Sermons

August 4, 2024

Hallelujah

Nearly eight years ago one of the true icons of modern music, the poet, singer, and song writer Leonard Cohen “slipped the surely bonds of earth” . . . and, as he put it, “stood before the Lord of Song.” His song, Hallelujah, has always enchanted me, and I thought today I’d unpack it a bit in the light of scripture.  I wanted to play the song for you but that ran into too many problems, so I’ll recite his words like poetry (which, in fact they are). I’m sure most of you have heard the song. We begin with King David:

These are Cohen’s familiar words:

Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do ya?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Well, King David, so scripture tells us, played the lyre, and as a boy he played it so sweetly that it drove the evil spirits from the heart of King Saul.  But David, the magical musician, grew up to be a baffled king, indeed.  He was not a plaster saint in Israel’s memory as is our own George Washington.  He was remembered as sometimes faithful, sometimes devious, sometimes courageous and sometimes paranoid, occasionally guided by his great wisdom, and frequently led astray by his uncontrolled passions.  He was, it seemed, truly baffled by life and by his place in it.

Isn’t it astounding that the ancient Israelites, so sure of their place as the chosen people, would reflect in sacred writings on the troubled heart and distasteful deeds of the king who, from antiquity, had so powerfully defined them?

A case in point: King David, his head full of the trappings of power, strolled on his rooftop late one afternoon and chanced to see a beautiful woman below bathing.  He inquired about the identity of this beauty and was told she was Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah.  So he sent for her and made love to her in his quarters.  Later, Bathsheba sent word to King David; “Guess what?  I’m pregnant.”  So, the good king did what any upright father of a nation might be expected to do; he devised a way to kill Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah.  He had him put at the front of an advancing military charge, and as might be expected, Uriah was cut down in the battle.  After Bathsheba had time to do her mourning, David sent for her and married her.  O David, “You saw her bathing on the roof, Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya.”

Not exactly the kind of story you’d expect to find in an Israeli student’s history book.  But then, these writers didn’t seem to be interested in glossing over the weaknesses and failings of their leaders.  And Leonard Cohen, a faithful Jew, was also not interested in polishing the image of an historic ruler of Israel.  But it wasn’t always lust and depravity that marked those ancient leaders; sometimes it was pure stupidity, as in the case of Samson who succumbed to the transparent, flagrant greed of his lover, Delilah.

Samson’s enemies, the Philistines, had offered Delilah eleven hundred pieces of silver if she would find out the source of Samson’s great strength and betray him.  So she asked Samson, and he toyed with her; he told her his weakness was fresh bowstrings.  If he were bound with them, he would become weak.  So, inexplicably, he let her tie him up with fresh bowstrings while the Philistines hid in the shadows.  She shouted, “The Philistines are upon you!”  And, of course, he snapped the strings.  She kept asking him what his weakness was, and he kept lying to her, and she kept trying to tie him up for the Philistines, and he kept breaking the ropes.  You’d think, after a few times, he might catch on that this woman may not be entirely worthy of his trust.  Anyway, he got so tired of her nagging, that he finally told her the truth, that if his hair were cut, he would lose his strength.  So she cut off his hair, the Philistines grabbed him, put his eyes out, and carried him off in chains.  And Delilah was financially set for life.  O Samson: “She tied you to a kitchen chair, She broke your throne, and she cut your hair.”

From all this painful past, in all this ugly, tainted history, is there nonetheless a hallelujah to be sung?

Once agin, Cohen’s words:

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Ancient leaders are not alone in their foibles.  How many, many times you and I have been tripped up by our passions, our self-interest, our naivete, our foolishness, our greed.  In spite of our claims to goodness and our aspirations to worthiness, failure and folly seem to be woven into the fabric of existence.  And sometimes souls seem terribly and irreconcilably lost.  Sometimes it feels as though a heavy cloud had moved in to obscure the sunlight of Divine presence, and all that remains is darkness.  We see such a thing in the haunting face of a young Black man cut down in the prime of life by an anxious, trigger-happy police officer.  We see it in the body-count on the nightly news from the hearts of our major cities.  And when the bodies fall, and the odor of gunpowder fades, the rest of us are left to try to make the puzzle pieces fit together in some picture of reality that makes sense.

There are too many guns in America.  There are too many assault weapons, and way too many super clips of ammunition.  There is too much despair in America.  There are too many lost souls, and way too few resources for the mentally ill.  There are too few ears listening for the “cry you can hear at night”.  There is too little hope in the despairing streets of our cities, and way too few opportunities for broken people to find the light in the darkness of those cold streets.

But even with the echoes of gunfire bouncing off the walls of our cities, is there nonetheless a tear-filled, “cold and broken hallelujah” to be sung?

From Leonard Cohen:

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew ya
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not somebody who has seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

So many of our hallelujahs are broken and cold.  They are anguished cries that rise up from parched mouths and frozen tongues.

But some words of praise are even broken and cold.  Is there a more broken hallelujah from a more broken human being than the cry of “Allahu Akbar” shouted before the bomb goes off?  Such a cry is regarded as holy by those who shout it.  But when it’s the final exclamation of a suicide bomber the words sound more like profanity to us.

It’s not only Muslims, you know.  Our own Christian tradition is replete with fanatics who thought they were doing “God’s will” by slaughtering people.  And this disease goes back even further.  In the book of Revelation we read this morning that angels in heaven would be singing “hallelujah!” when “the great whore . . . Babylon” (which was code language for Rome) would be burned to the ground.  “Hallelujah, Amen!” they would sing.

What are we to say about such brokenness – the broken lives, the broken souls, the broken hearts, screaming words of praise and words of hatred?  Here’s the thing that gets stuck in my head about all this: whether people are praising one another, praising the Lord, or shouting at their enemies, whether they are assiduously watching their language, dropping a profane word into their vocabulary, or swearing like a drunken sailor, whether they are throwing around the latest rehearsed political put-down, mangling the king’s English beyond recognition, or offering resplendent words of inspired leadership, isn’t it a deeply compelling and even awe-inspiring thing that we human beings are able to convey to one another the depths of our hearts – love, joy, peace, hope, hatred, fear, confusion, the very essence of being human?  Every word of language is blazing with the astonishing light of the laws of physics, the very power of creation.  The ability to do what I’m doing right now, to pass the inner workings of my soul on to another being, is a miracle!  It’s a wonder!  It’s a profound reflection of the divine gift that, in spite of all our failings and foibles, resides at the core of our existence.

Amid all our words, profane words, holy words, or broken words, is there a hallelujah to be sung?

Here’s how Cohen put it:

You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well really, what’s it to ya?
There’s a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

You and I want to fill our Sunday mornings with holy hallelujahs, but we find ourselves from Monday through Saturday living with broken words, broken dreams, broken promises.  It’s not that we’re terrible people; we’re basically good people.  But we’re people.  Like David, like Samson, like the bad cops, the religious extremists, and street rioters, our humanity keeps getting in the way of our aspirations.  I reach the point where I feel that if I do the right thing instead of bollixing everything up half the time, it’s a pretty good percentage.  But we keep trying; and that’s also what makes us human.

And here’s what I believe down to the very soles of my feet: you can get enthralled by a woman you see bathing from your rooftop; you can be foolish enough to let another person cut your hair and dis-empower you; you can say the wrong thing, embarrass yourself by your vocabulary, but you can’t screw up badly enough to cut yourself off from the Heart of Being.  Your life is like a song, but you’re not singing it – you’re being sung!  The words, the words of your character, your essence, your soul, at times profane, at times holy, are being sung through the years, at times off key or off tempo, but the melody underlying it is harmonious and brilliantly performed by the composer of the work, who is the very Heart of Existence.

This is the essence of faith.  Faith isn’t the commitment to be a good boy or girl; faith isn’t mouthing a bunch of religious doctrines; faith isn’t the determination to believe a lot of things that seem unbelievable; faith isn’t the will power to use clean language or speak nicely about people.  Faith is an attitude of being.  It is a “hallelujah” sung in the face of the hooded messenger of fate.  It is an awareness of the timeless and elegant beauty of being connected to the Center of Existence, and knowing, in a way that transcends language and reason, that through all the failures and missed opportunities there is nonetheless a hallelujah to be sung!  Through all the abusive moments and times of inadequacy there is nonetheless a hallelujah to be sung!  Through all the denials, days of skepticism and nights of despair, no matter what, in the end, we all stand together before the Lord of song with nothing on our tongues but Hallelujah!

Here’s his last stanza:

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool ya
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah,

July 28, 2024

“Give Your Lunch to Jesus”

I must confess, it’s been so many years that I can’t entirely remember from whom I first heard the line.  I think it was the great Black preacher, Sandy Ray, holding forth at the Mordecai Johnson Institute of Religion, but I know it was over forty years ago.  All I remember is the ringing sound of the voice saying, “Give your lunch to Jesus!”  He had just told the story of the feeding of the five thousand, and of the little boy who offered his five barley loves and two fish, a little boy who, in fact, gave his lunch to Jesus.  And he admonished us to do the same, to give whatever we had to Jesus, no matter how meager, no matter how seemingly inconsequential.  Just give whatever you have to Jesus, and see what he can do with it.  I was carried away by the simple power of that message all those years ago, and in reflection, I still am.

My theology has changed a lot over those years, but I’d like to reflect with you this morning on how, after all these years, and all the hard knocks of over fifty years in parish ministry, and all the frustrations, sacrifices, disappointments and painful lessons of a guy who’s been around the block so many times now that my beard is grey and my hair is falling out, those simple words, “give your lunch to Jesus,” still carry meaning for me.

