, our words and our deeds are clearly in sync, and love’s power seems to flow through our lives, and touch others. You see, the power of love to change the world and save lives is not due to some vague, supernatural influence whereby strong emotions send out cosmic vibrations that alter the course of fate. Love changes everything because of what it compels people to do.
A man I knew many years ago served as an Area Minister in the American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts. His name was Stan Manierre. Stan was a rare and gifted area minister because he had the capacity to be a pastor to pastors unlike anyone I have ever known. He used to just “show up” regularly to visit me and find out how things were in the church and how the ministry was going, and he was always close at hand when there was a need.` I knew he was there for me, and his caring and compassion were always obvious. This capacity was developed, I believe, over the course of a very painful but growth-producing experience.
Stan had been a flier in World War II. His plane was shot down over the Pacific, and he was subsequently captured by the Japanese. The time he spent as a prisoner of war was horrendous. I never heard all the details from him, but I know that he was left with real hurt and deep animosity toward the Japanese. When the war was over, Stan had to find a way to come to terms with his experience. One option would have been to live in bitterness and resentment the rest of his life for all that had been done to him, and all the pain he had endured. Another option would have been to forgive the Japanese and try to move on with life, having nurtured love in his heart.
Stan chose another option. He enrolled as an American Baptist missionary to Japan. He spent many years in Japan, living and working with the Japanese, learning from them, and offering them the love and grace of Christ. When he completed his missionary career, he became an area minister in Massachusetts and began going out and sitting down with clergy to share their burdens and inspire their ministries. His loving heart, his ability to put feet on his feelings, was won in a hard-fought battle of the soul. And because of his real, tangible, caring ministry, many lives have been touched and changed — here and around the world. That’s the power of love!
Every day, you and I are given the opportunity to answer Christ’s question, “Do you love me?” Each moment offers the possibility of responding with more than words.
In the play, My Fair Lady, Eliza is being courted by Freddy, who writes to her daily of his undying love. Eliza’s response is to cry out in frustration:
“Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!…
Don’t talk of stars
Burning above,
If you’re in love,
Show me!
Don’t talk of love lasting through time.
Make me no undying vow
Show me now!”
I submit that if we could ever put away the folly of waiting for some feeling to surface that we might call love, and seize instead every opportunity to do love, a power might be discovered that could change the whole world.
Pierre Teihard de Chardin looked to the future of the human race with hopeful eyes. He saw the great accomplishments of science and technology beginning to blossom, but knew that the greatest power available to us had yet to be tapped. He said, “Some day, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, [we] will have discovered fire.”1
So, the question is before us: are we out to change our lives, and then change the world, or are we just foolin’ around?
Jesus says, “If you love me, feed my sheep.”
1Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “The Evolution of Chastity,” Toward the Future. 1934
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