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A few weeks ago, I mentioned in a sermon that I had entered seminary after a dramatic experience of calling into the ministry. I believe I may have told some of you the story of that experience, but I hope that those of you who have heard it will forgive me for telling it once again, because it bears repeating. Our gospel reading this morning is about a dramatic experience that occurred at the top of a mountain, and this is my own “mountaintop experience.”
It all occurred the better part of 50 years ago when I was a police officer in Aurora, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. I was out on patrol in my cruiser one night – it must have been about 3:00 in the morning. As I rounded a corner, it happened without warning. I heard (or felt) something like a voice. It wasn’t really a voice – I think the ancient Hebrews called it a “shadow of a voice” – it was simply a clear and certain knowledge as though someone were in the back seat of the patrol car whispering in my ear. I simply knew that something was going on at a junior high school in my area. And I was absolutely certain that this was some sort of Divine message. If that sounds strange to you, imagine how strange it made me feel. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever. But there was also no question in my mind. I simply switched on my red lights (back then, police cars had red lights, not blue lights), pushed the gas pedal to the floor, and headed for the junior high. When I got there, I started checking the building. As a got to the back of the school, I discovered a door that had been kicked in. I called for back-up, and waited. When the other officers arrived, we entered the building and started the search. Every room we went through had been trashed: things broken, waste baskets overturned, graffiti scribbled on the walls, chairs thrown around. But at one point, the vandalism seemed to stop right in the middle of a room. It appeared the vandals had been scared away. I concluded that they had seen my red lights through the windows as I approached and took off out the back, which would mean that they were there breaking things up at the time that I heard that “shadow of a voice.” Indeed, we found sets of tracks in the snow leading away from the back door and across the school yard. We followed them as far as we could, but finally lost them at the sidewalks and streets.
I don’t mind telling you that I was pretty shaken by all this. It made no sense. If I had, indeed, received a message from the almighty Lord of this universe, why in the world would that Majestic Power care about a couple of kids vandalizing a school building in the middle of the night? I went to a friend of mine on the force at shift change; he was one of those we referred to at the time as “Jesus freaks.” I figured if anyone could explain all this, maybe he could. I told him the whole story, and said, “I don’t understand any of this.” His answer was telling. He said, “You don’t understand now, but someday you will.”
Well, someday came about six months later. I was sitting in my living room in a deep reflective mood, trying to sort out my life. Suddenly, I heard – or felt – the same “shadow of a voice,” and I knew that I was supposed to enter the ministry. If you had asked me five minutes earlier to list all of the things I would never do as long as I lived, ministry would have been at the top of that list. But in that moment I knew. I made arrangements, left the force, and took off for seminary as soon as I was able.
I don’t know if that episode at the junior high school might have had to do with stopping something from happening that turned out to be more important than we’ll ever know, but I like to think that it served as a kind of litmus test for me. It was a way of letting me know that when I heard that shadow of a voice, I would know it could be trusted and was something to heed.
Nothing like that had ever happened to me up to that time, and nothing like it has happened since. But whenever I start to lose my way, whenever I get discouraged or doubtful, whenever I begin to fall into deadly routines or chronic weariness, I think back on that experience. I remember that it did, indeed, happen to me, and I once again see my life from the perspective of that high moment.
I think that’s what Mark is recording here in the ninth chapter of this gospel. It was a mystical experience at the top of a mountain in which they perceived Jesus to be transfigured before their very eyes. It’s the instant in which their hunches and beliefs and hopes about Jesus, and about his divine calling were confirmed. It’s the high moment to which the frightened and discouraged architects and builders of the early church could look back, and from which they could see their lives and efforts from a better perspective. And I believe that’s why they recorded it and left it to us, as a reminder to trust our “mountaintop experiences.”
We all have them. Not everyone’s is quite so dramatic as mine, I acknowledge. I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have had such an hour of grace. But every one of us has high moments in life – times when the heavy veil of uncertainty is lifted, and the way seems clear. Many of you have had times of discovery, when you realize that Christ is inviting you to take up the journey and you have said, “yes.” For some of you, it may have happened on a retreat, or at summer camp, or in the midst of a service of worship. And who among us has not seen a sunset, or heard a piece of music, or encountered a written word that seems to leap into our experience like an intruder, and inexplicably open up a new way of seeing, a sense of hope and possibility? If we could pause for a moment right now, I’m sure everyone here could fix in your mind some treasured memory of such a lofty moment.
There are, most certainly, many valleys and dark places in life, but each and every one of you knows, and can recall, times on the mountain of transfiguration, instances of high vision and transforming power.
It happened to John Bunyan. Bunyan was a devout Baptist minister whose life was full of many dark and dreadful valleys. He was born in England in November, 1628, the son of a tinker. He was an apprentice tinker and a soldier in the Parliamentary army. Around 1648 he experienced a religious conversion and became a separatist from the Church of England, eventually becoming one of the leaders of a congregation in Bedford. Bunyan became a popular preacher, speaking to large crowds. But in 1660, it was declared illegal to conduct worship services or preach except within the confines of the Church of England. Bunyan was not the kind of man to be pushed around by the state. So, he continued to preach from street corners. He was summarily arrested and sent to Bedford county jail for twelve years.
While in prison he began to write religious tracts and pamphlets and an autobiographical work, “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners .” In this book, he tells us of his titanic struggles of the soul, and his many mountaintop experiences.
Bunyan considered himself to be greatest among all the sinners, and totally unworthy of salvation. But there were moments of grace. Such as the time he was playing a game called “cat,” and after hitting the ball he dropped his club, feeling the presence and voice of Christ calling him to pursue faithfulness, or the time he was in a shop and felt what seemed like a powerful wind that he experienced as the presence of the Spirit, or the time he was lying in bed next to his wife who was in the throes of some terrible pains, and he prayed that if her pains stopped he would know that God heard the “most secret thoughts of the heart,” and it happened immediately. These and other experiences had a profound impact on him.
Upon his release from prison, he returned to preaching on the street corner. In 1675 Bunyan was imprisoned again, and during that time he wrote a book called, “The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come, a prose allegory of the pilgrimage of a soul in search of salvation.” Ten editions of Pilgrim’s Progress were printed during Bunyan’s lifetime. It eventually became the most widely read book in English except for the Bible.
One telling passage in Pilgrim’s Progress is the moment of questioning, when Christian is almost convinced by Atheist that there is no such thing as the Celestial City which they seek. But Christian’s companion, Hope, recalls the shepherd taking them up the hill called “Clear” where they had caught a glimpse of the city at a distance. He says to Christian, “What! no Mount Zion? Did we not see, from the Delectable Mountains the gate of the city?”
In that moment, one can almost feel the years of loneliness in Bunyan’s jail cell, the anguish of his times of spiritual torment, and the doubts that haunted him in his dreariest days. And you can hear his triumphant recollection of his own mountaintop experiences: “Did we not see it with our own eyes?”
My message to you today is this: trust your high moments. Cherish and nurture those times of clear vision, those peaks of human experience in which transience becomes transcendence, and the divine is revealed. When you are living in a time of darkness, remember the light. When you are enduring the winter of despair, remember the springtime of hope. When you are suffering the consequences of irresponsible human arrogance and folly in the marketplace and the halls of government, remember the vision that has been set before us – the vision of a people under God fulfilling a dream of liberty and justice for all people.
And, like those early Christians who recalled the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain, take hold of those high moments of clear vision and trust them. Let your heart and your feet be guided by the dependable vision that you have touched on a starry night in the back yard, in a circle of loving friends, or other times of holiness. Remember Bunyan’s words of Hope: “Did we not see, from the . . . Mountains the gate of the city?”
The day after tomorrow will be the twenty first anniversary of my mother’s death. It has put me in a reflective mood and I want to take some time this morning to share a very treasured story and memory from the time of her dying. My wife, Dadgie, wasn’t able to go, so I flew down alone as our family gathered in Arkansas for my mother’s final days. We were all there together when she breathed her last. It was an intimate and sacred moment that none of us will ever forget. We sang, and prayed, and read scripture, and cried and laughed, and shared in a wondrous sense of release when it was over. It had been coming a long time, and it was truly a blessing.
That was all on Thursday evening. She died at about twenty minutes after seven. It was then that things started to get a little strange. I want to tell you the story of how I managed to become a basket case in a matter of three or four hours, and how my 38 year old nephew became a pastor to me.
It all started when we got back to my father’s house and I phoned my son, Eric, in Colorado, to begin letting my children know that the end had finally come for their grandmother. As soon as I told Eric the news, he informed me that he and his brother, Drake, and sister, Nichole, had already been talking to each other about coming out to Arkansas to be with me. I thanked him much for the thought, but obviously it was not feasible at that point because we were going to have a memorial service the very next day (Friday), and I would be leaving to return home on Saturday morning. He made it clear to me, that feasible or not, they had already decided to make the trip – to drive from Denver, Colorado to northwest Arkansas to be with me and the rest of the family. I then explained that we had just had a snow and ice storm there and the roads were treacherous, and that my father had been in touch with his brother in Kansas who said that it was the same there. It was not only unrealistic to try to drive about a thousand miles in sixteen or seventeen hours, just to turn around and drive home again, but that it was unsafe on those roads. He thanked me for my advice, as grown children do, and informed me that they would see me on Friday afternoon. That’s when my worry set in, and my nerves started to unravel.