It is particularly now that the simplicity of “give your lunch to Jesus” strikes a deep and powerful note, because it is now that the world seems a far too complicated, too painful, and too confusing place.  But I am not drawn to the simplicity of this phrase because it’s an escape from the problems of the world.  I’m drawn to it for exactly the opposite reason – it describes three miracles that are the only means I can think of for saving the world.

Before I share those three miracles with you, I have a few things to say about water, economics, and war.  You’ve read the news.  You know that while the oceans are rising, there are also places where water is becoming more scarce every year.  More heat and dryness out West in our country has led to drought worsening in Northern California, the Northwest, Northern Rockies, into the Plains, but that’s nothing compared to places on this globe where clean water has become such a scarce commodity that it’s like gold – and the poor have about as much access to it as they do to gold.

Now, I have a little morning ritual that I’ll tell you a secret about.  My shower head has settings on it for wide spray, concentrated spray, and shower massage.  I personally love the massage setting, so I just keep it there most of the time.  Unfortunately, the water pressure from our well pump varies quite a bit from time to time depending on where we are in the backflow cycle of our filtration system.  So, sometimes the flow is strong and vigorous, and other times it’s merely acceptable.  But when it’s at its lowest, there’s not enough water pressure to drive the massage mechanism on my showerhead.  So, here’s my morning ritual.  I put the showerhead on massage and hope that it keeps working.  I try to divine the pulses and sounds of the system to determine if it’s going to keep going or stop and just squirt a steady stream.  So I try to get in a little massage action on my back before it might quit on me.  Now, I realize that this is a trivial little part of my day that most of you are probably not be the slightest bit interested in, but here’s the point: somewhere in Nigeria there’s a mother who, like hundreds of thousands of others all over the continent, wakes every morning hoping against all hope that she will be able search out, scrounge, or steal from somewhere, somehow, enough clean drinking water to keep herself and her children alive for one more day without giving everyone a deadly disease.  When I awake in the morning hoping that my shower massager will keep working, I should at least have the decency to be embarrassed.

Water is an increasingly precious commodity.  We have lots and lots of it here where we live; even when there are dry conditions, none of us has been terribly inconvenienced.  We haven’t figured out a way to get water from here to sub-Saharan Africa; redistribution of this resource is pretty tough to work out.  But even if we could, how ready would you and I be to share?  Would we happily, or even grudgingly, limit our own water availability to the point that it impacted our ease of living?  I raise this question because it strikes at the heart of a very large issue for our world.  I suppose it’s largely an economic question: how do we come up with an equitable distribution of limited resources?

We have a presidential campaign underway (in case you haven’t noticed) in which economic policies are front and center.  The Republicans and Democrats are perhaps not as far apart on this score as many of us suppose.  The difference between the two parties is only a matter of degree in terms of taxes for the wealthy, how much government should be involved in things like private sector support, health care, regulation of the financial markets, etc.  Each party has its own vision for what kind of policies will prove to be best for all Americans.  But the truth is, no economic system or set of policies and laws will be the determining factor in that larger question of equitable distribution of resources.  If people want to accumulate for themselves everything they can, hoard resources, assets, and the means of production, while others are left to fight over the table scraps, they will do it.  No economic system, no set of regulations, will keep us from it.  We will find a way.  And whether people who earn over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year pay 35% income tax or 39.6% is not going to change that dynamic one iota.  If I thought political systems were the answer I’d be a politician.  The answer has to do with what’s going on in the hearts and minds of people, and that’s one reason I have been in the ministry.

Which takes us to war.  War is always about inequality.  It’s always about some people wanting what others have and adopting any means necessary to get it.  The primary instigation for such conflict is always the desire on someone’s part to get the wealth, power, influence, religious privilege, resources that someone else has.  It is the dynamic of greed and desire based on perceived social, political, religious, or economic, inequalities writ large.  And the stockpiling of nuclear weaponry, and the actions of wing-nuts like Vladimir Putin are all part of the global distrust and hubris that grows out of this human condition.

So, the question is not simply economics, it’s a moral question: how do we come up with a world in which people are willing to share, even to the point of some self-sacrifice?  That takes us to our three miracles.  Most people think the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand was that Jesus used some magic power to make the loaves and fishes grow and become tons of food.  If that’s all there is to it, I have to confess, I’m not impressed.  No, the miracles in this story are bigger than that in my mind.  They are no less than the potential salvation of the world.

It all started with a little boy who brought a basket lunch to the first century equivalent of an outdoor rock concert.  As rock concerts are wont to do, the show went on a lot longer than anyone figured it would, and we all know what happened.  Anyone who’s ever put up a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with potato chips in a brown bag knows the point of greatest significance in this story: it’s about what happened when a little boy decided to give up his lunch.

But it didn’t have to happen the way it did.  The boy with the loaves of bread and fish in his basket might have looked around at this sea of people and clutched his lunch a bit more closely.  He might have logically concluded that, in a crowd so vast, in a place where no clear answers were evident, in a situation that looked murky at best and at worst defied all attempts to offer a reasonable solution, the best course of action was to hold on to what little he had, withdraw from the problem and leave the perplexing task of taking care of all those people to “those who are more familiar with the situation.”  But he didn’t.  And that’s the first miracle of this story.  He did a miraculous thing: he gave his lunch to Jesus.

It could have gone differently.  Andrew might have seen the boy approaching with his little basket of barley loaves and fish, and intercepted him with a warm and appreciative smile: “Thank you, son.  Your desire to help means a lot, but I’m afraid we need a bit more than a few pieces of bread and fish.  You might as well hold on to them.”

It could have gone differently.  Philip, who knew that they needed more than 200 denarii might have gotten so involved in the “Over the Hillside, Over the Top” financial campaign that he might not have even noticed the little boy trying to offer his lunch.

But it didn’t go that way.  The boy gave up his lunch, and I think that gesture changed everyone at the gathering.  I know I’m reading into the story, but I can’t help it; it only makes sense.  I think he inspired the disciples.  And I think, so inspired by his gesture, the disciples were able to be inspiring to the crowds as they went among them.  Which takes us to the second miracle.  People passed the food among themselves and each one shared with his neighbor.  I suspect, that, inspired by the act of this small boy, others in the crowd who had something to eat were motivated to share what they had as well.  In how many crowds of five thousand people would that happen, without a few grabbing as many baskets as they could and running off to another hillside with their booty?  Everyone shared what was there.  For me, that’s miracle enough.  It’s miracle enough to demonstrate that human beings aren’t destined by their genetic code or “survival of the fittest” to live always and only for themselves.  It’s miracle enough to convince me that we are all capable of becoming more than we are, and even sacrificing some of our own riches, pleasures, and security for the sake of others.

Which leads naturally to the third miracle.  The food was distributed, and scripture says, “they were satisfied.”  There’s the miracle.  Everyone in that place was satisfied with what they got.  I don’t know how much each person ate.  Some surely ate more than others.  Some surely just took a few bird pecks, to leave more for others.  Some were probably ravished, and gobbled up loaves; others were probably not that hungry, or decided to wait till they got home.  There were probably five thousand different stories of eating loaves and fishes on that day.  But here’s the miracle: everyone was satisfied with what they had.  How many of us in this land of plenty are satisfied with what we have?  How many of us instead yearn for something else, something more in life, some different life circumstance, some more dependable security, some greater comfort?

What a miracle took place on that hillside!  It was the miracle of a little boy who in spite of his own desires, amidst the intimidating atmosphere of people in authority, and in the face of ridiculous odds offered up his lunch.  It was the miracle of an overpowering spirit of sharing that spread through the crowd like some benign virus.  It was the miracle of five thousand people all deciding at last that they were satisfied with what they had.

Do you find yourself at times lost in sea of uncertainty about the future, maddening debates that miss the point, and confounding dilemmas that seem to be ignored?  Do you find yourself looking at your own meager resources of faith, finances, and fortitude, and feel ready to just give up?  Do you wonder if your own little drop in the bucket of time spent volunteering to bring meals to a family in crisis, or helping with the food pantry, or tutoring children, or visiting someone in the hospital, or just being thoughtful and kind really matters in the grand sweep of things?  I have a word for you today: “Give your lunch to Jesus.”

The power of your faith or convictions may seem quite flimsy and of little merit in comparison to those around you who seem to have so much to offer.  The possibility of being a friend to a person in need may not seem of any real value in a world where people are hurting and suffering by the hundreds of thousands.  But I have a word for you today: “Give your lunch to Jesus.”

We are faced with a world of so much need, and so many seemingly unanswerable questions.  But we keep learning, in one context after another, that putting forth a little effort and doing the best we can with what we have is often blessed by the Spirit of Christ in ways that surprise us, and lead us closer to true understanding and true community.  As for me, I’ll never turn on my shower massager again without thinking about some woman and her children in Nigeria scrounging for enough to drink.  And I’ll be motivated by that thought to do my part in whatever small way I can.  In various and wondrous ways we keep discovering anew the profound value of a simple lesson:

Don’t cling to what’s yours with a death grip;

don’t flail around grasping for more;

don’t despair;

don’t surrender;

don’t give up;

just “give your lunch to Jesus.”

