(978) 939-8821 | Worship every Sunday @ 10 a.m.
(978) 939-8821 | Worship every Sunday @ 10 a.m.
Engage with out most recent sermons.
There are days full of sunshine and hopefulness, and there are those times when everything seems clouded or even covered with a dark blanket. And if we are truly honest, both are present to a degree in every moment. We are never totally without hope, and we are never entirely free of the veil of uncertainty. Life, even in its finest moments, remains a deep mystery. And we are like those theater goers who sit in the dark, unsure of what is to come, waiting for the curtain to go up. I suppose that’s why these words from Isaiah jumped out at me: “And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations . . . .” I’m in a rather reflective mood these days, so, if you don’t mind, I’d like to just play with Isaiah’s “shroud” image for a while.
The first thing that strikes me about these wonderful and cryptic words from the prophet is that they don’t fit. They spring up in the midst of this passage and stand out like a big, yellow hat at a funeral. The first words we hear from Isaiah are the familiar strains of gloating and self-congratulation that we have grown accustomed to hearing from warrior nations: “O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you, I will praise your name; for . . . you have made the city a heap, the fortified city a ruin; the palace of aliens is a city no more, it will never be rebuilt. Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you. . . . When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm, the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place, you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds; the song of the ruthless was stilled.” This is nothing more than an ancient cry of victory in battle. There’s no telling who the enemy was – the “ruthless nation” that was overthrown, the “fortified city” that was laid to ruin – it may have been Babylon or Nineveh. But clearly this is an exultation by those who saw themselves as divinely chosen to be victorious over others – always a dangerous notion.
It is right on top of this hymn to the glory of military victory that Isaiah drops in these astounding words: “On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth. . . .”
God will make a feast “for all peoples,” and he will lift the shroud that is cast over “all peoples,” and “all nations.” And instead of lauding Israel as a leader of nations, Isaiah looks forward to a time when “the disgrace of his people . . . from all the earth” will be taken away. That’s a remarkable statement of humility – the kind of gaff that might cost any presidential candidate an election. And here’s the stunner: all of these great things for all the people of the earth will happen, in the prophet’s words, “on this mountain,” by which he means Mount Zion, by which he means Jerusalem. Jerusalem will be the site for reconciliation among all the peoples and all the nations, and the place where in Isaiah’s words “ the disgrace of his people” will be removed. I could not help being struck by the irony of that.
We all know what’s happening in that city and in that nation today. Jerusalem today is covered in a shroud of war, of violence, pride, and animosity. Jurisdiction over the ancient holy sites there is at the center of much of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. This mountain, this Zion, this Jerusalem is today the volcano from which an enormous cloud of misunderstanding, animosity, and violence among Arabs and Israelis has spread. And this is the very place, Isaiah says, where the shroud of global hate and violence will be lifted. Is it possible that millennia of bloodshed and venom will be put away, that generations of conflict and dispute will be resolved, that one of the hottest hot-spots on the globe will be the birthplace of world peace? It’s hard to believe.
Hundreds of years after Isaiah delivered these words, Jesus stood up in the very cross-hairs of the epicenter of that mountain of contention, the Jerusalem Temple, and offered a rather cloudy parable, cloaked, as far as I can see, in mystery. He spoke of a “a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet,” but they wouldn’t come, and they killed the messengers. The king sent troops to ruthlessly wipe them out and burn their city. Then he sent his slaves out again into the streets to bring in whomever they could find to his wedding feast. One poor slob walked in off the street at the king’s invitation and presently found himself bound hand and foot, to be thrown “into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” all because he had the audacity to walk in off the street without the proper clothes. Now, I generally wear a white shirt and jacket to church, and I guess I’m glad I do, because, frankly, I don’t think I’d want any part of that “outer darkness,” or the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” thing. Does this parable make any sense to you at all? I must confess, it confounds me. It seems to be saying that the Lord of Hosts is fickle, and prone to entrapping people so they can be punished. I can’t imagine that’s really what Jesus was getting at, but I’ll be darned if I can be sure what he was saying. So, there’s another veil that cloaks our lives. It is the shroud of unknowing. Who can discern what the great Mind of Being at the heart of existence is up to in this universe? Every time I think I get a bit closer to comprehension of the divine mystery, it seems to slap me in the face and remind me that it’s all too huge for my predilections, presumptions and prejudices. Is it possible that one day this shroud will be removed as well? Will we one day understand the arbitrariness of loss, the unfairness of life, the fickle nature of the one who holds the wedding feast? Will the veil be lifted to reveal that it all does make some kind of wondrous sense after all? I find it hard to believe.