Those nerve endings frayed even more when, the next morning, I received a cell phone call from my son, Drake, on the road. They were running behind schedule and didn’t expect to be there until about 7:00 PM on Friday, the same time we had scheduled the memorial service for. He said they were just entering Texas. I said, “Texas? Why would you be going through Texas?” He said, “Well, it’s just the northern tip of Texas.” I decided not to press the issue, because there was nothing to do about it at that point, but I knew they would have had a much shorter trip coming the northern route through Kansas.
My family had asked me to conduct the memorial service for mother, and I was happy to oblige. I spent the afternoon on Friday preparing for the service. As the time drew closer and we hadn’t heard from my children, I began to get more anxious. Then came the cell phone call. They were approaching Fort Smith, still an hour and a half to two hours away. Eric said, “I don’t think we’re going to make it, we’re not going to get to Little Rock until maybe nine o’clock. I said, “Little Rock!? Why would you be headed to Little Rock? We are nowhere near Little Rock!” He said, “Well, it is in Arkansas, isn’t it?” That’s when it dawned on me that he had no idea where he was going. He then informed me that their cell phone battery was running low and they didn’t know how much longer it would last. We started to give them directions to get there, but their phone died, and we lost them before we could finish.
The family huddled and started trying to think of contingency plans. Several members of the family favored delaying the memorial service until they could get there. I was starting to lose it, though, and I said I thought it would be unfair to the people coming from the community to ask them to wait indefinitely for the service to start. At the same time, I couldn’t imagine those kids driving what was going to amount to about twenty hours across country just to miss the service. Mostly, I kept imagining them driving all over northwest Arkansas all night unable to find us, and finally running out of gas in the middle of nowhere on a freezing winter night.
By now, I was coming unglued. I threw my jacket down on a chair and headed for the kitchen to try to find a way to get my wits about me. What would happen to my children? Why did they take off on this insane trip to begin with? Would they get there for the service? Would they get there at all? How in the world was I going to conduct a memorial service for my mother under these circumstances? I could barely think straight.
That’s when it happened. My nephew, the pharmacist, walked into the kitchen behind me. He had decided in a quick instant that it was time to change our relationship. He stopped in front of me as I turned around and looked straight into my eyes. He was taking the personal risk of extending himself and relating to me in a way he had never done before. I knew what that gentle peace in his steady gaze meant, because I knew how devout a Christian he was. As he held my attention with his eyes, he said quietly, “Uncle Mike, it’s going to be alright. They’re going to be alright. It will turn out fine.” I knew that for him, this was not an idle hope. It was a declaration of absolute confidence, grounded in his faith. Being a person of faith doesn’t mean that, indeed everything will turn out fine, but it was clear that he loved me, he wanted to help me, and he cared about me. And that confident faith of his washed over me like a healing balm. I put my arms around him and said, “Thank you.” And I was in awe of this young pharmacist from California whose diapers I used to change, and who had suddenly become my pastor.
[By the way, for the record, it all did turn out beautifully. We held up the service until my children arrived. It was a deeply meaningful time, and it touched the heart of their father more than they could know that my children made that unbelievable trip.]
Paul said, “I have become all things to all people.” “To the Jews I became as a Jew. . . . To those under the law I became as one under the law . . . . To those outside the law I became as one outside the law . . . . To the weak I became weak . . .” and I would add on behalf of my nephew, Scott, “To one who is a pastor, I became as a pastor.”
I don’t know how easy it was for my nephew to do what he did, but I rather suspect that it was not at all easy for Paul to do what he did. Paul was, in my estimation, a passionate, single-minded man. I don’t think it was in his nature to “become all things to all people.” To be so open and so flexible strikes me as contrary to the man’s psychological make-up. But he says, “I do it all for the sake of the gospel . . .” He stretches himself to the point of doing almost anything for the sake of the gospel.
Would we? You and I are not inclined to go beyond our “safety zones” for the sake of most anything. When an opportunity presents itself to stick our necks out, to move beyond the familiar patterns of a relationship, and say something to a friend or a stranger who might need a word of support, when a situation arises in which we might be able to share a bit of our faith with another human being, when the moment of truth comes and we could make a difference for someone by getting beyond our limitations and fears, do we seize it, or do we tend to withdraw to an anonymous place of safety?
My late father once related to me the story of a man who attended his church in Rogers Park on the north side of Chicago about fifty-five years ago now. The man was coming home from work one day on the “el” (Chicago’s elevated commuter train). He got off at the Roger’s Park station, and headed for the stairs. But at the top, he slipped and fell all the way down that long steep stairway to the sidewalk. He found himself lying on the concrete, bruised and battered, and barely able to move. He later told my father that no one stopped or spoke to him except one woman. She came up to him and offered him a religious tract; “Are you saved?” it said. I was amazed to hear that story. Not a soul on that street, I thought, could take a chance and reach out to this injured man – not a soul. If you or I were there, we would certainly stop and help, right? Or would we find it more emotionally convenient to assume the guy lying there is simply a drunk passed out on the curb, someone to not “get involved” with?
Paul says that getting outside of himself and meeting people where they are is not an option, it’s a “necessity.” “Woe to me,” he writes, “if I do not proclaim the gospel.” And “proclaiming the gospel” does not mean simply asking someone if he’s found Jesus or sticking a tract in his hand; it means taking the risk to discover that person’s need and responding to it. We, like Paul, are not simply encouraged to extend ourselves for the sake of the gospel, we are absolutely compelled to do so. We are compelled to do so, because there is no other way to live the gospel; there’s no other way to follow the footsteps of Christ.
But, like the lady with the tract on the streets of Chicago, it’s very easy for us to fool ourselves into thinking we are proclaiming the message of Christ when all we’re doing is offering lip service. So how are we to know the difference? How are we to know when what we are giving voice to is the will and way of Christ, and when it is simply our own narrow agenda?
Well, the truth is, sometimes it’s hard to tell. But here’s a clue: if we find that what we are doing is very comfortable and easy, we just may be getting off track. We likely need to get outside our comfort zones and take some risks if we are going to truly understand others, truly relate, truly empathize, and meet them where they are.
But the rewards, as Paul suggests, can be high. To live the gospel, to embody Christ to another, to participate in another’s experience and thereby help to heal them is to, as Paul said, “share in [the gospel’s] blessings.” It is to know that there is truly power in life; it is to know that love conquers all; it is to discover the wondrous gift that is given to those who reach for it: a computer programmer can be a healer, a pipe fitter can be a prophet, a pharmacist can be a pastor.
Praise the Lord. Hallelujah.
First, a confession. My sermon title is stolen. But that’s OK, because the guy I filched it from stole it first. You may recognize it as part of the famous line by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (a line he used, by the way, in three different speeches and a sermon). Dr. King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” He is regularly credited with those words, but he stole them from a nineteenth century Universalist preacher named Theodore Parker. Don’t let all of this upset you. We preachers are famous for being literary thieves. A seminary professor of ours used to say that any preacher only has one original idea at most, and only three sermons (everything else amounts to variations on themes).
Anyway, this brings us to the question of why there is a photo of Theodore Parker on the cover of your bulletin this morning. It’s because I wanted to introduce you to this remarkable man who was ahead of his time in so many ways, and because some of what he had to say bears directly on our scripture readings today – and might just change your life, as it has mine. Theodore Parker was an outspoken, theologically radical, Unitarian pastor and leading abolitionist in the mid-eighteen hundreds. His grandfather, John Parker, by the way, was Captain of the Lexington militia at the Battle of Lexington in 1775. Parker’s rhetorical brilliance was plundered not only by Martin Luther King, Jr., but by Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s famous line in the Gettysburg address, “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” was lifted right out of a speech by Parker thirteen years earlier titled “The American Idea.”
Over the years of his ministry, Parker became so radical in his theology that he was too much even for the Unitarians to bear. He pretty much rejected the Bible, and counseled people to base their faith on personal experience instead. More and more he became a social activist and provided not only some kindling, but the lighter fluid and matches for the abolitionist movement in Boston. He started an independent Congregational Society and filled the pews with the likes of Louisa May Alcott, William Lloyd Garrison, Julia Ward Howe, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. That congregation came to number in the thousands. He never lived to see either the horrific tragedy or the glorious triumph of his cause, however. He died less than a year before the outbreak of the Civil War.