July 21, 2024

“Ally, Ally Outs in Free”

In Ottumwa, Iowa, about sixty-five years ago, on any warm summer night, somewhere in the vicinity of the 200 block of South Ward Street, you would have heard some kid yelling, “Ally, ally outs in free!”  It meant that the person who was “it” had found somebody who was out hiding in the bushes and had beat them back to “home.”  The game was over and everyone who was out hiding behind the garage or under the porch was supposed to come back in so a new game could be started with the loser of the foot race being “it.”  The cry, at least in my neighborhood in the mid-fifties meant that all the “outs” (those who were still out hiding) could come “in” “free” (that is, without getting penalized) since the game was over.  Hence, “Ally, ally outs in free.”  Now, I know that a lot of you learned the phrase as “Olly, olly oxen free,” but let’s be honest; that doesn’t make any sense.  Some people say it’s a corruption of the German phrase “Alle, alle auch sint frei,” or, roughly, “everyone, everyone is free.”  But that’s just bad German.  Anyway, we said it how we said it.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

There was something almost sacred about that phrase.  We never messed with it.  We were, I confess, fond of trying to trick each other into coming out of hiding so we could get them and win the game.  We might yell, “Joey, your mom wants you to come out so you can go home for dinner!” or “Oh, I stubbed my toe, come help me.”  We were shameless.  But there was a sort of unspoken sanctity about “Ally, ally outs in free.”  There was no joking with it.  When you used that phrase, it was real; the game was over; there were no tricks.

I tell you about all of this as a way of asking your indulgence if I take a bit of liberty with the lofty language of scripture this morning.  I’d like to offer a translation of today’s text.  I’m translating into the language of the ’50’s, as heard in the neighborhood of 245 South Ward Street.  In that jargon, these words from the second chapter of Ephesians would sound something like this: “Ally, ally outs in free.”

The Apostle Paul knew who the “outs” were in the early Christian movement.  They were the Gentiles, those who were not pure.  In those days the test of authenticity for “church membership,” if you will, was not how many committees and rummage sales you had worked on, it was whether or not you were a child of Abraham, a faithful Jew, adhering to the law of Moses.  The early Christians, the first followers of Jesus, were Jews; and the non-Jews, the Gentiles in places like Ephesus were not quickly embraced by the faithful in Jerusalem.

So, Paul tells these newbies, these new Gentile followers of Christ, that they should no longer consider themselves “strangers and sojourners” – they are no longer “outs” – but “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”  They are now “in,” and, what’s more, they are “in, free.”  They’re not “in” because they contributed enough dollars, or because they belong to the right social class, or because they’ve put in enough hours on programs and projects, but totally by grace, totally without price or accounting, “free.”  “Ally, ally outs in free.”  It’s a sacred thing.  No playing around; no tricks.  The words can be trusted.

Are you one of the “outs,” or are you “in?”  If the truth be known, most of us feel at times like one, and at times like the other.  In some settings, with our friends, or in places where we spend a lot of time, we are at home, it’s our turf, we feel comfortably “in.”  In other arenas of life, any of us can feel like a stranger, a sojourner.  Attending a friend’s wedding reception, in a room full of complete strangers, moving into a new town, or even attending a church, can seem like being on someone else’s turf.

But, there are folks who have been “outs” for so long, and ousted from so much, that the entire world feels like someone else’s turf.  That’s a particularly painful way to go through life.  It can lead to chronic shuffling of the feet and downcasting of the eyes.  Sometimes I think a person can feel so thoroughly “out” of this world that everyone in it is seen as nothing more than an alien being responsible in some convoluted logic for one’s own misery.

And we are all well aware of the zones where we are “out” or “in,” the boundaries of which are defined by skin color, or socio-economic background, or language, or political views.  Sadly, those who attempt to cross these boundaries are consistently met with looks, and gestures, and comments that remind them they are out of their territory.  Certain sections of any major city, certain communities, clubs (country and otherwise), political organizations, even service organizations, can be such places of clearly identified turf.  I’m led to wonder if a young man takes a rifle to a rooftop to try to assassinate a candidate for the presidency because the divisions between us have become so extreme that it seems in his twisted mind it’s the only solution.

I’ve often wondered what a visitor from another planet would make of all this.  I imagine such a newcomer to earth standing with mouth agape, and head cocked trying to understand as we explain all the intricacies of social stratification.  I wonder if the alien would say, “But, you all look alike, and you’re all on this same little planet together.  The purpose of all these divisions among yourselves eludes me.”  I don’t know what we’d say to that alien to explain it all.  I’m not sure that I could make sense out of it.  For whatever reason, we seem to be enamored of drawing circles around ourselves, whether we draw them to identify ourselves as “ins” or to identify ourselves as “outs,” we can be equally comforted by them.

Well, check your magic marker at the door when you enter this place, because we draw no circles here.  As soon as you cross the threshold of the church, you enter a place where there are no “ins” and no “outs” – at least that’s the ideal we try to hold ourselves to here.  It’s not easy, because it goes against the grain of everything else in our lives and seems almost contrary to our very natures.  We might be more comfortable in some ways if there were different levels of membership, each with a different status.  In fact, we sometimes subconsciously try to create them.  We could have hierarchies like the rest of the world does, based on seniority or talent.  That way you could work your way up the ladder over the course of a few years and become a “senior, chief muckity-muck,” but then we wouldn’t learn anything, would we?

And, once every month we come to the table, to eat the same bread and drink the same cup. Every Sunday we sit and stand and sing together, with no honored places, or positions of privilege, to declare a oneness in Christ that flies in the face of society’s proclivity for naming the “ins” and the “outs.”

Martha Sterne tells a wonderful story about a sermon that went way out of control.  “A friend was delivering the sermon to his parish in downtown Macon, Georgia,” she writes, “on a Sunday in the late sixties. As you know, the whole country was in an uproar with Vietnam and civil rights marches and women were waking up and young people finding spectacular ways to be outrageous.

“All of this was swirling around his congregation, which included city fathers, who made it clear to their young rector that on Sundays they wanted to rest from the unrest. . . .

“Newcomers were showing up in church, some in jeans and long hair, even rock musicians. The newcomers got involved in outreach ministries serving the poor, which was sort of okay with the church leaders. But the newcomers also wanted the poor and anybody else to come to church which was not okay. They even put an advertisement in the paper with the Sunday service schedule and a picture of a black sheep and the words ‘Come As You Are.’

“Inviting even more strange people to flock to the church through the newspaper, with the connotation that some of the sheep might be black, was the last straw for the traditionalists. One woman mailed a letter to the entire parish in which she stated that the reach of the outreach people had exceeded the grasp of any sensible person by a long shot.

“Thus, lack of appreciation pervaded the atmosphere on that Sunday. . . . The priest . . . launched, subtly of course, into repenting the traditionalists’ sins. He spoke with assurance, deftly weaving the stories of Isaiah’s community and Jesus’ crowd and the world of Macon, Georgia. He described the parallels in a gently ironic tone, and he looked out over the congregation who seemed transfixed. If the truth were to be told he was pleased with himself. Then as he paused for breath, the unthinkable happened.  A lady stood up. . . . she said, ‘do you mean to say we are wrong? Do you mean to say that for all these years we have been wrong?’

“Then the young rector opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. And he stood in the pulpit. For a moment, all was silence. And then another voice in the congregation spoke up and then another and then another. And people talked of trying to become part of church and being frozen out. And others mourned the loss of respect for traditions held dear. And some yelled in anger and some said they were afraid of what the church and the whole world were coming to. And many people cried.  The congregation argued with itself for about twenty minutes. And the young rector stood in the pulpit. And listened. Then for a moment all was silence again. And he said, ‘I don’t know what to do. What do we do now?’ And someone said, ‘well, we might as well do [communion].’

“And they [celebrated the Lord’s Supper] . . .And of course you know the rest of the story. Like Paul and the Gentiles or Nixon and the Chinese, the enraged traditional woman became the instrument of reconciliation between the old-timers and the new people. She was the first woman ever on the vestry, and largely through her sponsorship, the first female priest in Georgia came to that congregation. And through the grace of God in her and some others, the doors of the church opened wider to invite strangers in and to send people out to love and serve.”¹

And, like that church in Macon, Georgia, Sunday after Sunday here, together, we continue to lift up to those around us a model of community without barriers and divisions, and we continue to invite others to do the same.

My message today is not complicated; in fact, it’s rather brief.  It boils down to this: In the course of my ministry, I’ve thought of three or four things that are so important I’ve wished they could be written on a big sign over the front door to the church.  One of them is this:

“Ally, ally outs in free.”

¹ Martha Sterne, All Saints’ Church, Atlanta, GA, “Can Pentecost Be Private?,” Journal For Preachers, Pentecost, 1997, pp. 40-41.

July 14, 2024

That’s What You Get for Dancing

One of my first pastorates out of seminary was in a small rural community in upstate New York.  I have changed quite a bit since those days, but one way in which I remain much the same person is that I have always loved to have fun.  I tend to make light of a lot of things, and I’m particularly good at particularly bad jokes.  Sometimes I even get a little carried away and get downright silly.  Well, in this rural church there was a farmer by the name of Elihu Jones.  Elihu was a stern, austere man who had admirably made his way through life by sheer hard work.  He was an early riser, and a no-nonsense, nose-to-the-grindstone sort of guy.  He read the Bible regularly and could quote chapter a verse when called upon.  Mostly, though, he didn’t say much.  I’ll never forget one evening after a church meeting held in someone’s home, Elihu came up to me and confronted me about the jokes and light-hearted fooling around that was my wont.  He said that he didn’t think it was quite appropriate for a minister to behave in such a way.  When I protested he put me in my place by quoting Isaiah 53:3.  He said, “Jesus was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief!”  Well, dear old Elihu probably went to his grave thinking that I was a lost cause.  And I guess he was right; I’ve never gotten over my inclination toward light-hearted fun and bad jokes.  But then, I’m not convinced of Elihu’s scriptural exegesis.  I recall also that Jesus seemed to enjoy a party – he turned the water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana.  And I suspect that he must have known how to have a good time because he got the finger-wagging rebuke that comes to those who don’t take it all as seriously as some would prefer.  Jesus tells us in Matthew 11:19 that he was accused by some of being a glutton and a drunkard, and hanging out with the wrong crowd.  You don’t get that kind of reputation for nothing.