And then there’s the shroud of all shrouds – the cerement of our mortality. At the loss of a dear friend, gone too soon, I have found myself staggered by the reality of death. I kept seeing his face; kept expecting to encounter him walking through the door, finding it hard to believe that he is truly gone. The curtain that stands between life and death is impenetrable. It is the ultimate loss that faces each of us, the ultimate end to all our beginnings and endings. It looms over our plans and presumptions like an uninvited guest who refuses to leave, and almost seems to mock us as we go about our busy lives flitting from one supposedly “urgent” task to another. And yet, Isaiah says, “. . . he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces.” Is it possible that death is not the last word? Can it be that even that cold, dark sheet will be lifted, that life will prevail, that tears will be dried? It’s hard to believe.
Well, thinking about those shrouds strangely led me to toss around in my head the image of some other coverings. I was covered with a kind of shroud this past Tuesday. I went to the hospital to have a cardiac monitor placed under the skin in my chest. They put what they call “drapes” around the insertion area (which are simply those big blue sheets of paper with tape along one side to stick to your body). The top drape went clear over my head so I was kind of buried beneath it and couldn’t see anything that was going on. Then the cardiologist who I knew but could not see started doing things to my chest with a scalpel. The experience under that drape could have been very frightening. But when that shroud was removed, I went home to a miracle. I now have a tiny device in my chest that conducts a non-stop EKG on my heart, stores all the information from each day, which is then automatically downloaded to a device by my bedside that automatically transmits the information to my doctor’s office. I have no idea how all of that works. The technology is staggering, but it is wondrous.
Then, I thought of the shrouds that are the sheets and blankets of my bed. Every night I enter into a different world. I climb between those sheets and drift off into another state of consciousness, a kind of deep soul awareness in which my mind speaks to itself and transports me to diverse places. And in each new setting, I am instructed, in some ways; I see the events of my life reflected in a sort-of fun-house mirror, and the issues that have been left dangling through the jumble of my waking days are often worked through and sometimes resolved. I don’t know how this happens. I don’t know who the self is who is instructing me – or who the “me” is that is being taught, for that matter. It’s all cloaked in a kind of darkness that lies just beyond the range of conscious perception. And in the morning I awake and stumble through my usual routines. Eventually, I see the sunlight streaming through the windows. The places I have been in my dreams and the things I have learned vanish, and I am left wondering in awe at the realm of existence I just tasted but cannot comprehend in the dark beneath those bed sheets. Then I remove the shroud of the night and sit down to breakfast. The dog comes to the table looking for handouts which Dadgie happily provides. I pick up my cell phone and read that the universe, which is infinite in scope, embracing distances that are staggering beyond all comprehension, is nonetheless expanding in every place, in every minute, and nobody really knows why. The dog, Charlie, pokes his head up on my lap from beneath the table, and I swear I could see him smile. Moments like these are simple and routine, but their cumulative effect is profound. And in the end I’m left with a sense that life is more than it seems to be, and beyond that, something, some profound reality, some pervasive awareness residing in the central core of being is, in a way that’s beyond my comprehension, aware of me. And it’s as though a curtain is removed that has covered all my hopes, and I realize that even on the mount of Zion, peace is worth working for and believing in, that even with a tiny mind incapable of grasping the reality of divinity, knowledge and faith are worth pursuing, and that even in the presence of heartbreaking loss, death may not, indeed, have the last word. And all of that I can see just in the eyes of our dog.
So who am I to argue with the prophet Isaiah?
True to form, this morning I plan to take personal exception to over a dozen centuries of biblical interpretation. I may sound a little flip about it, but in truth, I don’t go about this lightly. It’s simply that every so often, when I read scripture, something jumps out at me and takes hold of my imagination.