So, why do I share all this biography with you? It all comes back to this phrase of his that Dr. King pilfered. It comes from a remarkable sermon that Parker delivered in 1852 titled “Of Justice and Conscience.” I’ve read it, and I must tell you, it took me a while. In those days, sermons went on for one or two hours. He begins his treatise with a survey of the physical sciences (and does so, by the way, with language that presages some of the discoveries of quantum physics that were about seventy years from being formulated). He then says that, just as there are physical forces that hold the material world together, there is a force that holds the moral world together; that force is justice. His argument is that justice is not a choice that we can make or let be; it is an elemental principle of human existence that cannot be undone any more than we can dismiss with gravity. Making his case he writes, “Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”1 Dr. King expressed this confidence in the irrepressible power of justice with these words: “. . . let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows.”2
This idea, that justice is an indispensable element of the created order and the arc of its direction is built into the structure of things, is actually a very old one. We heard a remarkable reflection of that principle in our reading from Deuteronomy this morning. By the way, sometimes I don’t understand the lectionary people. In the given pericope for today they left out the best – and most important – part of the passage. I fixed that by including verses twenty one and twenty two. Those two verses deal with the question that jumps immediately to our minds when we hear these ancient penalties for false prophecy. The biblical writer says, “You may say to yourself, ‘How can we recognize a word that the Lord has not spoken?’ If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it.” This is pretty neat, really. The role of the prophet in ancient Israel was to speak the disturbing word of justice to the principalities and powers. And these verses are telling us that you have to wait to see how things come out – no matter how long it takes – the words of a true prophet will inevitably come true. The point beneath the point is that, well, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
You and I see evil on the throne in so many places around our world. Theodore Parker saw it too; the scourge of slavery was not bending to the will of his band of abolitionist followers. But tyrants fall, evil is ultimately exposed for what it is, and the sands of time wear down and blow away the pride of those who devote themselves only to greed, destruction, and violence. This truth gives us something to hold onto in those hours of dread when it seems that the darkness is overtaking the light.
But this law of abiding justice is not only for the great arc of history, it is the glue that holds our own hearts together. Parker put it this way: “. . . I learn justice, the law of right, the divine rule of conduct for human life; I see it, not as an external fact . . . but I see it as a mode of action which belongs to the infinitely perfect nature of God; belongs also to my own nature, and so is not barely over me, but in me, of me, and for me. . . . I find a deep, permanent, and instinctive delight in justice, not only in the outward effects, but in the inward cause, and by my nature I love this law of right, this rule of conduct, this justice, with a deep and abiding love. I find that justice is the object of my conscience. . . . Finding it fits me thus, I know that justice will work my welfare and that of all [humankind].”3 Here’s how I would make Parker’s point: a love of justice and the longer perspective that one acquires by knowing its law, alters one’s own moral bearings.
And this takes us to our second reading for this morning from the gospel of Mark. It’s a tale about casting out demons. But I’m not going to focus on demonic possession (although you and I are certainly subject to our own demons at times). My interest here is in the statement at the very beginning of the passage in which it notes that Jesus was doing this healing on the Sabbath. This is exactly the sort of thing that got him in hot water so often. Later on in the gospel Jesus heals a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath and Mark says because of it, “The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.”4 But Jesus’s argument was that the law of love (or, one might say, the law of justice) supersedes all other laws. If there is a question about what course of action to obey, if there is a conflict with one moral principle as against another, the law of love – the law of justice – wins. Period.
Theodore Parker put it this way: “Viewed as an object not in man, justice is the constitution or fundamental law of the moral universe, the law of right, a rule of conduct for man in all his moral relations. Accordingly all human affairs must be subject to that as the law paramount; what is right agrees therewith and stands, what is wrong conflicts and falls. Private cohesions of self-love, of friendship, or of patriotism, must all be subordinate to this universal gravitation towards the eternal right.”5
Parker saw this at work even as those in power struggled against the eternal and irrepressible force of justice. He wrote: “Hitherto, the actual function of government, so far as it has been controlled by the will of the rulers, has commonly been this: To foster the strong at the expense of the weak, to protect the capitalist and tax the laborer. The powerful have sought a monopoly of development and enjoyment, loving to eat their morsel alone. Accordingly, little respect is paid to absolute justice by the controlling statesmen of the Christian world. Not conscience and the right is appealed to, but prudence and the expedient for to-day. Justice is forgotten in looking at interest, and political morality neglected for political economy. . .”6
He was a man ahead of his time, and his words not only inspired Louisa May Alcott, William Lloyd Garrison, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr., they touch our hearts, and remind us that the course of history, like the topography of our own lives, is littered with the remains of poor decisions, greed and self-interest, foolish notions, and even, for some, senseless violence, but that those have not the final word, for us or for humankind. This principle is made manifest in my own life experience. I was rebooting my laptop the other day and across the screen it said, “Upgrading your system firmware. Do not power down your system.” It struck me that looking back at all the foolish, embarrassing things I’ve said and done in my life I’d like to “upgrade my system firmware” instead of “powering down.” And Parker’s words remind us that that is an ever-present possibility, that there is a law that holds both our hearts and our moral universe together, and to which all other laws must yield. You might remember it as a principle for your own life with a familiar mnemonic device: WWJD, What Will Justice Demand?.
I leave you, of course, with the words of Theodore Parker: “As an eagle stirreth up her nest, from her own beak to feed its young, broods over their callow frame, and bears them on her wings, teaching them first to fly, so comes justice unto men.”
1 Theodore Parker, The Collected Works of Theodore Parker: Sermons. Prayers, p. 48. See: http://books.google.com/books?id=_VRGAAAAMAAJ&dq=theodore%20parker’s%20life%20and%20writings&pg=PP5#v=onepage&q&f=false.
2 Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here?, Speech delivered at the 11th Annual SCLC Convention,
Atlanta, Ga., August 16, 1967.
3 Op cit.
4 See Mark 3:1-6.
5 Op cit.
6 Op ct.
You may be wondering why we are reading three passages from today’s lectionary and what in the world I see as a connection among these three passages. I think I’ll keep you guessing for a little while. I’d like to begin by taking each one of them in turn and unpacking them for you.
We begin with the story of Jonah. The passage you heard this morning is actually a little deceptive because it’s lifted out of context. I’m sure all of you have heard of “Jonah and the whale.” That story is also widely misunderstood because it too gets lifted out of context. In order to understand what’s going on with this ancient legend, you really have to stick all these parts together and get the whole picture of what is a quite fanciful yarn. In essence, so the tale goes, Jonah was called by God to go to Nineveh and cry out that the city will be severely punished by God for their wickedness. Jonah instead runs away. He books passage on a ship going the opposite direction. But God sends a terrible storm that threatens to sink them all. To save the crew, Jonah tells them to throw him overboard and God will quiet the seas. So they throw him over, down he goes, and God sends a whale to swallow him. He spends three days and nights in the belly of the whale (I told you this was a fanciful yarn). The whale spits him out on dry land, and Jonah relents and goes to Nineveh, crying out to the residents God’s message of doom and destruction. The people of the city hear and respond by fasting and wearing sackcloth as an act of contrition. This pleases God who then chooses to spare the city (that’s the part you heard this morning). Jonah then gets angry and depressed because God has forgiven the people of Nineveh as Jonah figured he would, and he goes outside of town to sit and pout. But God makes it clear to him that compassion for these Assyrians in Nineveh is part of the divine program and Jonah had best get on board.
So what’s going on here? What we are dealing with is an ancient Hebrew parable – much like the parables Jesus told. Most biblical scholars believe this story was written after the exile of the people of Israel in Babylon, and it’s addressed to the Israelites who were bitterly angry after their treatment at the hands of the Babylonians, and even more so, the Assyrians, the people for whom Nineveh was a major city, and who invaded Israel and ravaged cities time and again for generations. Jonah is a comical character, who just keeps making a fool of himself as he is driven to silly extremes by his hatred of the Assyrians in Nineveh. The parable is told, in much the same way Jesus did, to suck in the listeners with an engaging little story and then whomp them upside the head with the deeper message. In this case the message to the Israelites is: get over your seething rage at the Assyrians. It’s time to forgive and move on. In short, get a life!
Next, let’s take look at this reading from First Corinthians. This is the apostle Paul writing to the church at Corinth. It is also a passage that cries out to be understood in the context of the whole letter. The Corinthian Church was, like churches some of us have been familiar with today, in deep trouble. It was on the verge of splitting up into rival congregations. Some were followers of Paul, some of Apollos, and some of Cephas. In addition, there were those who were overly strict moralists who believed that marriage itself was to be rejected by the truly faithful as a lure away from ascetic purity, and on the other hand, those who believed in unrestricted sexual license (the notion behind the phrase, “All things are lawful”). Into this hotbed of hostility, Paul sends this letter. And in it, he tries to identify to some degree with all sides, and with none. He calls for unity, and says neither he, Apollos, nor Cephas should be the object of Christians’ allegiance, but Christ. He agrees that “all things are lawful” but says that “not all things are beneficial [or] . . . build up.” And then we come to today’s reading in which he sides, to a degree, with those on the opposite side of the fence. He says, “let even those who have wives be as though they had none,” echoing something of his other statements about his own preference to not marry. So Paul is urging the Corinthians to find unity because that is the way of Christ. And in our passage he is trying to scare the bejeebers out of them to get them to shape up. He says that the time is short, and “the present form of this world is passing away.” In other words, the world is coming to an end any day now, and there are more important matters at hand than bickering over allegiances, theology, or even morality. The fact that he was wrong about the rapidly approaching end of the world is perhaps not as significant as the truth that he was calling upon the Corinthians to wake up to.