King David certainly knew how to party.  He brought the sacred arc up from the house of Obed-edom to Jerusalem “with rejoicing”.  And then he got so carried away that he stripped down to his skivvies, and started dancing in the street.  Now, I can’t really imagine a national leader doing that today (the image is a bit unsettling), but for David it kind of feels right.  He was, if you’ll pardon the expression, “letting it all hang out.”  There was something authentic and compelling in his outrageous performance that was not simply calling attention to himself but reminding everyone that even though he is king, he also a human being.  But Michal, the daughter of Saul, looked out her window and saw the king prancing around in front of everyone in his skivvies, and she was scandalized.  She let him have it – called him vulgar and shameless.  For David, I guess, that’s what you get for dancing.

It seems there’s always someone around to throw cold water on the party.  And if the truth be known, a lot of the time that’s you and I.  We adhere to our sense of propriety.  We don’t want to be seen as fools.  And consequently, we can find ourselves disinclined to really loosen up to find and express the joy in life.

Now, I have to admit, I haven’t always felt much like dancing – let alone doing it in the street in my BVD’s.  But I think David’s dance is about something larger than having fun.  He explains to Michal: “It was before the Lord, who chose me in place of your father and all his household, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord, that I have danced before the Lord.  I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in my own eyes.”  In other words, David was dancing with his feet because he felt blessed enough by the Lord’s presence and favor that he was dancing in his heart.  And having a dancing heart is what it’s all about.

I think that David’s dance is informative.  It is the sense of being connected to the divine, of being one with the Heart of Existence, of being touched by the Divine Light, that makes a heart dance.  And you don’t have to be happy for that to happen.  Your heart can dance even when your eyes are flooded with tears.

I’ve often tried to describe what this “dancing heart” feels like; I never seem to quite get it right.  It’s so hard to explain because it’s not just about being happy, it is a certain lightness that comes when one can let go of hurt and fear in the awareness of a deeper Presence.  One elucidation of this feeling is found in C. S. Lewis’s description of the emotional reaction to the name of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  He writes that, “each one of the children felt something jump in his inside. . . . Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her.  And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.”¹  It’s that kind of transportation to a place of freedom and wholeness that I’m talking about.

But your heart can’t dance if it’s tied up with resentment and weighed down with anger.  That was the case for Herodias in our gospel reading from Mark today.  Her heart was so twisted up with rage at John the Baptist that all she could think about was killing him.  So her daughter performed a death-dance before the king and wound up with an ugly, bloody head on a platter.  That’s what you get for dancing if that’s the kind of dance you’re into.

And your heart can’t dance if it’s in a straightjacket.  And that’s what happens so often when we become emotionally absorbed in our own trials and traumas.  I’ve discovered something about that also.  When all there is to do is sit around, felling sorry for myself about something, the minutes and hours can seem interminable – unbearable.  Often, all it takes is to have some focus other than myself to make it all seem so much more manageable.  Dadgie, bless her heart, can lift me up with a smile or a kiss.  Something like that can do wonders to take you out of yourself.  I think that’s the case for any of us.  When we get into those awful times of self-absorption and self-pity, it can turn into a downhill spiral that’s hard to get out of – and that’s the straightjacket that keeps one’s heart from dancing.  I think that’s one of the great values of the kind of fellowship we have in this church.  We rub elbows around here and get to know each other, and in time, we learn to truly care about one another.  I’ve seen people here reaching out to others in times of need, and I’ve seen folks doing that in scorn of their own infirmities and troubles.  The bonds that we form in this church family are mutually healing.  They shift our perspective and free our hearts.

So, one way to get a dancing heart is to get outside of yourself.  Another way is to simply stop taking yourself so seriously.  I think it was G. K. Chesterton who said that angels are able to fly because they take themselves lightly.  There is great power for healing to be found in poking fun at one’s self.  Sometimes you and I can get so consumed by our agendas and priorities that one might think the world rises or falls on whether we get what we want.  Maybe that’s the value in telling jokes and being a little silly.  It keeps one from getting too serious about one’s own place in the world.

But perhaps the best way to get a dancing heart is to spend time realizing your connection to the quiet Power that pervades all being.  Whether it’s through meditation or simply repeated moments of reflection, there is a tremendous release that comes with such broadened awareness.  Reading the Bible stories can do that for some people.  Encountering the life of Jesus and taking his words to heart can bring a whole new perspective on life and help to unbutton that straightjacket around one’s heart.

But there are bound to be those who resent you for having inappropriate affect, for reflecting inner peace and joy in the face of trauma.  They’re the same ones who will scold you for telling jokes when they feel proper decorum is called for.  And they’re the ones who will look down on you and call you vulgar if they catch you dancing in the street – I suppose that’s what you get for dancing.  Just be careful not to be one of those scolding types yourself.

Instead, nurture a heart of joy, a heart that is in tune with the great Heart of Love that beats throughout this created order, a heart that can find peace in the midst of the storm, a heart that is free from the bondage of self-absorption and is free to be concerned for the welfare of others, a heart that can help you laugh at yourself and find the best in life.  That, after all, is what you get for dancing.

¹ C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Harper Collins, 2002, pp. 74-75.

July 7, 2024

On the “God Particle” and the Blessings of Angst

A few years ago scientists made a big discovery at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.  They smashed a couple of protons into each other at near light speeds, and up popped the evidence of a hitherto unconfirmed subatomic particle.  It’s a boson, which is just a fancy name for photons, and some other elusive particles that flash into and out of existence when particles collide.  This boson is very much the particle that was predicted to exist by Peter Higgs back in 1964.  So this particle, now called the Higgs boson, confirmed the existence of the related “Higgs field” that acts a kind of cosmological sticky soup permeating all of space and slowing down other particles, causing them to acquire mass.  This process is called the “Higgs mechanism.”  The “Higgs mechanism” is simply the generation of masses for the W⁺, W⁻ and Z weak gauge bosons through the breaking of electroweak symmetry.  Now the big question.  Do I really understand everything I just said?  Not entirely.

But here’s where it gets interesting for us.  Somewhere along the line (to the consternation of physicists), media types started referring to the Higgs boson as “the God particle,” perhaps assuming that since the Higgs field would be responsible for the generation of mass, and therefore everything we see in the universe, it would be somehow the key to creation itself, or more likely, media types thought calling it the “God particle” would sell more newspapers, magazines, and air-time.  The truth is it’s not really God, it’s simply a theory about how the physics of the universe operates (which, I suppose, could mean about the same thing, depending on your conception of God).  But it’s not even anything new; physicists have been doing math and physics based on calculations for the Higgs field ever since Higgs came up with the idea.  They had already taken that theoretical line of research almost as far as they go with present knowledge.  So, physicists didn’t really get so excited about the realization that this new boson is pretty much the same particle that Higgs envisioned.  What really got their engines revving is the possibility that it would turn out to be somewhat different than the classical Higgs boson.  Because that would mean they’d have to go back to the drawing board and take up a whole new line of research and investigation.  That’s what really turns them on.  Therein lies my message today: a complicated, confusing, unknown, and angst-producing world is the best kind of world to live in.  Isn’t it lucky that’s the one we’ve got?

I was driven to this notion when I started to read the lectionary for today and saw that those who compile the lectionary readings had decided in their wisdom to leave out some verses from the passage in 2 Samuel you heard this morning.  In your bulletin, it says the reading is 2 Samuel 5:1-10.  I have to confess, I fudged a bit.  The actual lectionary reading, and the one I had Barbara read for you this morning, leaves out verses six through eight.  Well, you know me; I couldn’t resist looking to see what they decided to skip over.  Here it is:

“The king and his men marched to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, who said to David, ‘You will not come in here, even the blind and the lame will turn you back’ – thinking, ‘David cannot come in here.’  Nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion, which is now the city of David.  David had said on that day, ‘Whoever would strike down the Jebusites, let him get up the water shaft to attack the lame and the blind, those whom David hates.’ Therefore it is said, ‘The blind and the lame shall not come into the house.’”

David wants his men to attack the blind and the lame in Jerusalem because he hates them.  Yeah, I can understand why the lectionary people would want to skip over those verses.  As you can imagine, this really got me going.  So I started to dig.  What’s going on here?  Well, it turns out these three verses are considered by most biblical scholars to be so corrupted as to be practically non-translatable.  In other words, with the passing down of the story, first orally, from generation to generation, and then in written form, transcribed and recopied innumerable times, the words got jumbled and truncated to the point that transcribers were struggling to make sense of them and so revised them even further.  So translators are left trying to make sense of what has been passed down to us in Hebrew which, according to the best I’m able to do, translates the words of David most literally as, “Whoever would strike down the Jebusite and struggle with [something – which may mean a water shaft] and the lame and the blind, hated by David’s soul.”  All of this leads to the question, what might the original sentences have been?  There’s no way to know.  But there’s an intriguing possibility.  If one reads some later accounts in the Bible, in Joshua and Judges we find these words: “the Jebusites live with the people of Judah in Jerusalem to this day.”  So, David did not wipe out or drive out all the Jebusites when he conquered Jerusalem.  So it would be reasonable to assume that some kind of amnesty was accorded to the Jebusites that would have been set down in a retelling of the story, such as an account like this in 2 Samuel.  Add to this notion something else I discovered in doing my own translation.  If you move one little dot from above the left side of a letter to above the right side of the letter, it changes that letter from a sin to a shin, and so changes what the word might be.  The translation might go from, “the lame and the blind, hated by David’s soul . . .” to “the lame and the blind, sublime to David’s soul . . .”  Now, I’m no Hebrew authority, so don’t put a lot of stock in my half-baked notions here.  But if I’ve lost you in all this linguistic ruminating, that’s OK, because here’s the point of all this: It’s the corrupted text, the part that doesn’t make sense, that offers the most intriguing area of study, and yields a potential insight (at least an hypothesis) that could make the passage mean just about the opposite of what it seems – and could shed a gracious light on an otherwise ugly scenario.  That’s the kind of thing that really turns me on – just like the physicists get turned on when the experimental results throw them for a loop.