Anyway, what grabbed me in this morning’s passage from Matthew is this old phrase you’ve heard a dozen times about “the stone that the builders rejected,” and how it “has become the cornerstone.” I’m not convinced Jesus was talking about what everyone seems to think he was.
It has been assumed for generations that he was referring to himself. Jesus was the “cornerstone” rejected by the “builders” (i.e. the scribes and the Pharisees), and that same stone (Jesus) is the “stone of stumbling” over which the non-believers would fall. And, according to scripture, “The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” According to this interpretation, we’re all supposed to believe in Jesus in order to avoid tripping over the rejected cornerstone. Well, I believe in Jesus. I believe that the Jesus we encounter in scripture is normative for our lives. But if that is so, it’s not enough to say “I believe in Jesus;” the Jesus we encounter should transform us and cause us to live and act according to divine principles and purposes.
When I read this story from Matthew, I get the very clear impression that Jesus was not talking about words or beliefs at all! I get the idea that Jesus didn’t give a hoot what we say about what we believe in our heads! The story he told was not about what people thought, or what they said. It was about what some people did, and what they didn’t do! The story is about some tenants who were working in a vineyard they had leased. What they didn’t do was to pay their dues at harvest time! What they did was to kill the messengers who told them it was time to pay up! At the end of the story, the owner pointedly does not come on the scene and require of the laborers that they sign a pledge of allegiance, or that they offer words of regret, or promises, or affirmations. The owner is, instead, inclined to throw their sorry rear-ends out of the vineyard and give it over to (please note) “a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”
So, the “cornerstone” that Jesus speaks of is, I believe, that critical piece of personal architecture that is a life truly committed to the way of Jesus. I don’t think we’re in danger of stumbling over the “cornerstone” by failing to profess our belief in Jesus, I think we’re more likely to fall on our faces when we stop producing the “fruits of the kingdom.” So, in the face of all those centuries of Biblical interpretation in which Jesus is said to be that “cornerstone” and our task is to believe in him, I raise an objection. I think Jesus was trying to point us to the message more than to the messenger. And the message is: “What have you done for me lately?”
How much of our energy is put into creating rumors? At its worst, the church can be likened to a giant rumor mill, where we are all sharing rumors of the Divine realm. We show pictures to our children and tell them stories about things we want them to believe. I get up here in front of all of you and tell you things that I glean from scripture about Divine intentions. From time to time, we have interesting discussions about life and death and after-life, and morality, and social ethics, and things about our belief system that interest us. It’s like we’re all running around here gossiping about Divinity, but how much of our lives are spent producing those fruits, and turning the harvest over to the Landlord? Do we just talk about it, or do we live it, do it, share it?
We speak here of social justice. We look forward to a day when all people will be free from the ugliness of racial and religious hatred and prejudice. Our denomination issues proclamations against violence, and we read newspaper articles extolling the virtues of tolerance. We talk about justice and equality. But, my friends, unless we are participating with or supporting those who are engaged in the dismantling of racial, cultural, religious barriers in our nation and world, or putting forth the effort to learn about the history and the lives of brothers and sisters with different backgrounds, or supporting those who fight the political battles for affordable housing, equal opportunity, or quality public education, then all of our words are just “rumors” about the realm of Divine Love.
We use the word “love” quite freely around here. We speak of the value of forgiveness, and the beauty of the church’s close fellowship. We tell people in our church brochure and on our website that we are an open and affirming community. But unless we go out of our way to meet new people, learn about their lives, and befriend them, unless we pick up the phone to make contact with the person we know is suffering in silence, unless we offer an olive branch of good-will to the one we have been alienated from, then all of our words are just “rumors” of that holy realm. Paul said it bluntly to the Church in Corinth: “the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power.”
I have to confess, just like last week (in fact every week), this sermon is preached to myself as much as to anyone. I live from day to day in a virtual sea of words. I write words for the church website and weekly email, I write words to put in the bulletin, I write words to speak in a sermon. In fact, I love words. I actually learned to say all the days of the week in thirteen different languages. (Why would I do that? you ask. . . parties). So, I’m not down on words per se. Communication is terribly important. But we could put ourselves to sleep with all of our words.