Which brings us the third reading from the Gospel of Mark. Here we find Jesus beginning his ministry by walking around finding guys hard at work as fishermen and calling to them to drop their nets and follow him. The amazing part of the story is that, indeed, that’s exactly what they do. Though, reading a little deeper into the narrative, it may not be quite as amazing as it seems. It appears that Jesus must have developed something of a reputation by this time as a very learned Rabbi, and it also seems that these four fishermen already knew Jesus. Still, it’s pretty remarkable that they were ready to become his disciples in an instant, without a moment’s hesitation. I’m reminded of the wonderful scene in the TV series The West Wing when Josh seeks out his high-priced lawyer friend Sam to join the speech writing staff of Governor Bartlett who is running for the Presidency. All it takes is a look from Josh through the meeting room door window at Sam, and he gets up from his chair in an important meeting to walk out the door. When they ask him in astonishment where he’s going, he replies, “New Hampshire.” I think this episode with Jesus and the fishermen must have been something like that. He called, and they dropped everything and followed.
So, now I’m ready to answer your query about what in the world these three stories have to do with each other. We have a parable about a guy who was called by God in a dramatic fashion to a mission that was totally abhorrent to him, and he tried every way he could to run away from it but ultimately had to do it in spite of himself. It is a story addressed to people who were being called to completely change their course in life, even though they would initially find the idea revolting. And it is the story of a city full of people who heard a prophetic message and found their hearts changed.
We also have a letter to a church filled with people who were about to blow the place to smithereens and were being called to a new and higher life of unity. The approach was to shift their perspective by scaring them into changing their minds.
And we have a great rabbi who has built relationships and demonstrated his powers, and who calls four fishermen to change their careers and become disciples of his ministry, proclaiming good news to those who were ready to listen. He told them he would make them into fishers of people instead of fish, calling still others to respond and take up the journey of faith.
These are all stories about different kinds of people receiving a divine summons by different means, in differing circumstances, and responding in divergent ways, but all being drawn to a new life and a new mission.
When Dadgie and I were in seminary we had a brilliant professor and mentor by the name of Jim Ashbrook (I’ve spoken of him before, I’m sure). Jim once summed up the amazing diversity of callings and responses, of people and circumstances, with the phrase: “There are many gates into the holy city.” From our study of ancient Jerusalem we learned that there was the Damascus Gate, the Sheep’s Gate, the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, and others – all different configurations and sizes. So, we knew his meaning: there is more than one way to find the treasure of divine purpose and meaning in life; this is so because there are many people coming from many different directions. This is a message that it took me some time to internalize. When I first entered seminary, I had come from a very dramatic experience of calling into the ministry. It made me something of a “Jesus freak”, as the old expression went. I felt that anyone who had a genuine calling must have had a similar experience to mine. It was only in time that I learned how many different gates there indeed are. I found that some folks had been reading a book and suddenly a light went on and everything made sense to them. Others had been brought up in the church and simply moved inexorably toward a deeper faith and a role in ministry. Still others came out of a history of doubting and questioning everything, and brought all those doubts and questions with them as they took up the path of faith.
This morning we sit here among friends. They each also come to us through different gates. And this we celebrate and affirm. In our church diverse beliefs, experiences, and approaches are not a cause for shame, they are a cause for rejoicing! They are a reflection of this beautiful, kaleidoscopic world that we have been placed in. This is given expression in one of the most sacred principles of the Free Church tradition; it is a doctrine we call “soul freedom”. We cherish this freedom of each individual soul among us to work out his or her faith in fear and trembling with no other member, no church potentate, not even a pastor, having the authority to dictate what that person must believe or profess. We believe that it is in such an environment of freedom that each of us has the best opportunity to learn, and grow, and find one’s way on this journey we call faith. All of this, by the way, is why we take votes at church meetings like we will be doing next Sunday, instead of having decisions handed down from the lofty throne of the pastor (in what I like to refer to as “the good old days”).
But, seriously, the recognition of the many gates goes even further than all this. We not only acknowledge that each of us comes to the journey by different means, we affirm that people all over this world come by different paths and through different gates. So we shun the hubris of claiming that our brand of religion is the “true path” and we refuse to condemn those who find faith through other Christian denominations, and even other religions.
What do our three stories have in common? Not a common experience of calling, but the fact that, out of divergent places, differing circumstances, and varied emphases, each of these were about people who responded, who at times even against their own desires or self-interest, ultimately said, “Yes” to that which was calling them to be more than they were. May you and I, entering through the many gates, keep finding ways to say, “Yes.”
Across our land and around the planet in this hour a battle is raging. It is a struggle to claim the hearts and minds of the next generation – those who will plunge our world into the abyss of endless rivalry and global warfare, or lead us to the heights of unprecedented mutuality and human achievement. It is a contest for the future.
There is a battle raging. We try to deafen ourselves to the noise and fury of its fray, but it resounds nonetheless above the ramparts of our comforts and securities. Its trumpets and detonations echo from the walls of our living rooms with the nightly news. We hear a mortar round and fear the tide of the battle is turning to the side of ceaseless hatred as we stare in shock at the images of bodies piled up in make-shift morgues in Gaza or pulled from the rubble of a home in Israel. We hear the rifle report of enemy fire threatening a victory for carelessness and greed when the newspapers tell us about corporate officers, bankers, and captains of finance who cover their eyes to the welfare of their clients and the nation as a whole in the pursuit of short term profits. We see the ranks of hostile troops burgeoning, threatening to overwhelm our human village with global disaster, when oil companies, auto companies, emerging markets, and government leaders point fingers at one another instead of taking initiative to reduce the use of fossil fuels.
There’s a battle raging in the world. Do not be lulled into the myth of apathetic non-involvement. There is no place of withdrawal. As the late Dr. Gene Bartlett once reminded me, you cannot stand forever on the shore of life, and seek safety in a non-committal spirit. Sooner or later you must decide whether you will “throw the meager weight of your existence” on the side of truth and beauty and love and justice, or whether you will not.
There is a battle raging. But the outcome is not in question. Dr. King said that “the universe is on the side of justice.” We know this. The outcome of the battle, my friends, is not in question. The only question is, while it rages, in whose army will you serve?
From where do we derive such confidence? The same place as did Philip when he appealed to Nathanael to believe that Jesus was the one for whom they had waited, the one who would change the world. Nathanael was skeptical. He said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip gave him an answer for the ages. It is an answer to every challenge presented to faith, to all those who are inclined to despair, and who strain to see any sign of hope. He simply said, “Come and see.”
That’s my appeal to you this morning: come and see. We mark tomorrow the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But I don’t want to set before you merely the high ideas or the grand sounding dreams of a generation gone by. I want to appeal to you to come and see what the power of Goodness and Love has done in this world, what is happening all around us, and what can, by the grace of the Almighty, be our future.
When Dr. King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and shook the land with his mighty words, he wasn’t setting himself up as “dreamer in chief.” He was sharing something with us that grew out of our common American experience and resonated profoundly in the depths of the American psyche. He was revealing himself to be an ordinary dreamer, and sounding a trumpet to summon each one of us into the battle as ordinary dreamers.
Fighting for the last half century under the banner of justice and equality, this army of dreamers has breached the walls of hatred and injustice. And look what happened: The Civil Rights Acts of 1964, 1968, and 1991, the Voting Rights Act, Affirmative Action, Loving v. Virginia (the abolition of discrimination against inter-racial marriage).
The battle for racial justice has not been won; we have yet a long struggle ahead. But if anyone questions that a stiff-necked people can be turned around, learn new ways, and build a new world, I invite them to “come and see” what has happened in America.
And yet the battle still rages. Our weary world is bleeding. Too many of her daughters suffer on bloody and rubble-filled streets in Gaza; too many of her young men are satiating their rage by firing rockets into Israel; too many of her children go to sleep hungry and too many cower in fear; too many of her people live in oppression. And too many of her nations are withering from smallness of vision.