I think this has everything to do with what the Apostle Paul was getting at in his second letter to the Corinthians.  He talked about a “thorn” that was given to him in the flesh.  We don’t know what that was, apparently some physiological problem that he struggled with through at least his adult life – maybe a chronic disease, or a physical impairment, or epilepsy, who knows?  But Paul saw in this thorn in the flesh something of great value.  He rejoiced in it, and said, “Whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

You and I yearn for a simpler life.  We’d like to be free from travail, exempt from frustration.  We imagine that the best in life are those days when we zip effortlessly from one simple routine to another without any glitches.  We dread the thought of having our plans interrupted, our dreams crumpled, our expectations frustrated.  And we’ve got it all backwards.  We could learn a lesson from the physicists and from the apostle Paul.  It’s the hitches in our plans that offer the greatest possibility for finding new directions.  It’s the places where we get tripped up that afford us the best chance of learning something.  It’s the struggles and difficulties of life that point the way to a deeper and more meaningful existence.  Angst is not our enemy; it’s a blessing!

Stop and consider for a moment what life would be if everything were simple and always went smooth as silk – no troubles, no worries, no surprises, no glitches.  Sounds like paradise, right?  Think again.  Nothing new; nothing challenging.  Nothing to adjust to and become more of a person because of.  Without the possibility of discovering something dreadful there is no possibility of discovering something full of wonder.  Without dead-ends there are no new roads to travel.

Here’s my thought.  What if the angst that seems to be part of our lives is, in fact, like a Higgs field permeating the very fabric of our existence and making life possible?  What if every event, every encounter, every experience of life moves through this field encountering angst and gets slowed down enough to acquire true essence – like a quark or an electron gains mass moving through the Higgs field?  If the analogy is apt, then you and I couldn’t really exist – we wouldn’t be people of substance – without the traumas, frustrations, and pains that are our constant companions.  In fact, these are our treasures, because they so invariably point the way to new possibilities and larger lives.  They strengthen and teach us.  When you stop to think about it, maybe this all does have to do with a sort of “God particle.”  Maybe the fact that existence is chock-a-block full of challenging, eye-opening, soul-stirring frustrations and problems is proof enough for the existence of the Almighty.

So, I leave you with the words of Paul: “Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

June 30, 2024

Free Indeed

It’s that time again – the Fourth of July week.  So, this seems like a particularly meaningful time to be reflecting on the blessings of liberty.  I want to look at Some of our cherished words as Americans, examine them under the spotlight of Biblical concepts of freedom and of justice, and talk about what it has meant for us to be a nation of free people – a nation which we proudly proclaim as “one . . . under God, with liberty and justice for all.”  And I want to reflect also on the implications of those biblical concepts of freedom and justice for a church like ours – a church that is going through a rather stressful time of weighing the treasures of our endowed past against the promises of an unknown future.

It is a remarkable system we’ve developed here in America.  It’s based on an almost sacred list of freedoms.  They are: freedom of religion, freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of the press, freedom to petition for grievances, freedom to bear arms, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, freedom from arbitrary, capricious or secret prosecution or civil complaint, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.  These freedoms are so dear to us that the words we use to describe them are burned into our hearts from an early age, and their recital can almost bring tears to our eyes.  Those tears of gratitude for our freedoms come easily when hearing, as I did just the other evening on the PBS NewsHour, that a woman in Russia was imprisoned for treason for sending fifty one dollars to Ukraine.

But what has become of our cherished American freedom?  Increasingly, it has become the freedom of multi-billionaires to shelter their assets from taxes while single mothers are unable to care for their children and put a roof over their heads.  Increasingly, it has become the freedom for America to behave in any manner it chooses because we are the most powerful nation on the planet and therefore able to make up the rules as we go along.  Increasingly, it has become the freedom of powerful corporations to dictate government policy and profit from legislative and administrative influence.

And here’s the larger question: what has become of the simple biblical notion of justice?  It’s a principle that we are supposed to hold as dear as that of freedom – after all, the familiar phrase is “liberty and justice for all.”  The Apostle Paul spoke to the Christians in Corinth about justice.  He said, “it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance.  As it is written, ‘The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.’”  Wouldn’t it be a wondrous world indeed if “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little?”

The problem is, you can’t entirely legislate that kind of justice.  The Soviets tried it, and it was a resounding failure.  One of the common assumptions in modern American politics is that the United States won the cold war and defeated Communism because we had a “superior ideology.”  Well, that’s partly true.  We won the cold war because we crushed the Soviet Union economically by pushing the arms and space race all the way to “Star Wars” so that they would have to choose whether to become a second class military power or spend until they broke the bank.  Either way, we win.  Now, the argument can be made that we were able to defeat the U.S.S.R. economically because our system worked better than theirs, which proves that our ideology is superior.  Well, that’s also true.  Communism can’t work because you can’t legislate absolute justice without crushing people’s hopes and trampling on their freedoms.  Sooner or later they will rise up and wrest their liberty away from you.  There is a passion for freedom that beats within the human breast, and it cannot be stifled.  So, we must be ever vigilant to maintain our separation of powers and our precious democracy.

The problem lies in what the Apostle Paul spoke to the Corinthians about.  When he urged them to offer assistance to those in need as a matter of justice, he said, “I do not say this as a command, but I am testing the genuineness of your love against the earnestness of others.”  It is the genuineness of our love that is the issue.  It is the earnestness of our compassion – a compassion that we as a people demonstrate, not the compassion we talk about – that determines whether “liberty and justice for all” is a real possibility or simply a pipe dream.  Because in a world of self-interest and greed, greater freedom only leads to greater injustice.  In a world that easily turns its eyes away from the plight of the working single mother or the kid growing up on a hopeless ghetto street, the tax sheltering of billions in assets is heralded as wise money management.

So what does all this have to do with you and me?  Just this: America is and will be what we make of it.  And it will be built up, brick by brick, from the individual beliefs, acts, and decisions of every one of us.  I must admit, I long for the days when we were regarded by great numbers of nations as the model for heroic generosity and good will.  I truly do yearn for a time when, as Doctor King said, “all of God’s children will be able to say . . . we’re free at last” – free from the chains of ignorance, free from the prison of injustice, free from the clutches of poverty.

One of the tools that has been used to try to promote justice in our land is the highly debated practice of “affirmative action.”  One year ago the Supreme Court of the United States decided a landmark case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, holding race-conscious college admissions processes to be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.  A lot of folks are afraid that affirmative action will take away their own opportunities in order to advance the opportunities of others.  But you know something?  I’m the beneficiary of “affirmative action,” and I’ll bet that just about everyone in this room is in some way or another.  I never called it that.  I never even thought of it that way, but it’s true.  When I was a young college student, I nearly flunked out of my freshman year at the Illinois Institute of Technology.  I spent my time chasing girls and playing handball.  Studying just didn’t fit into the equation.  By the end of the year, I was sharing a small apartment with a roommate and the few worldly possessions that I called my own.  I had hardly any money for food, and I had no prospects because I wasn’t going to be allowed back for another year of architectural studies.  In other words, I was at the bottom of the barrel.  At the time, my father was in an executive position with the American Baptist Churches in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.  He made some phone calls, and arrangements, then came to Chicago to pick me up and get me to Ottawa, Kansas, where he had arranged for my admission into the American Baptist related university there.  My grades did not qualify me for admission; my record offered no reason for the school to have confidence in me; my father’s influence got me into that school.  And if I hadn’t gotten in there, who knows what would have become of me?  I don’t like to think about it.  That’s affirmative action if ever there was such a thing.  What we need to foster is simply a broader appreciation of the concept of “family” and a deeper sense of who might be “worthy” of a little help.  That’s what justice means.  It’s nothing less than compassion.  In the apostle Paul’s words, it’s “genuineness of love.”

Freedom carries with it the burden of responsibility.  If we are to be a freedom-loving people, we must raise the torch of justice or else our freedom will devour us.  If we are to stand for the noble vision of our forebears, we must embody the kind of generosity and vigilance that will keep that dream from turning into a nightmare.  Every time you enter into a conversation or tell a joke, you are helping to shape the face of America.  Every time you step into the voting booth, or pull out your check book, or sign a petition, you are casting the force of your being behind one possible future or another.

And as those who stand in what’s called the “free church” tradition, we are participants in one of the greatest counter-cultural movements for freedom and justice in the world.  This church strives to be a model for the kind of community that’s envisioned in the New Testament. Our commitment is to live in the kind of freedom that Christ spoke of when he said that “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free,” and that “if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”  I take that freedom to mean that we are not bound to common beliefs, but to the very right and responsibility to hold divergent beliefs, and in our disagreement, to commit ourselves in love to one another and to Christ’s church.  That’s the justice side of the equation.  Disagreement or dispute without love is like freedom without justice; it just doesn’t work in the long run.  We have an uncertain future here at Memorial Congregational.  These are the times that test, as Paul said, “the genuineness of our love.”  There is, perhaps a larger question before us than whether we will be able to hire a pastor.  The larger question is whether we are truly and deeply committed to the counter-cultural model of love that binds us together in the freedom of our diversity or whether we’re just foolin’ around.