I’m reminded of the story of two American students in a German university who were listening to a famous German philosopher speak. Finally, one turned to the other and said, “Let’s leave. This is too dull.” The friend replied, “Well, I admit it’s dull, but let’s at least wait until he gets to the verb.” The Divine realm is about verbs! It’s about actions, not simply the piling up of words. A Christian isn’t just someone who believes the right things, it’s someone who’s life is transformed. A church isn’t just a place where the right words are spoken, it’s a place that’s supposed to turn the world upside down.
Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady” said it best: “Words! Words! I’m so sick of words! I get words all day through. . . . Sing me no song! Read me no rhyme! Don’t waste my time, Show me! Don’t talk of June, Don’t talk of fall! Don’t talk at all! Show me!”
That’s exactly what I think Jesus was saying. When he spoke of the tenants in the vineyard, he was making a point that we ignore at our peril. If we get so caught up in our words that we fail to produce results with our lives and with our world, we might find ourselves left behind as others are busy remaking the world.
I was reminded of that when I came across the story of a young man named Sam Vaghar who never waited around to hear the right words. Vaghar, whose father is from Iran, and whose mother is British, grew up in Newton, Massachusetts and graduated from Brandeis. When he was fifteen years old, he was on a trip to Cuba with his parents and was mugged by a group of kids who took his wallet. Rather than making him enraged, it made him reflective. He wondered about the level of poverty there, and about all the inequities in the world. He resolved to try to make a difference. Vaghar, in his mid-twenties, founded an organization called the Millennium Campus Network or MCN. It motivates students to get involved in making a difference in global poverty. They are using social media to organize, enlist students, engage in projects, and raise money which goes to hunger, poverty, and disease alleviation projects (like buying anti-malaria bed nets for African villagers). “Since MCN’s inception in a university dorm room about a decade ago, over 10,000 undergraduates from 450 universities worldwide have participated in one or more MCN programs. MCN alumni have gone on to work at the United Nations, USAID, and launched their own social enterprises.” Vaghar appealed to a group of 1200 students at a Millennium Campus Conference, saying, “Don’t just think about why you care, but how do we actually have an impact?” What Vaghar cares about is results.
You and I aren’t necessarily going to start some global organization for social justice, but we can write the check, pull the voting lever, make the phone call. We can volunteer some time. We can reach out to a family member, a friend, a neighbor, or even a total stranger with compassion, understanding, assistance and support. And we are doing some good things through our church. Our mission and ministry are of real value. But we should always make sure we are keeping our “eyes on the prize,” as they say. And we might be asking, “Is the church of Jesus Christ, in all its expressions and forms, being all it can be and doing all it can do to be the hands and feet of Divine intention in this world?” There are some blessed people who are taking to heart the challenge to feed the hungry, heal the broken, and bring good news to the poor. Maybe they are the ones to whom the landlord will turn over the vineyard Instead of those who fail to bring forth “the produce at the harvest time.”
That’s enough words.
What if I asked if you were afraid of God? Any of you might laugh. But I should tell you that, to begin with, I’m a little afraid of even using the word “God.” That’s because it’s been so abused over the centuries and so burdened down with mental images of an old man who sits up on top of the clouds, and it’s very hard for any of us to shake those images of our childhood — images that circumscribe and make somehow manageable the unfathomable power and breadth of divinity. You might recall images from Bible-thumping preachers of generations gone by who spoke of God’s wrath meted out upon the evil-doers and who tried to frighten people into declaring their faith. You might say, “Hey preacher, those notions of a scary, frightening God went out with horse-drawn carriages.” What if I said to you that you’d better be afraid of God? Would the smile retreat from your face? Would you consider turning me off and deciding I wasn’t worth listening to anymore? In fear and trembling (to pick up today’s theme) I hope to convince you this morning that there is very good reason to be afraid of God.