Of all the diseases that wrack our world, perhaps the most pernicious is myopia. Rulers who try to make themselves bigger than the countries they rule only succeed in making their nations smaller. It is a weak nation that is only as strong as one person. This was understood by the founders of our republic. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the words that were crafted and inserted into the Constitution created an oath to be sworn by every President who assumes the office. In the first drafts, the oath was simple: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.” But George Mason and James Madison knew this wasn’t enough, and George Washington agreed. They added the phrase, “and will to the best of my judgment and power, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” As the Constitutional Convention continued, the words “to the best of my judgment and power” were changed to “to the best of my ability.”
This is profound. The framers were doing something new in the world. They were, according to Marvin Pinkert, Executive Director of the National Archives Experience, creating nothing less than an “oath of subordination to the Constitution.” Our president would not be free to simply use his (or her) best judgment to do whatever they felt was in the interests of the nation. The oath of office insists that the president will pour all ability into preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution. In other words, the Commander in Chief is enlisted along with the rest of us as a foot soldier in the army for justice and equality embodied in the Constitution.
And to those around the globe who languish in nations made tiny by self-absorbed leaders who place themselves above the law and above the people, I say: if you want to know how the world can be different, come and see. Come and see how a nation is made great.
But a battle still rages. When a man walks into a bowling alley and restaurant in Lewiston, Maine with a semi-automatic assault rifle and kills 18 people at random, it feels like a small victory for blind hatred and reckless folly. But when the battle is joined, and a community mobilizes to respond with expressions of support and solidarity, such hatred and folly are defeated once more.
When the crumbling economy, the global wars of hate, and even the frigid weather seem to conspire to send everyone to the brink of hopelessness, it can feel at times like folks are left to barricade themselves in their living rooms, hunker down, and fight for their own slice of security. But then the ice and snow come and the power goes out. Come and see how neighbor calls on neighbor, and a church family pulls together to celebrate the ties that bind them, and a community brings food to the school house and shares in a meal, come and see that together we’re fighting the right battle.
When greed takes over our financial institutions, calloused indifference pervades the marketplace, and cynicism fills the headlines, it can seem as though the forces arrayed against us are too great and the battle for the hearts and minds of the next generation is hopeless. But come and see how places of faith and caring like this one still abound, and Prince of Peace isn’t done with us yet.
Do you wonder if there’s any point in living a faithful life, and sharing that faith with others? Do you wonder if standing up for the things you believe in really matters – things like peace, or equality, or justice, or love, or faithfulness? Do wonder if it will really make the least bit of difference in the world? Philip knew that it could. When he was summoned by Jesus to take up the cause, he dropped everything.
You and I have been drafted, in a way, into an army of ordinary dreamers. And if anything will turn this world around and finally win the battle for racial justice and equality, populate the world with nations that are greater than not only their worst leaders, but even their best, and mark a victory for faithfulness and hope, it will be through battles large and small waged by folks like us.
Are there those who ask if there’s any power to be found in believing, in caring, in working for justice? Do they wonder if people like us are just wasting our time thinking that the world can change for the better and that walls of hostility and distrust can be broken down, or if perhaps there is something deeper, lovelier, more profound and life changing to be discovered?
Does the world wonder if competition, dirty tricks, violence and greed have taken over, or if America can still be a place where love rules, hearts are opened even a little, and caring for others, sharing of gifts, and mutual understanding prevail? Do they wonder if this land is just full of self-interested hypocrites, or if it indeed contains people who are genuinely trying to find their way to a deeper truth, a finer humanity, a richer and more compassionate way of life?
Are there those who wonder if there is any genuine love, community, and support to be found following the footsteps of Christ in a church like this one. We have an answer for them: come and see.
The opening words of the book of Genesis are awesome and powerfully poetic. I remember a seminary professor who began his Old Testament course by reading those words and then saying, “If that doesn’t stir your blood and send chills up your spine, then maybe you don’t belong here.” Those words are even more stirring and chilling in the original Hebrew, some of which I’ve shared with you before on a different subject:
b’reshit bara’ Elohim et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz v’ha’aretz hayatah tohu vavohu v’hoshek al-p’nai t’hom v’ruah Elohim m’rahephetz al-p’nai hamayim vayo’mer elohim y’hi ‘or vay’hi-‘or
There’s something about the mystery of creation itself that is powerfully reflected in those words, “tohu vavohu v’hoshek al-p’nai t’hom” – everything was a “formless void, and darkness was upon,” what the author of Genesis describes as “the face of the deep.” This ancient story says that it all started with water. Life itself came forth ultimately from what began as “t’hom” – the vast oceans of the primordial world – the “deep.”
Modern science concurs. One of the more recent theories on the origin of life on the planet comes from William Martin and Michael Russell, who theorized that the first cellular life forms may have evolved inside what are referred to as “black smokers” – hydrothermal vents that are chimney-like structures at sea-floor spreading zones in the deep sea. Older theories involve the idea of biomolecules springing from a “warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts.”1 But in any event, there are few scientists who postulate theories on the origin of life that don’t involve water in some way. At least on this point, modern science and the ancient Biblical stories agree. We come from the water.
The dark ocean depths are also archetypal from a psychological standpoint. Freud saw water as a sexual symbol, perhaps harkening back to the watery environs of the womb from which each of us has sprung. Thomas A. P. van Leeuwen tells us why we have swimming pools: “The pool,” he says, “is the architectural outcome of man’s desire to become one with the element of water, privately and free of danger. A swim in the pool is a complex and curious activity, one that oscillates between joy and fear, between domination and submission, for the swimmer delivers himself with controlled abandonment to the forces of gravity, resulting in sensations of weightlessness and timelessness. . . . Springboards are launching pads for the swimmer’s eternal game with death. The embrace of water is an erotic one, yet at the same time its cool fingers presage the immediacy of mortality. Eros and Thanatos,” he concludes, “occupy the two antithetical components of the complex sensation that we call swimming.”2 You probably didn’t know you were doing all that when you jumped in the pool.
I can relate to it somewhat, though. At least to the business about swimming being like a “game with death.” For me, it all goes back to my childhood. I was maybe eight years old, and had just worked up the courage to dog-paddle my way out to the raft beyond the swimming area of our church camp, Forest Lake. The older kids were there, jumping and diving off the raft and having a great old time. I pulled myself up onto it, and sat in near exhaustion, trying to catch my breath. To paraphrase Martin Short, I wasn’t much of a swimmer. Anyway, the older kids, doing what children do, decided to throw me in the water. I remember flying through the air, then going down, down, down into an increasingly dark, yellow abyss. I was sure I was going to drown, and I struggled for the surface in panic. I had to be pulled out by an older swimmer. The incident was traumatic, and is as vivid today as it was then. I was terrified of the water from that moment on. I conquered that fear enough to resume my dog-paddling, but I never actually learned how to swim properly until I was in college. I was at the pool one day, doing my usual dog-paddle when the swimming coach walked up and asked me if I’d like to learn to swim. He taught me in about five minutes. Go figure, now I enjoy swimming.
Maybe there is something about plying our way through the water that has to do with “defeating death.” Maybe we love to frolic in the waves precisely because they can be so deadly. Under the water there is no free oxygen to breath. Every oxygen atom in the lake is tied to a couple of hydrogen atoms, and if we try to breath them they fill up our lungs and suffocate us. To dive under the water and emerge above it, and then keep our bodies moving along it, evading the gravitational tug into its depths, is to score something of a victory over the elemental forces of nature.
All this ruminating about water leads me to think about baptism – your baptism, my baptism – of which the baptism of Jesus we heard about this morning is the prototype. I’ve often wondered why Jesus chose to be baptized by John, who was practicing a “baptism of repentance for sin” (we don’t often think about the sins of Jesus). I suspect it may have more to do with this imagery about drowning. There is a powerfully symbolic message in Jesus giving himself over into the hands of another to be laid down beneath the water, and then drawn back up out of that water to begin a new life, a new ministry. It is a foreshadowing of the way in which he would later give himself over into the hands of the authorities and be put to death, only to defeat death with new life.
That’s what our baptism is about too. In the waters of baptism, we are buried in those primordial waters of chaos and death – buried along with Christ. And, like him, we are drawn up again to new life, new dedication, and hope.
Now, I realize that our baptism ceremonies here aren’t quite like that; we don’t put people under the water. I used to do that when I was a Baptist. When we baptize people here, we just touch a little water to their foreheads. But the symbolism still holds. When we touch them with that water, we are recalling that same act of submersion and rising again, even if only emblematically.
It brings to mind the story of the Baptist preacher and the Congregational minister who were having an argument about baptism. The Congregationalist said, “Now, as I understand it, you don’t consider a person to be baptized unless they are dunked completely under water.” “That’s right,” said the Baptist. “They have to get entirely wet.” “So,” he shot back, “it’s not OK to just have them wade in the water up to their ankles?” “Oh no,” said the Baptist. “That’s not nearly enough.” “Well, how about if they get in the water up to their waste?” “No way.” “Is it enough to get under water up to their chin?” “Nope.” “How about if you get them in water all the way up until just the very top of the head is sticking out.” “No. Even that won’t do,” said the Baptist. “Well, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along,” said the Congregationalist, it’s just that little bit on top that matters.”