On this coming Fourth of July, I urge you to celebrate freedom as never before.  I invite you to lift high the worthy ideal that is America.  And I encourage you to rededicate yourself to the cause of justice, and to compassion, and genuine love, and to celebrate that if Christ “. . . makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

June 23, 2024

On Faith and Fear

I love those marvelous words of FDR spoken at the time our nation was in the Great Depression.  It was 1933.  The Depression worsened in the months preceding Roosevelt’s inauguration on March 4.  Many people have compared recent recessions with the Great Depression, but there really is no comparison.  Factory closings, farm foreclosures, and bank failures increased, while unemployment soared far beyond what we’ve seen in more recent times.  Roosevelt faced the greatest crisis in American history since the Civil War.  In his inaugural address, he said, “First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself!” Those words are like the man who spoke them – strong, confident, reassuring.

They are not like the words Jesus uttered to his disciples in the boat, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”  Let me explain:

In verse 36 we read, “leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat . . . [and] A great windstorm arose”  Now, I’ve gotten into boats.  I can remember being with friends on a sailboat in two to three foot seas.  That’s not considered much by sailors, but it was plenty enough for me.  I remember the pounding of the boat against the waves as it dove into each trough.  When we changed course and the boat leaned, I thought I was going to lose my lunch.

I’ve never been in a boat in a serious storm.  I’ve heard plenty of stories about it, though.  I’ve heard friends tell of being out on the water with eight foot waves crashing over the bow in the darkness – the kind of seas that make veteran sailors fear for their lives.  I can hardly imagine being in that kind of storm at sea.

So, when I read here in Mark, “A great windstorm arose . . .” I can imagine a great storm.  This is no little heavy wind.  It says here, “the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped!”  Not only were the waves crashing over the bow, but the boat was about to sink!  That’s some storm.

Now get this.  Then it says, “But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion.”  He was asleep?  That’s one of the most amazing things I’ve encountered in scripture.  He was either an astonishingly great and soul-centered man, a narcoleptic, or a complete idiot!

“. . .and they woke him up.”  Now, think about that for a minute.  I have no idea how they did that.  If he could sleep through a raging storm that was tossing the boat around and about to sink it, what in the world could these guys do that would get his attention?

So Jesus wakes up, assesses the situation, quiets the raging seas, and utters this truly baffling phrase, “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?”

“Why are you afraid?”  You’ve got to be kidding.  It seems rather obvious.  I’ve been in a boat in heavy winds.  I was scared to death when it was nothing like what’s described here.  “Why are you afraid?”

I’ve been frightened.  I was a police officer.  And if you think cops are never afraid, you’re mistaken.  I remember starting to wear a bullet-proof vest under my uniform because there was some nut-case going around shooting police officers.  I can remember high speed chases, trying to arrest a guy who was twice my size and drunk and resisting.  I remember ordering larceny suspects out of a car at gun-point. I remember going home after a long and stressful shift, so caught up in my fears that I had to go check on the children in their beds to make sure they were breathing.

I don’t blame the disciples for their fear.  I’ve been frightened.  I remember huddling in the living room with a transistor radio while hurricane Gloria came rumbling through.  And when it felt like the house was about to be reduced to rubble we went into the bathroom because it seemed like the sturdiest part of the structure.  We crouched there while a sixty foot maple tree in the back yard came crashing to the ground.  I don’t blame the disciples for their fear.

I doubt that you can either.  When the obstacles have seemed so large, and self doubt has crept up on you, so that you wonder what you are doing, or what you are going to do.  When the storms of life, of loss, of tragedy, of failure have moved in to blacken the sky overhead, and the winds of uncertainty have blown and piled up the waves like great walls, and all there seems below is a great, cold, black void, fathoms deep.  You’ve been frightened.

I remember when the sixth grade bully beat me up on the playground.  I told my dad about it.  His advice?  “The next time he comes after you, you just clean his clock – punch his lights out.”   The fact that this kid was nearly twice my size was to have no bearing on the situation.  Somehow, just saying, “don’t be afraid” doesn’t seem like good advice.

And Jesus doesn’t say, “don’t be afraid.”  He doesn’t offer some stirring words like, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” or even, “fear not, the Lord shall be they confidence.”  He challenges me, and he challenges you with a mind-blowing question: “Why are you afraid?”

That’s the question.  It calls us to truly look at ourselves and come to terms with the source of our fears.  It’s not the sort of word you might hear from most of us preachers when you’re in the midst of a traumatic and painful experience.  We’re trained in seminary to try to hear and empathize with people’s fear and hurt.  It’s not considered the time to challenge them.

And Jesus was perfectly able to empathize with the disciples.  His amazing ability to sleep through a raging storm at sea notwithstanding, Jesus was capable of knowing fear.  He certainly demonstrated that on the night before he was crucified, in the garden of Gethsemane.  He prayed, and sweated, and trembled, and asked to be let out of this terrible situation.  He knew.  He knew what it’s like to live in a terrifying world.  But he still put it to the disciples, “Why are you afraid?”

“Why are you afraid?”  It’s a question that directs us to the very heart of our faith.  The things that we fear are real.  There are more things to fear than just fear itself.  But it can be terribly important to ask ourselves what it is that lives at the deepest heart of our fear.  We might say we fear losing our job, or getting cancer, or having something awful happen to someone we love, or just about anything else.  But if we search diligently enough, we may discover other, deeper fears that fuel the more routine and daily fears.  Are we afraid of death, or are we afraid of what death might be?  Are we afraid of losing income, or are we afraid of losing the routines and titles that give us something to cling to for security?  Are we afraid of global catastrophe, or are we afraid of losing the future, thus rendering the past meaningless?  In the final analysis, most of our deepest fears boil down to the fear of what the universe and our place in it would be if there were no hope, no grace, no divine providence.

I think that’s why Jesus startled the disciples with what sounded like a foolish question.  He was turning the disciples’ experience upside down.  In essence, he was saying, “You think you’re afraid of the storm?  Why are you really afraid?”  I think he challenged the root of their fear because that’s the only point there is to make, and the only way to make it!  Faith is not a magic elixir to make our fears vanish into thin air, but at a deep, existential level, faith is the opposite of our greatest, most profound fear.  Faith is that connection with the heart of the universe that grabs us by the shirt collar and tells us existence is not arbitrary and capricious; it is an expression of divine intention.  And there’s something about that way of approaching life that turns things upside down!

Because of the reality of grace, the world doesn’t always work the way we think it does.  Just when we are at the end of our resources, and we’ve no place left to turn, the answer comes from the least expected place with no warning.  The very thing you think is least likely to happen may well be the Divine plan.  The irresponsible slacker, sleeping in the boat while a storm rages may just be the one who can, astonishingly, quiet the waters.

The world is full of miracles; we are surrounded by miracle-workers, and we usually don’t know it simply because we’re not looking for them.  When you run out of options, another option can be created for you out of thin air.  When you are most alone, you discover the wondrous healing touch of a friend.

You see, either we’re just going through the motions here, or this entire universe, along with each one of us, is resting in ultimately powerful, perfectly loving, and eternally abiding hands.  And that makes all the difference.

To live by faith may not be to walk blithely through our days unaffected by the storms that rage, but it is to wrest from life at least a modicum of the peace that comes from knowing that the world is upside down, that storms can be stilled when that’s the last thing we expect, that the Lord of Life is in charge, even though it seems like there’s no one minding the store.

Every once in a while it’s important to remind ourselves that we are not among those who live without hope, and that our hope is built on a sure foundation.  Whatever disturbs you, whatever dismays you, whatever keeps you awake at night, whatever gnaws at your insides, whatever causes you to worry and fret, whatever your fear, here is my word to you this morning: There may be a surprise in store for you.  So look for it, be patient, be ready.  And maybe ask yourself: “Why are you afraid?”

June 16, 2024

Fence Posts and Flowers

Dadgie and I have always had interesting nesting habits.  Just about every time we’ve moved to a new place we’ve gone through this little ritual.  She planted gardens and I built fences.  The gardens are . . . well . . . self explanatory.  The fences were often to keep the dog out of the gardens.  I am usually quite proud of my fences.  I’ve built picket fences, wire fences, stockade fences, you name it.  But there is one problem that I haven’t yet quite figured a way around: after a few years, her gardens still looked bright and beautiful, but my fences started to rot.  It’s the doggonedest thing!  The very minute she put those flowers and vegetables in the dirt, they started to grow, and the very minute I put those posts in the ground, they started to rot.  Now I know some of you watch “This Old House” and are ready to say, “Mike, just use pressure treated lumber.”  I do use it, but my point is that even p.t. doesn’t last forever.  Apparently, there’s something built right into those flower seeds that’s a miracle – a miracle that has long since faded from possibility in those fence posts, but a miracle that makes the flowers keep becoming more than they were.

It’s automatic!  At least that’s the word Jesus chose to describe it (or, the translators of Jesus’ words, if you will).  In speaking of the kingdom, he said it was like a seed planted in the ground, growing into a stalk of wheat that is brought forth from the earth (in Greek) automaté.  That’s the same root from which comes our English word automatic.  Growth is built-in.  Organic development seems to be one of the basic ingredients in the recipe of creation.  It’s common, apparently, to single-celled animals, complex organisms, and the kingdom of heaven.  Jesus apparently considered it intrinsic to the Gospel; he spoke about it all the time.  Many of the parables are about growth: grain, yeast, mustard plants, trees, weeds.  Jesus seemed to love these kind of stories.  And in this fourth chapter of Mark, he makes it very clear that what he is doing and calling us to do is not so much like building a fence as it is like planting a garden.