Let’s begin with the Apostle Paul and his admonition in this letter to the church at Philippi that people of faith should indeed be afraid. He wrote, “. . . work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” And then he said why this task should be so scary. He concluded, “ . . . for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” I want to tell you this morning that I find the notion of Divinity at work within me shaping my will and my work for the Almighty’s own pleasure extremely frightening. My will and my work are shaped by my own inclinations, prejudices, beliefs, and desires. I find that very comfortable. And I find a god who fits neatly into my hip pocket while I’m engaged I my own will and work to be very satisfying. There’s absolutely nothing scary about the bumper sticker: “Jesus is my copilot” – nice to know he’s hanging around to back me up, isn’t it? But a Transformational Power who gets inside me and redirects my will and my work according to Divine priorities instead of my own – that’s way too scary to imagine really happening. Heaven knows what might become of me if I allowed such a thing to happen. In fact, that’s exactly the problem: heaven may know what would become of me, but I sure don’t.
Let me begin to unpack all of this by first letting you in on some of my own theology. Specifically, I want to share a bit of my Christology (which simply means what I believe about Jesus as the Christ). In doing this I am picking up on a very old tradition inspired by some of the verses you heard read this morning from Philippians. When Paul writes that Jesus was, “in the form of God [but] . . . emptied himself, taking the form of a slave . . . . And being found in human form . . .” those words practically leapt off the page at the early church fathers. They wanted to know what was this “form of God” that described Jesus, and how did it relate to his “form of a slave” and his “human form”? The debates that grew out of these few words of scripture ended up branding certain notions about Christ as heresy, and establishing an orthodox Christology for the church. So, my own notions about Christ also relate to these verses, but I suspect those learned early church fathers would have declared me a heretic along with the Arianists and Docetists. At any rate, when Paul writes that “it is God who is at work within you,” in my mind this echoes his magnificent words about Christ being “in the form of God” and in “human form”. I happen to think that the difference between Jesus and you and me is simply one of degree. I think we are all divine, to a point, that we are all sons and daughters of The Most High, that Schiller’s Götterfunken – the “God-spark” of joy – is the imago dei – the image of God – that Genesis says resides in all of us from the moment of creation. The difference, in my belief, between Jesus and us is that Jesus just happened to be much more deeply in touch with, or got a larger dose of, or gave himself over more fully to that divinity within.
This is a paradox. To say that we are both human and divine is nonsense. It is as nonsensical to say it about us as to say it about Jesus. And yet our entire religion is built on paradox, the paradox of the trinity (the one God in three persons), the paradox of the virgin birth, the paradox of God’s all-powerful and all-loving nature that seems to make no room for the existence of evil and suffering. If our religion made sense, it would be boring – worse than that, it would inconsequential.
In asserting all this, at least I’m in good company. Soren Kierkegaard picked up on Paul’s phrase and wrote an entire one hundred and twenty page treatise titled Fear and Trembling. In that magnificent work of theology he referred to faith itself as a paradox, the same paradox that Abraham faced when confronted with the horrific choice between killing his son and being disobedient to God. And in another place, he saw this paradox in the human experience of what he refers to as “unutterable joy.” He supposed that “. . . the unutterable joy is based upon the contradiction that an existing human being is composed of the infinite and the finite, is situated in time, so that the joy of the eternal in him becomes unutterable . . . .”
So, what, you might ask, has all this got to do with being afraid of God? It all comes down to this great paradox of our religion, the notion that the infinite power of Love, the force that pervades and sustains the universe, can reside in a single human heart. In other words, in the language of earlier religious formulations, Jesus is constantly knocking on the door of our hearts, and it’s up to us to open that door and, as Paul McCartney suggested, let ’m in. But that door opens on a frightening prospect. Jesus himself opened the door and allowed the Divine Spark within to flare up into a raging flame, and it consumed him, and ultimately destroyed him. In the Garden of Gethsemane he sweated great drops of blood wishing that there were some way to close that door again and douse that fire, but he was too far gone, he was totally committed.