Be that as it may, Baptism is baptism, however you do it. And in my mind one of the most significant aspects of it stems from the way Jesus chose to be baptized. He didn’t go down to the river and dive in. He went to John the Baptizer, and asked to be baptized, along with, so scripture tells us, “people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem.” You see, this act is not an individual, private thing. When a person is touched by these waters, they are drawn by all the hands of grace that surround them into the “Body of Christ” – the church.
When that happens, the Genesis story is repeated all over again. Out of the watery chaos (the tohu vavohu), out of the frightening deep darkness (the t’hom), a new kind of order is created. It is the order that comes to our lives when we immerse ourselves in the family of Christ.
In that sense, then, all of us here come “from the water.” And this community of faith, this family of believers, this church comes “from the water.” It’s just a chemical compound, dihydrogen monoxide, two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, but somehow, it’s what we come from – it’s the source of life, and the source of new life in the spirit. In that way, it ties us together. Our bodies are mostly made up of it, and our spirits are linked by the act of yielding ourselves to it through baptism. I must tell you that every time I take a shower, I let that glorious water run down over me and, in my mind, I reaffirm my baptism.
Swimming as we do through life, in that mysterious balance between Eros and Thanatos, tossed about by the waves of love and mocked by the deep abyss of death, we who journey together in this “ship” we call the church share a matchless gift. It is the gift of new life, fresh possibility – for those who rise above the drowning, daily patterns of futility and meaninglessness (in the incomparable words of Ruth Duck) “water washed and spirit born.” This gift is the treasure of a second chance, passed out freely by a congregation of people who have each been rescued themselves and live by the law of grace.
Life can be hard. A lot of the time it’s “sink or swim.” But what an immeasurable joy it is, and what overpowering gratitude comes, to look around and find you are not alone when you’ve been pulled “from the water.”
1 Charles Darwin in a letter to J.D. Hooker, February 1, 1871
2 The Springboard in the Pond: An Intimate History of the Swimming Pool
by Thomas A. P. van Leeuwen (The MIT Press, 1999)
Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to Jerusalem to “present him to the Lord.” This was the ritual of purification for firstborn children. While there, they encountered two people, Simeon and Anna. We don’t hear a lot about either of them.
Simeon is described as a righteous and devout man to whom it had been revealed that he would not die before seeing the Messiah. We can assume he was elderly because when he laid eyes on the baby Jesus, he offered a prayer, essentially saying that he could die in peace now, because his hope had been fulfilled. Anna is a similar case. Luke tells us that she was the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher, and that she was a prophet. This might be a little surprising to those who suppose that religious leadership in Bible times was always the domain of men. In fact, Jewish tradition recognizes seven women as prophets in ancient Israel. And Anna was a prophet at the Jerusalem temple; a position not achieved by happenstance. Particularly in such a place of prominence one is only regarded as a prophet through the power of her words and actions. Anna was no bystander to the events unfolding around her. She was, as we would say today, a major player. And we don’t have to guess about her age. Luke says she was 84 years old.
So these two holy people had been hanging around the Jerusalem Temple for decades, following the same routines, obeying the same rituals, perhaps just about ready to give up on the hope of coming face to face with the promised messiah. And then, after waiting in hope for all those years, Anna and Simeon got a surprise. That for which they had been waiting was to be found in something as simple as a family’s ritual of purification – something as ordinary as a young mother’s face – something as wondrously common as the cry of a baby. An old man ready to die, and an eighty-four year old woman at the peak of her powers both found fulfillment in the least expected place. Simeon may have even surprised himself with what came over him. He found himself uttering the most unexpected prophesy. Frederick Buechner describes the scene well: “Jesus was still in diapers” he writes, “when his parents brought him to the Temple in Jerusalem ‘to present him to the Lord’, as the custom was, and offer a sacrifice, and that’s when old Simeon spotted him. Years before, he’d been told he wouldn’t die till he’d seen the Messiah with his own two eyes, and time was running out. When the moment finally came, one look through his cataract lenses was all it took. He asked if it would be all right to hold the baby in his arms, and they told him to go ahead but be careful not to drop him.
“‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation,’ he said,” Buechner continues, “the baby playing with the fringes of his beard. The parents were pleased as punch, and so he blessed them too for good measure. Then something about the mother stopped him, and his expression changed. What he saw in her face was a long way off, but it was there so plainly he couldn’t pretend. ‘A sword will pierce through your soul,’ he said.
Buechner concludes, “He would rather have bitten off his tongue than said it, but in that holy place he felt he had no choice. Then he handed her back the baby and departed in something less than the perfect peace he’d dreamed of all the long years of his waiting.”1
There were surprises abounding in Jerusalem that day, and they were coming to and coming from a couple of old fogies. In America today, if you’re over forty you’re considered on the downhill side of your abilities, and if you’re over fifty you’re practically unemployable. What a strange culture we have created. We worship youth and spend around 66 billion dollars a year on cosmetics and cosmetic surgery alone.2 There have been cultures throughout history in which old age was venerated and those who had achieved long life were considered wiser and more sound of judgment.
And you and I, the older we get, feel less and less capable of being surprised by anything. We tend to feel that, at a certain age, we’ve seen it all. And now we live in an age when even our young people have pretty much “seen it all.” They’ve certainly had access to most everything there is to see on the Internet. Even our youth are becoming more jaded; people of all ages are less capable of being surprised by life. And when life seems to hold no more surprises, we begin to lose the capacity to hope.
But eighty-four year old Anna and equally aged Simeon have a lesson for us, and it applies even in this age of instant communication and access to information. For these two, the time spent waiting to see the messiah is a time full of energy and spiritual power. It is the waiting of one who hopes; and hope, according to Eric Fromm, is revolutionary. “Hope is paradoxical,” he writes. “It is neither passive waiting, nor is it unrealistic forcing of circumstances that cannot occur. It is like a crouched tiger, which will jump only when the moment for jumping has come . . . . To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime. There is no sense in hoping for that which already exists or for that which cannot be.” Fromm continues, “Those whose hope is weak settle down for comfort or for violence; those whose hope is strong see and cherish all signs of new life and are ready every moment to help the birth of that which is ready to be born.”3 And I would add: those who live in hope are always ready to be surprised by life.
Dadgie and I love watching Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, especially the Patrick Stewart version – I think maybe the best yet. Anyway, poor old Scrooge had spent so many years grinding away at his business he was not capable of being surprised by life. It took the ghosts who walked him through his past, present and future to shake him out of the distorted idea that the world ended at the edge of his wallet. It was only after he came to terms with reality and was awakened to deeper meaning that he was able to feel the surprise of a clear, crisp snowy morning, or the joy of encountering a small boy on the street. That’s the kind of expectant living that can turn practically any moment into an occasion! That’s what Scrooge ultimately became known for – his capacity to find and share joy because he was not done being surprised by the gracious wonder of living.
Watching Scrooge being jolted by the vision of Marley in his door knocker reminded me of something I once learned about Francis of Assisi. He had wandered into the abandoned chapel of San Damiano in his hometown one afternoon to pray. To his surprise God seemed to speak to him through a crucifix: “Francis, rebuild my church that you see is falling down.” So Francis began repairs on a dilapidated, unused chapel. There were probably some who thought him pretty strange for doing so, but I suspect he was singing and smiling as he did it.
You don’t have to be led around by the ghost of Christmas past, or see a face in a door knocker, or hear God speaking through a crucifix. All you have to do is live in expectant hope, like Anna and Simeon. And who knows? Maybe you’ll find yourself ready to be surprised by a baby’s cry, or a face on the street, or a paragraph in a book. Maybe you’ll find that you haven’t, in fact, “seen everything” and that each moment is dripping with the unexpected delight of the Divine miracle of incarnation, that every person you meet and every experience that awaits you is a surprise waiting to happen. It can happen, you know, at any age.
1 Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures, Harper and Row, 1979, pp. 156-157.
2 https://www.plasticsurgery.org/news/press-releases/americans-spent-more-than-16-billion-on-cosmetic-plastic-surgery-in-2018. https://www.zippia.com/advice/cosmetics-industry-statistics/
3 Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology, Harper & Row, 1968, P. 9.
It’s Christmas night. The gifts are opened, the family members have departed, the wrapping paper is cleaned up, and a man strolls out of his back door onto the lawn, to consider the day gone by. For our reflection tonight, let’s just listen in on his inner conversation with himself:
“It’s funny how the night and the light seem ‘used up’ – out here in the dark, in the cold. And there sits the moon – almost full. A waxing gibbous moon, so they say. So here on Christmas night, like the infant in the manger, it could be the hopeful start of something, or maybe the ominous end of something.