Seeds of peace, planted long ago, have begun to germinate in many corners of the world.  We saw it happen in Ireland and South Africa a number of years ago.  There are even rumors lately of behind-the-scenes negotiations going on between the Israelis and Palestinians.  If that came about it would indeed be a miracle. There are still nations at war; there are still religious rivalries that erupt into deadly conflict.  There are still atrocities being committed.  There are still ancient hatreds simmering in many lands.  But, isn’t it remarkable how the conflicts on our planet seem to be scaling down, and our emerging global network of economic interdependencies seems to be making really large scale warfare like world wars less and less likely.  We may be a long way from lasting global peace, but we just may finally be starting to grow in that direction.

It’s true for our world, and it’s true for our community of faith.  When we look back at the history of our church, we are aware of times of struggle and times of triumph.  We have seen the church supporting missions around the world and reaching out to people in our own community.  As with any church, I’m sure our historical record includes conflicts and reconciliations, unity and diversity, set-backs and stunning achievements.  Yes, we have dwindled in numbers, but we have grown together in love and faith and are striving every day to embody the Love of Christ.

And the same is true in your own life.  Rarely do we take the time to notice, but it can be important to rest a moment along the way and look at the road you’ve traveled.  It may at times seem that you take two steps back for every one forward, but over the long haul, you know it’s not true; you are more today than you once were.  You are wiser, more able to listen and hear the hopes and fears of others.  I believe it was Robert Raines reflecting somewhere on the remarkable growth of the human soul over time and his awareness that real growth often only comes when one has lived a number of years.  He responded to the question of Nicodemus, “How can one be born again when he is old?”  And Raines said, “Why that’s precisely when it happens!”

All of this is good to reflect on and sheds a hopeful light on our lives and our world.  But there’s a significant caution for us in the story Jesus tells.  It is the caution to not lose sight of the mystery of growth.  In the parable, the seed grows secretly while the man sleeps.  In the light of day he sees the growth of the plant, but he’s at a loss to explain how it happens.  Because the miracle of growth is a mystery, it’s also a process that’s often hidden, almost imperceptible.  Consequently, we need all the patience we can muster.

That’s the lesson we all learned from Nelson Mandella.  He spent years in prison, with no certainty about his future, but he patiently nurtured the seeds of hope within, preparing himself for a day he could not be certain would ever come.  Upon his release, he became the voice of justice and peace, and ultimately the leader of his nation.  Those who are about the business of the realm of Love are most certainly people of infectious hope, but they must also be people of indomitable patience.  So, even in the bleakest of times, we must have the wisdom to lie down on our beds at night and know the seeds, hidden in the darkness, are hard at work performing an automatic miracle.

Another aspect of the story Jesus told is equally critical for those of us who are trying to find our way in this age of uncertainty.  Jesus goes to considerable lengths to illustrate that this mysterious growing of love and faith is a process, and a process involving human beings at critical moments.  Yes, the grain grows mysteriously, but the seed has to be planted.  The blade appears, then the head, then the full grain in the head, but the one who must harvest the crop stays vigilant throughout the growth cycle, sleeping each night, but rising each day to examine the progress.  There’s no doubt about it, you and I are co-creators, partners in the divine work of creation and re-creation, collaborators in the unfolding of a new world and a new humanity.  We are called to be earnest and diligent gardeners, tending to and watering the seedlings of all the beautiful things growing in our world, and pulling at the weeds of greed and self interest, intolerance and abuse.

I believe that the most terrible kind of death a person can suffer is the death of the spirit.  That’s what happens when you give up on growth.  Concerns for peace, social justice, human service, global ecology, civil rights, all have grown up out of the fertile soil of those in our nation, in our cities, in our churches, who have been vigilantly progressive.  By that I mean they have refused to be content with things they way they are.  They have been committed to a self-critical approach to life, that looks not only at the world around them, but first within, and asks, “How can things be better?”  Not, “How can I keep things from getting worse?”  I’m deeply concerned that we’re in danger of letting that spirit die in America.  We are all too rapidly becoming a nation of finger-pointers.  And I fear we are losing the capacity to look critically at ourselves.  Goethe said it: “everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.”  If the kingdom is going to come about (as we pray each week) “on earth, as it is in heaven,” if the seeds of peace and justice are going to grow within our own hearts and minds, if the flower of community is going to blossom in this place, then we must be vigilant, always seeking the opportunity to pitch in and be a part of the new thing that’s trying to bloom.

Finally, I’m struck by the fact that, even after all the focus on growth as a process, the kingdom becoming, growing like a stalk of wheat, the need for vigilance and care, Jesus points to the final harvest.  If we are working, waiting, and keeping watch over the growth of the kingdom, we are working and waiting for a real outcome, not pie-in-the-sky.  A new realm of love and justice and community is in the cards!  Growth is not for its own sake.  The process is not an end in itself.  We may spend our entire lives becoming, but there is something to be.  We may never see the end results of our labors, but there are results.  Full fruition of the kingdom may continue to be unrealized, but it is nonetheless real.  Don’t give up on tomorrow.  It’s just a sunrise away.

So what’s all this got to do with fenceposts and flowers?  Well, there are two kinds of people in the world, those who, like fence posts, get stuck in the muck and start to turn rotten, and those who, like flowers, spread their leaves and keep reaching for the sun.

June 9, 2024

On the Merits of Being Out of Your Mind and The Curse of Theology

I preached a few Sundays ago about Kit Smart and the importance of being crazy enough to, as he wrote, “Hear the Hallelujah from the heart of God.”  I’d like to expand on that notion a bit this morning and talk about what it can really mean to go “out of your mind.”

An absolutely amazing picture is painted in our scripture reading from Mark this morning.  Crowds were gathering to hear Jesus speak, and it’s clear that for many, it was a kind of circus sideshow.  They wanted to come hear the crazy man.  In the same sentence that Mark says the crowds were swarming around him, he points out that a lot of people who heard Jesus speak thought he was a few Fruit Loops shy of a whole bowl.  The situation was so distressing to Jesus’ family that they were trying to get him to back off – maybe disappear for a while.  Listen to this: “and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat.  When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’”  And apparently Jesus didn’t do much to convince the crowds that he had all his marbles.  Because when they told him his mother and brothers were there to see him, he said, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”  And then he looked at the crowds gathered around to listen to him, and he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!  Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”  Don’t you think if he were concerned about the rumors and trying to demonstrate that his elevator went to the top floor, he would have said something a bit more conventional, like “Oh, I’m glad they came to see me.  Tell them I’ll be right there.”  If I may be so bold, I think Jesus may have seen some merit in being “out of his mind.”  Let me try to explain that.

You and I are so often like those crowds who gathered for the sideshow, who came to spend a fun afternoon chuckling under their breath while they listened to the lunatic from Galilee.  The media moguls have figured that out; they know what turns us on.  From the so-called “reality shows” to the kind of stories that often pass for news these days, what we so often are drawn to are caricatures of humanity that are so broadly and outrageously drawn that they can serve to reinforce everyone’s sense of their own normalcy – the validity of their own view of the world.  It’s a lot like going to hear a so-called prophet we think is off his rocker.  Chuckling at him makes us feel superior and fortifies our own convictions.  We all find that very satisfying.  The problem is that, whether we’re talking about relational ethics, politics, or theology, simply having one’s own predilections and prejudices strengthened doesn’t necessarily lead to greater wisdom or truth.  Witness the cancer of retrenched partisan ideology that has become our political system.  Both sides in this current run for the presidency paint their opponent in the most extreme terms they can think of.  It helps their own supporters feel superior and confident in their leader. Don’t we all do it? Depending on which end of the political spectrum you are on, the other guy is either a senile, doddering, old fool, or a megalomaniac out to destroy our democracy.

Truth is, we spend most of our time in our own minds.  We are marinated, basted, and sautéed in the ideas that have formed us; we swim in the ocean of our own thinking; we wrap ourselves in the comfortable blanket of the world view carefully crafted in the factory of our minds.  There is a certain arrogance in this business of living constantly in our minds.  Our unshakeable and utter dependence on the validity of what we think we know carries the implied assumption that any of us is capable of comprehending truth all by ourselves, that we can actually grasp reality and know with omnipotent certainty divine and eternal intentions and determinations.  It is the idolatry of setting one’s own mind on a pedestal as if it were the epitome of Divine Intention.  Clergy are particularly susceptible to this kind of idolatry.  The great German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew this danger well.  While preparing today’s sermon I stumbled upon a remarkable phrase from Bonhoeffer dredged up by William Willimon.  He wrote about “the curse of theology.”  Bonhoeffer (writing in the day when all clergy were presumed to be males – so excuse the exclusive language) wrote, “The greatest difficulty for the pastor stems from his theology.  He knows all there is to be known about sin and forgiveness . . . The peak of theological craftiness is to conceal necessary and wholesome unrest under such self-justification . . . The conscience has been put to sleep.  Theology becomes a science by which one learns to excuse everything and justify everything . . . The theologian knows that he cannot be shot out of the saddle by other theologians.  Everything his theology admits is justified.  This is the curse of theology.”¹  That’s quite a comment from one of the world’s greatest theologians.  What Bonhoeffer refers to as “necessary and wholesome unrest” is that unsettling word from Jesus, that business of going “out of your mind,” that many pastors try to avoid by tying their theologies up in neat little ribbons and bows.  Whenever you hear a preacher (including this one) issue an unequivocal declaration of what “the Bible says,” or what “God wants,” be afraid, be very afraid.

I think Jesus would have us go “out of our minds” from time to time.  I think he wanted us to see a larger world than the one that neatly fits into the box of our preconceptions and expectations.  I think that’s why he always said things that surprised, disturbed, and even shocked his listeners – things like “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple,” and “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division! . . . father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother,” and “Who are my mother and my brothers? . . . Here are my mother and my brothers!”  He loved to confound people’s expectations; he always found a way to throw them off balance, to get them “out of their minds.”  You and I could stand to get out of our minds from time to time.