Carl Jung is quoted as saying, “Religion is a defense against the experience of God.” Those words are often taken as an indictment of religion for swamping people in a haze of orthodoxies and theological constructs. I think there may be a deeper truth. I read somewhere – I can’t remember now where – that it was the role of the ancient shaman (and subsequently, the priest) to stand in that place between the people and God not merely as a translator, but as a buffer. This is because the Divine Power of the Universe is all-consuming, and to move too close is to risk be drawn into an overwhelming force that so transforms one’s life that, in essence, the self is finally lost. It is comparable to the Black Hole that resides at the center of a galaxy holding it together and powering its artful motion. Any matter that wanders too close to that source of energy is inescapably drawn into its oblivion. Now, I don’t mean to suggest that Divine Power is a Black Hole or simply a destructive force. But I have read the words of Jesus and absorbed the themes of the Bible, and it is abundantly clear that we are not compelled to regard our faith as a convenient add-on, like an app for our cell phones. Faith is meant to be totally transforming and to require complete commitment from us.
I love the words of Annie Dillard in her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk: “Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?” She asks. “… Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or,” she continues, “as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.”
I feel a little hypocritical preaching this sermon. I may sound as if I have made this total commitment and am fully in touch with the TNT we are mixing up here on Sunday mornings. Nothing could be further from the truth. I haven’t been able to give myself completely to that spark of Divinity within. I haven’t mustered the courage to allow that Spark to grow into a consuming fire, to permit it to, as Paul said, be at work in me, enabling me “both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Frankly, it’s just too scary. The problem is, the meaninglessness of a failure to live for love is even scarier.
So this sermon is being preached to me as well as to you, and it comes with a caution to all of us: that a comfortable god who fits into my life-style and is content with an hour of platitudes every Sunday morning is no God at all. But it comes also with a word of comfort that is another of the bizarre paradoxes of our religion. The power of Love is absolutely transforming, the gospel is demanding of total devotion and the way of Christ is one of complete sacrifice of the self. At the same time, we are accepted, just as we are, and saved – saved from ourselves, from our complacency, from meaninglessness by that same pervasive, all-powerful Love that rules the universe. Go figure.
So, we are left with this: “work out your own salvation in fear and trembling.” It’s good advice, because if you or I think instead that it just doesn’t matter how we respond to the gospel, or if we are satisfied with a pleasant, undemanding, comfortable god, we may be well advised to approach the Almighty with some “fear and trembling.”
I remember playing baseball as a boy. Typically, we would find ourselves in the field behind a friend’s house with the sun out on a beautiful day for baseball and having a great time. Then the ball gets hit over the hedge. I, being who I am, of course would feel it necessary to clarify the situation. “Out of bounds!” I announced.
For some reason that I never quite understood, Donny Roscoe used to take it upon himself to question my judgement. “That’s a home run! We never made ‘over-the-hedge’ out of bounds!” he said.
Naturally, I corrected him. “Yes, we did!”
Typical of Donny Roscoe, he differed about my judgement: “No we didn’t!”
I, being who I am, explained the situation clearly, “It’s out of bounds, Donny!”
A spirited debate ensued. “”Tis not!” Tis so!” “Isn’t.” “Is.” “Isn’t.” “Is”.”
Then Donny clarified his position: “It’s not fair!” And the debate continued.
Of course, we never questioned the supremacy of the rule of fairness. We knew — even by that early age — that fairness was everything!
It’s been drummed into my head since I was first able to grab the blue ball away from the little girl in the yellow dress, “Now, Mikey, let’s play fair.”
And many of us extrapolated the principle into all areas of life. We grew up believing that if we brushed our teeth and ate our broccoli, then it would never rain on Saturdays and no one we love would ever die. And when it turned out to not work that way, Donny Roscoe’s plaintive cry became the keynote for an entire generation: “It’s not fair!”
There’s nothing new, however, about believing in fairness, for people or for nations. Since even before the time of the social philosopher John Locke, government in Western civilization has been based on the premise that everyone has a certain catalogue of rights – and certain of our individual rights must be given up to government in order to maintain our collective rights as a society. It’s the fair way to do things.
It happens in labor disputes and baseball games – the most often heard cry of those in contention is, “We only want what’s fair!” Everybody agrees that fairness is the rule, but often times there’s no agreement on what fairness means. A clear example is the Presidential election three years ago. The cry of Donald Trump and his MEGA Republican allies reminded me of Donny Roscoe. If you lose the election, just claim that it was rigged. It wasn’t fair!