“The presents are done with, the dinner is over, the conversation sagged and then turned into ‘goodbyes.’ What’s left of Christmas when Christmas day is over? All the emphasis for weeks, even months, is on Christmas morning: presents, decorating the tree, lights, Christmas stockings, all meant to prepare everything just so for the magic morning. We’re big on mornings. The only nighttime that matters at this time of year is Christmas eve. But night passes and day becomes night again, just like all the other 364 days of the year, and suddenly here I am again, looking up at the Christmas moon.
“Christmas always seems so disappointing. Every year I get ready for a time full of wonder: snowfall, a crackling fireplace, Gorge Bailey singing “Hark the Herald Angels” for the 65th time, and long-lost family members coming home to heal the hurts of many years with a woolen scarf and a wondrous twinkle of Christmas cheer. But I always wind up here, too soon, staring up at the Christmas moon. And the moon sets, and nighttime slips away.
“I’ve followed that moon through all its courses for all the years of my life. It waxes and wanes. Oddly, it never disappoints. Unlike the consistently underwhelming experience of Christmas day, the lunar light is dependably compelling and fulfilling. Even when it hides behind the clouds, its presence is felt in a dim glow across the lawn.
“I wonder what it is in Christmas that I keep searching for and never finding. Is it some special gift: the perfect present for a loved one, or just the thing I’ve always wanted? Could I ever measure up to the paradigm of gift giving – those three guys in bathrobes and crowns who brought gold, and frankincense, and myrrh to the manger . . . or even the ‘little drummer boy?’ If I search the malls diligently enough, or surf from ‘e-bay,’ to ‘amazon dot com,’ might I, on some Christmas yet to come, find ‘gift-giving fulfilment?’ Or is my quest instead for the best time ever with family? Is it for the most satisfying holiday meal? Is it for some indescribable special feeling like I always thought the actors in those TV Christmas specials seemed to have? Is it something so far out of reach, it might as well be . . . the moon?
“I’ve known people whose Christmas dreams seemed so far beyond their grasp the only comfort they could find came in a bottle. I think there must be a dark side to Christmas – the echo of a mad king ordering the slaughter of infants in the desperate hope of putting an end to the irrepressible grace that would supplant his tyranny. There must be something in the season that calls attention to an aching, hollow place inside, that hooded ghost who haunts Scrooge’s Christmas Eve bed, and points a bony finger at our hidden storehouse of hurts and unmet expectations. Maybe people have to keep putting up more and more lights on their houses to ward off the swirling darkness. It’s as if the more lights we put up, the darker it gets. . . . except for the moon. It keeps a steady lamp burning to light our way in the dark, even through the winter solstice.
“It’s cold out here. Suppose I’d better head back inside soon. But I’m still reluctant to leave this lovely moon, and the promise it holds for all the coming phases – reluctant to go back to the desperate glare of the Christmas tree lights, vainly trying to stave off the inevitable demise of the holiday, twinkling away for all their worth, as though this tree won’t be lying in a pool of pine needles in a few days, cold and dead in the woods. But that old moon will still be shining on its carcass.
“Brrrrr! What was it that John wrote in his gospel? Something about a light – ‘the light of all people,’ that’s it. And, ‘that light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’ I guess I really don’t think that light is like the lights on the houses, or on the streets or the Christmas trees. Those lights are all too . . . temporary, too desperate, too disappointing, too . . . dark. The darkness seems somehow to always overcome those lights. By sometime in January, they’ve all been overcome, defeated, stuffed away in boxes in the attic for another year. If John was right, and ‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,’ then the light he was talking about must be something more like . . . like that old moon up there. Even when it seems to turn its back on us and show us its dark side, we know in the depth of our souls that the sun is still lighting it up. There isn’t any sort of darkness that can ever defeat it: not the clouds; not the deepest or blackest night sky; not the bleak moments of the soul in search of meaning; not the darkness of too many shopping mall Christmas carols, and too many lights, and too many toys; not the anguish of failed love, or the broken-heartedness of loss, or the anxious raging confusion of dreams deferred and unfulfilling Christmases.
“I think John must have been talking about a Christ who is a lot bigger than Christmas. I think he must have been saying something about a Spirit that transcends our traditions and celebrations, a Spirit far more dependable than what we all call “the spirit of Christmas.” He must have meant a Spirit that’s everywhere and at all times accessible, only requiring of us that we pause, and turn to seek it out. I think he must have been talking about a true light, an inner light, a divine, dependable light, one that shines even through our own darkness, one that cannot be overcome by that darkness, no matter how bleak.
“Well, time to go inside before I get frostbite out here.
“Oh, yeah . . . Good night, moon.”
In 1815, a newly ordained 23 year old priest was assigned to a parish in the remote mountain village of Mariapfarr, in the Austrian Alps. This young priest had come from an uncommon background. He was born to an unwed mother. In fact, he was her third illegitimate child. In the early nineteenth century that was a blot on one’s life that was not easily overcome. As a child, he was part of a marginal family; the only thing he had going for him was his musical talent. Because of his abilities, he found someone to sponsor his education. But, as an illegitimate child, even when he was fully educated he needed a special dispensation from the Pope to be ordained a priest.
So it was that he came to the people of Mariapfarr. In his first parish assignment for less than a year, he wrote a poem, then set it aside. A year later he was reassigned. They sent him on to the picturesque little town of Oberndorf on the Salzach River, also in the Alps. There, he pastored the Nicola-Kirche (Church of St. Nicholas). On Christmas Eve in his second year there, 1818, it was discovered that mice had eaten out the bellows of the church organ. In a panic, with no musical accompaniment for the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass, he went to the schoolmaster and organist Franz Gruber, and asked him to compose a guitar accompaniment for this poem he had written two years earlier in Mariapfarr. Gruber obliged, and Father Mohr and headmaster Gruber sang the song to Gruber’s guitar accompaniment at the Midnight Mass that evening. And that was that.
Or, that would have been that, had it not been for another little twist of fate. In 1825, the little church finally raised the funds and commissioned the organ repairman, Carl Mauracher, to rebuild the old organ at St. Nicholas’. While working on the organ, Mauracher found a handwritten copy of Mohr’s song. He took it home to the Ziller Valley in the mountains of Tyrol. It caught on and spread from village to village through the mountains.
The song was written, of course in the language they used, German, and it was titled Stille Nacht – in English, Silent Night.
The verses you will sing this morning are only three of the original six that Mohr wrote, and they are taken out of order. The three verses are Mohr’s first verse, his sixth verse, and finally, his second verse. They bear an approximate correlation to the three verses that we sing in English. You’ll find a more literal translation of the original German text in your bulletin announcements (along with the German words, for those who are interested).
Let’s hear two of the verses (verses one and four) as they may have sounded to those folks gathered on that Christmas Eve in a tiny village in the Austrian Alps nearly two hundred years ago.
[Play Strophe 1 &4 “Stille Nacht”]
Today, it may be the most treasured of carols sung at Christmas. It’s sung in virtually every language on the planet, in every corner of the globe. It has become the very essence of Christmas – a song that is almost a universal language in its own right. Mohr and Gruber had no idea what they were throwing together at the last minute on that panicky Christmas Eve, all because of the work of a mischievous little church mouse.
That’s one of the great wonders of life, isn’t it? We never know in any moment what might become of a simple act – what great results might spring from the least of intentions. And maybe that’s the great wonder of Christmas: that it could be at once such an ordinary human event and such a divine moment – the simple birth of a baby in a stable, attended by common shepherds from the field, and the birth of hope itself, heralded by angels, a moment that would change the world forever.
This is the mystery of Christmas. It is a birth, both scandalously common and profoundly wondrous. And in that mystical union of the human and the divine that is the Nativity there lives the germ of a mystery that pervades all our lives.
This Christmas mystery was eloquently conveyed by Oscar Hijuelos, in his novel, Mr. Ive’s Christmas. Mr. Ives had something in common with our hymn writer, Father Mohr, and with Jesus of Nazareth, for that matter. They all started out life with a problematic birth. Mr. Ives was an orphan in pre-World War II New York City. Here’s the account from Hijuelos’ book:
“Of course, while contemplating the idea of the baby Jesus, perhaps the most wanted child in the history of the world, Ives would feel a little sad, remember that years ago someone had left him, an unwanted child, in a foundling home . . . A kind of fantasy would overtake him, a glorious vision of angels and kings and shepherds worshipping a baby: nothing could please him more, nothing could leave him feeling a deeper despair. Enflamed [sic] by the sacred music and soft chanting, his heart lifted out of his body and winged its way through the heavens of the church. Supernatural presences, invisible to the world, seemed thick in that place, as if between the image of the Christ who was newly born and the image of the Christ who would die on the cross and, resurrected, return as the light of the world, there flowed a powerful, mystical energy. And his sense of that energy would leave Ives, his head momentarily empty of washing machine and automobile advertisements, convinced that, for all his shortcomings as a man, he once had a small, if imperfect, spiritual gift. That, long ago, at Christmas.”