What is it to be “out of your mind?”  First of all, I think it’s a wonderful expression of humility.  If I’m willing to step outside of my own world view long enough to entertain another perspective, I just may be able to stop worshiping at the shrine of my own truth.  Humility seems to be a rare commodity these days.  Folks are convinced that those who disagree with them are delusional, wrong-headed, or, in the extreme, communists, socialists, fascists, or instruments of the devil.  I love the old bumper sticker we used to see every now and then.  It simply said, “Have you ever stopped to consider that you might be wrong?”  Getting out of your own mind, if even for a brief excursion, is a great way to let a little air out of an inflated ego.

Secondly, to go “out of your mind” is to expand your world view in a way that shifts perspective and opens you to greater insight and greater possibilities.  A world that fits inside one’s own small brain is a very little world indeed.  There’s a whole wide universe of ideas, realities, and truths out there.  And none of us can ever master them all.  If you can practice stepping outside of the reality that you’ve constructed in your head, it can be truly astounding what you can learn.  It’s a scary thing to do.  Once we admit that there’s more truth than we know, it can shake our confidence and make us afraid that our whole world might collapse on us.  But if we muster the courage to look further, and experience more broadly and deeply those alien ideas that don’t always fit our assumptions, we gain not only more awareness, but a greater understanding of how little we truly grasp.  That’s what folks back in the time of Samuel couldn’t figure out.  Every nation around them had a king.  It was the thing to do.  So they wanted a king so they could be like all the other nations.  They couldn’t think any further than that.  It was all that their minds could grasp, and it turned out to be disastrous.  It wouldn’t be the first time in history that a nation got stuck in a rut due to a lack of vision.

Finally, to be out of your mind is to establish a greater bond with those around you.  Maybe that’s the deeper truth behind Jesus’ words about his mother and brothers.  He said, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”  Knowing what is “the will of God” is pretty tricky stuff, I admit.  But the task of searching for that will, and striving always to get closer to comprehending it takes us away from being embroiled in our own agendas, and needs, and persuasions.  It puts us on common ground with one another because when we acknowledge that it’s the Lord’s will and not our own that’s determinative, we can no longer separate ourselves from one another through judgment.

I’m very pleased to be in church full of people who are always going “out of their minds.”  There is a culture here of searching, growing, listening, and learning.  It is very healthy.  We have many opportunities to speak with one another and to listen. I’m confident that you will all continue to demonstrate the humility that comes with knowing none of us has a monopoly on truth, and that you will make the love that you have for one another manifest in knowing each other to be your own brothers and sisters.  Because of that, I always love our times of eating, and sharing, and listening. After all, it’s a great opportunity to get “out of your mind.”

¹ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Spiritual Care, cited by William Willimon in Pulpit Resource, June 10, 2012.

June 2, 2024

Complete Joy

I remember when, years ago, Dadgie and I took a picnic to Tanglewood.  We sat on the lawn beneath a giant tree and listened to the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Chorus perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.  I recall that it was a beautiful day, and I remember looking up at the sky through the leaves of that great tree and feeling that this was the an eternal moment.  I feel that a lot, though, when I listen to the Ninth Symphony.  It was exactly two hundred years ago last month, with the ink practically still wet on the paper from Beethoven’s pen, that the symphony was first performed.  It is a spectacular and inspired work that always brings me to a remarkable combination of laughter and tears – tears of joy.  And that’s the idea, isn’t it – joy?  The symphony was, according to Jan Swafford, Beethoven’s answer to the unanswered prayer “Dona nobis pacem” (or, “Give Us Peace”) at the conclusion of his sister work, the Missa Solemnis.¹  The Ninth Symphony is an exuberant celebration of the divine gift of joy, inspired by Friedrich Schiller’s ode: An die Fruede (or Ode to Joy) which Beethoven set to music and incorporated into the final movement of the symphony.  The poem begins with a shout, and an exclamation: “Freude, schöner Götterfunken” (Joy!  Beautiful Godspark!). It refers to this joy as the “daughter of Elysium,” Elysium being the idyllic land of flowers and lovely meadows that is the domain of those souls destined for paradise.  It is astounding that Beethoven, in his final years, would choose to shout for joy with this symphony.  He was blind, racked with pain and humiliation from illness, and arguably on the verge of insanity.  What was there in life to celebrate as divine joy?  Therein lies the quest of this sermon.

I have not struggled with the kind of disabilities and torments that Beethoven did.  But I have had my moments.  Many years ago, before I married the love of my life, I found myself in a terrible state of depression.  I was divorced and alone; I had lost my job, lost my home, lost my family.  In a session of counseling with an excellent therapist I was led into the depths of that depression.  And in the midst of my deep and desperate aloneness, I made a profound discovery.  I realized that I still had myself!  And in that discovery lay a hidden truth, something that I only gradually began to internalize in the months and years ahead.  That truth is this: that I am profoundly connected to Life itself, to the universe, to every person, to God, to (and I’m partial to the way Tillich put it:) the “Ground of All Being.” And my connection to all of that is unbreakable, and it is Joy itself.  It’s what the Psalmist was exclaiming those thousands of years ago.  He wrote, “O LORD, you have searched me and known me.  You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.  You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. . . . Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.”  That divine communion is what Jesus spoke of in today’s reading from the Gospel of John.  He employed, of course, a metaphor.  He said that we are connected with a vine that has branches and bears fruit.

I happen to believe that every human being shares in that vine.  Beethoven and Schiller seem to agree.  The words of the Ode to Joy embedded in the Ninth Symphony celebrate the universality of this connection:

All creatures drink of Joy

At Nature’s breasts.

All good, all evil souls

Follow in her rose-strewn wake.

She gave us kisses and vines . . .

No matter who you are, no matter what your background, how many your weaknesses and failings, or how pervasive your disbelief, you are connected to this Core of existence; you are a recipient of those treasured gifts of kisses and vines.  And in an ecstatic moment, Schiller seems to want to do more than make the point; he gives it a wild and passionate exclamation mark!

Be embraced, you Millions!

This kiss is for the whole world!

That kiss, that embrace, is joy.  Joy is that connection, a connection with the Heart of Reality, a connection ultimately with one another (even with all the millions), as all of us are branches on the vine.

Jesus sums it up for us.  He says, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”  And then he says, “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”  He couldn’t be more clear.  The connection we share on this vine is joy itself – complete joy.  And it has everything to do with loving one another – with, as Schiller put it, “all men being made brothers where the soft wings of joy sway.”

What does this mean?  It means that joy is a very different thing than that transient emotion: happiness.  It is not an emotion.  Joy is a profound and unbreakable connection that remains firm – abides, if you will – even when blindness comes and the lights go out, when pain and illness take over a life, when loss and aloneness seem to be all that’s left.  Such joy is the bedrock on which a life can be constructed.  It does not yield to the tremors and quakes that upend plans and bring dreams down to the dust.

But, of course, there is always a caveat.  Jesus says that every branch that bears no fruit is “removed” and even the branch that bears fruit is “pruned” to make it bear more fruit.  I think he’s laying out the truth that people frequently cut themselves off from the nourishment of that vine by simply disregarding it.  When we fail to acknowledge, nurture, and celebrate the abiding connection we have with the Heart of Being we find ourselves desperately alone.  As Schiller writes in our ode, if a person has never called “even one soul on earth his own . . . let him steal away weeping from this fellowship.”

And, the very traumas and heartaches of life, although they cannot shake the foundation of our joy – our connection with Grace – once it is established, can serve to “prune” away the extraneous, hone our perspective, and remind us of what truly matters in life.  I have known this in my own experience.  It was a heart attack that finally cleared away the fog of trivial pursuits for me, and allowed me to distinguish that which is true and lasting from that which is momentary and unreliable.  I’m sure that in your life there have been moments that have served you in that way.  For Schiller the extraneous parts of life that need to be pruned are the habits and customs that we can find ourselves entangled in, and which can separate us from one another, or even from ourselves.  He addresses Joy with awe, saying:

Your magical power binds together
What custom (or habit) tears apart.

It is simply turning away from that defining, holy connection that results in a profound alienation, and it is turning toward and affirming that connection that centers and grounds our lives and frees us for love.  The point is, as someone once noted, “You can’t get to love except through joy, and you can’t get to joy except through love.”

In the course of these two hundred years, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has taken its place as one of the most impactful pieces of music in human history.  It has been claimed by people of all ideologies and nations on the earth; it was transposed into one of the great hymns of the church: Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee; it was played as the resounding note of celebration at the fall of the Berlin Wall; and it has been adopted by the European Union as their anthem.  Jan Swafford writes, “What can be said with some certainty is that its position in the world is probably what Beethoven wanted it to be. In an unprecedented way for a composer, he stepped into history with a great ceremonial work that doesn’t simply preach a sermon about freedom and brotherhood, but aspires to help bring them to pass.”²

Well, I guess I’ve just preached that sermon.  I think the Psalmist wraps it up best.  He struggles, as we all do, with trying to comprehend the power and presence of Divinty.  His struggle can be seen, in one light, as a reflection of all the larger struggles of our lives – the trials and the hurts that might threaten to distract us, turn us in on ourselves, and turn us away from the vine, the Joy – the complete joy – that is our connection with the Heart of Being.  He puts it this way:

“How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!

I try to count them – they are more than the sand; I come to the end – I am still with you.”

Let’s sing together: “An Die Freude.”

¹ Jan Swafford, in the program notes to BSO Performance at Tanglewood, August 25, 2013.

² op cit.