That “mystical energy” that Hijuelos wrote about is not just a long-ago experience, and it is a gift received not only at Christmas. Every moment of our existence is filled with the promise of Christmas. Everything you do, every word you speak, bears the seed of God’s mystery. You do not know what wonder God will bring out of your own simple efforts.
You do not know if a smile and pat on the back extended to some young person might be the gesture that leads them to make a simple decision that leads to another decision, that ends in some great accomplishment. You do not know if an evening spent working with a group of folks to plan a program leads to someone being inspired by what you do, an inspiration that motivates them to make one small change to their course in life, and that one life ends up having a major impact on the lives of countless others. You do not know if a homeless, hungry couple who stumble into your back yard, might be about to give birth to the savior of the world in your garage.
Johann Hiernle, the choirmaster in Salzburg couldn’t have known what he was starting. One fine day, he decided to take a chance on a rag-tag, outcast little boy he found playing on the steps leading up to the monastery. The boy was one of the several illegitimate children of a local woman, scorned by the community. When Hiernle made the decision to give the boy a chance at an education, he could never have imagined that two hundred years later we would be faithfully singing that little boy’s Christmas Carol, or that Christmas for us would hardly be the same without it.
That’s the divine mystery of Christmas. Let’s sing about it.
It’s the time of year to sing about angels, and angel choirs: “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing,” “while mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wondering love,” “The first noel, the angel did say,” “from angels bending near the earth,” and this one: “Angels From the Realms of Glory.” Every year, my wife and I put an angel on the top of the Christmas tree, and we watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” about Clarence, the angel who has to earn his wings.
What is an angel? We tend to think of them as supernatural beings (usually appearing like young women), wearing white robes, and sporting a pair of wings coming out of their backs.
Well, you know me. Never content with the usual, I had to go digging. I found out that the word we translate as “angel” in the original Hebrew is malak, which simply means messenger. The divine being that went before the Israelites to protect them as they fled from Pharaoh was called a malak, and so were the men that Jacob sent ahead of him to take gifts of appeasement to his brother, Essau. In ancient Israel, it seems, there wasn’t a lot of distinction between divine messengers and messengers sent by people. A messenger was a messenger. The same thing is true of the Greek word used in the New Testament. The word we translate as “angel” in New Testament writings is aggelos, and it means simply an agent. So, the divine beings who were heralds of glad tidings to the shepherds in the field are called by the same name as the two disciples that John sent to Jesus to ask him if he was the one they had been waiting for. There didn’t seem to be a lot of difference between a divine agent and an agent of John. An agent was an agent.
What I take from this is that a malak or an aggelos doesn’t have to have wings to be the real deal. In fact, in a lot instances in the Bible, there seems to have been created some very intentional uncertainty about whether messengers or agents in a given story are supposed to be supernatural beings, or just ordinary flesh and blood folks. So, I’m inclined to think that what’s important about angels is not the wings, but the message (sorry, Clarence). And I’m inclined to think that there are holy messages being delivered by divine agents all the time, if only we have the ears to hear them.
Someone who heard the voices of angels was born in November of 1771 in Ayrshire, Scotland. His name was James Montgomery, and his parents sent him off to a Moravian seminary at Fulneck, near Leeds, in Yorkshire when he was seven years old. He said goodbye to his mother and he and his father boarded a ship bound for Liverpool. While they were at sea, the vessel was overtaken by a violent storm. Montgomery later recalled how, in the midst of the raging seas – so severe that even the ship’s captain was frightened – his father comforted him with a simple word of faith. His father calmly told him to trust in the providence of God. Montgomery, even at the age of seven, was so struck by this powerful faith that he never forgot it. It was a formative moment. His father had, as it were, been a messenger of divine grace, and Montgomery’s life was changed forever. From that day on, Montgomery was motivated by an unshakable faith, and an indomitable fearlessness.
Another unlikely angel came into his life when he was at the Fulneck seminary. One day the celebrated Lord Monboddo visited the school. Montgomery recalled that he was dressed in a “rough, closely-buttoned coat, with top boots, and carrying in his hand a large whip.” Lord Monboddo asked if there were any Scottish boys in the school, and the teacher brought out the young Montgomery. Lord Monboddo looked him in the face, and menacingly held the whip up in front of him. “Mind, Sir,” he said, “that I trust you will never do anything to disgrace your country.” “This,” said Montgomery, “I never forgot, nor shall I forget it while I live. I have, indeed, endeavoured so to act hitherto, that my country might never have cause to be ashamed of me.”
These two powerful moments in his life shaped the boy in unmistakable ways. After leaving the seminary, he found himself in time working for a newspaper called the Sheffield Register. The publisher had to leave the country in a hurry for fear of being arrested for sedition because of the strong liberal, reformer views he published and supported. Montgomery took over as editor, changed the name of the paper to the Sheffield Iris, and continued the tradition of publishing works that supported the reformers. Montgomery was wise enough, however, to do so with an artful subtlety that kept him out of prison – for the most part. He actually was jailed twice in York castle for his liberal views.
Throughout his life, he managed to strike a remarkable balance. On the one hand, he consistently spoke out on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised, against slavery, and in opposition to the oppressive government – he did so out of his strong, fearless and irrepressible faith, a faith ignited in him by a divine messenger, his own father. On the other hand, he managed to earn the respect of his comrades, even those who threw him in prison. He was so artful in his use of the printed word that he ultimately became something of a national treasure – he was able to do so because of a stern lesson learned from an angelic visitor with a whip who taught him to make his country proud of him.
Just to get a flavor of how clearly he spoke, and how eloquently he stood for the things he believed in, I offer the following quote from his farewell address to his readers in 1825: “I nevertheless was preserved from joining myself to any of the political societies till they were broken up in 1794, when, I confess, I did associate with the remnant of one of them for a purpose which I shall never be ashamed to avow; to support the families of several of the accused leaders, who were detained prisoners in London, under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and who were finally discharged without having been brought to trial.”
James Montgomery managed to pull off the most difficult of feats – something that few others have ever accomplished. He lived in a time of officially sanctioned oppression and insensitivity to the lot of common folk, and his life was devoted to the abolition of slavery, to the rights of poor classes like chimney sweepers’ apprentices, and to calling attention to those who abused their power, such as the magistrate who over-reacted in quelling a riot in Sheffield in 1795 – a criticism for which he spent six months imprisoned in York Castle. And yet, this man who spoke against the policies of his government was, ultimately acclaimed as a hero in his community, in 1830 and 1831 he delivered lectures on poetry at the Royal Institution, which were published in 1833, and in 1835 he received an annual pension of 150 pounds from the government because of his many contributions to English society as a respected poet and author. In essence, he kicked the blackguards in the shins, and was rewarded for doing it so well. That’s not easy to pull off.
So, what is an angel? An angel is a divine messenger or agent. I suspect if you had asked James Montgomery, he might have said his father was an angel, and he might have said that surly Lord Monboddo standing in front of him with a whip in his hand was an angel. If you ask me, I might say that James Montgomery was an angel.
His divine message was delivered through a lifetime of integrity and perseverance, through poetry and prose, and through a particular gift to us. In 1816, he published a poem in his newspaper, “Good Tidings of Great Joy to All People.” Many years later, the composer, Henry Smart, dedicated a hymn tune to London’s Regent Square Presbyterian Church. And some time later, someone thought to put Smart’s tune together with Montgomery’s words, and the result is sung every Christmas by millions of Christians around the world: “Angels From the Realms of Glory.”
I’m sure that on Christmas my wife and I will watch It’s a Wonderful Life for the forty seventh time. I’m sure that when they’re all standing around the Christmas tree in the end, and the bell rings, and George Bailey is reminded by his daughter that “Teacher says, ‘when you hear a bell ring it means an angel gets its wings,” and George smiles and says, “That’s right . . . that’s right . . . ‘atta boy, Clarence,” I’ll get all teary-eyed for the forty seventh time. I’ll get weepy partly because I love Jimmy Stewart and they don’t make movies like that any more, but also because the story is ancient and it touches a sacred place in my soul. It’s the celebration of the messenger who brings the eternal and omnipotent message that life is holy and that in the grand procession of the ages, faithfulness and goodness matter.
I believe in angels. I believe the world is populated with them. I believe that a divine message to us is being conveyed by agents of grace at every turn. My prayer for you is that these angels will happen upon you when you least expect it – that you will be engaged and transformed by their message. When it happens, will they be wearing white robes and sporting wings? Who knows? Maybe. But I suspect it might as easily be a family member, or even someone with a whip in his hand. Divine messengers and agents come in all forms. But angels are real. And I pray that in this Christmas season they will “wing their flight o’er all the earth” and proclaim that “God with us is now residing,” and that those of us who have been “watching long in hope and fear” will see the dawn of peace, and justice, and good will toward all.
May it be so. Amen.
Let’s sing it together.
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