It also reminds me of Jonah who left the city of Nineveh and went to sit down and pout by the side of the road because the Lord God was not going to rain destruction on the city after all. Jonah had preached to the Ninevites that they were doomed for their evil ways, but God changed his mind. It wasn’t fair!
And fairness reigns supreme even in churches, although in the House of the Lord I’ve heard people disagree about the rules. If the “Week-end Brunch-bunchers” have been using the 5th grade Sunday school room for their Saturday morning social for 25 years, it’s just not fair to expect them to move to make room for a “New Members Orientation Class” – and woe be unto them that try.
What’s fair is fair! And whether we can agree on what it means or not, fairness is the rule of last appeal on the playground, at the office, in the marketplace, in government, in the home, in the church.
So I hope I don’t scandalize you too much this morning if I say that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not fair!
I have proof. It’s right here in this 20th chapter of Matthew. Jesus is trying to explain the “New World Order” (if you will) to a group of disciples. He says that the heavenly system of economics, and hierarchies, and priorities, works like this:
This fella’s got three guys working for him. One has been at it all day in the hot sun, another one has put in a decent half-day’s work, and the third is a newcomer who just showed up and worked for maybe a half-hour. Then he pays them all the same!
It seems like a cute little story with a nice moral. But, let me tell you, if I were that guy who’d been working in the sun for 10 hours with not so much as a coffee break, I’d be steamed!
Since when does a newcomer with no seniority, no on-the-job-training, no experience, no time on his card, and who hasn’t paid his dues, get the same paycheck, the same pension plan, the same number of weeks of vacation, the same health insurance, the same amount of attention, the same clout, the same level of consideration, the same priority in making room assignments, as me!? It’s not fair!
That’s right. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not fair; never has been; never was intended to be.
If somebody cheats me out of my coat, I have a right to get the police, hunt him down, take him to court, get my coat back, and collect for damages suffered because of mental anguish. It’s only fair.
Jesus says, if he takes your coat, give him the shirt off your back too. That’s not fair.
That’s right. If the word and witness of Jesus of Nazareth left us anything to hang our hats on, it’s this: Those who buy into the gospel, and presume to call themselves “Christian,” taking on the very name of Christ, are challenged to take on, also, a higher standard than mere fairness.
It rubs against the grain. Common sense tells us that we should, in a just society, expect fairness for ourselves, and offer fairness in return. The gospel says that we should expect less than our fair share, and go beyond fairness in return.
Is any of us grown up enough to handle this? I don’t think I am. I’m trying. Heaven knows I’m working at it. But there is just about nothing that will get my dander up faster than feeling like someone is taking advantage of me. Maybe it’s because I was always fairly small of stature, and I felt like I had to punch my way through grade school. But, all it takes is some wisenheimer in a gold Lexus to cut me off on the expressway and I’m ready to ‘duke it out’ – “He got in front of me in traffic! That’s not fair!”
But it’s not just other people who are supposed to treat us fairly, it’s the world in general – life – the cosmos. Haven’t you noticed that we Americans have come up with a whole new twist on life? We’re a piece of work. We are the first civilization in history to believe that life owes us good looks, a nice job, 80 or 90 years of relatively trauma-free existence, and a BMW. Young people expect to start out in life with everything. And we become sullen and bitter when it doesn’t work out that way. When things don’t go the way they do on the TV commercials, we feel like life has cheated us.
I have met some precious folks who don’t seem to be caught up in all this. You probably have too. Did you ever notice that they tend to be the ones in nursing homes, and apartments for the elderly, and Senior Centers, and sometimes you even bump into a few of them in church. They tend to be the ones with both arthritis and a sense of humor. They’re the ones who’ve lost their spouses, and their homes, and half their friends, but not their spirits. They’re the ones who, by the world’s standards, seem to have nothing left to live for, but somehow, mysteriously, every time you’re around them, you come away with traces of a gift in your heart that you don’t want to let go of.
And this is the gift: to know the blessedness of a spirit that’s finally free from the tyranny of fairness. It’s the sort of spirit that Jesus referred to as “poor” – that is, unencumbered by greed and need (You remember the “poor in spirit” don’t you? They’re the ones who possess the Kingdom of Heaven).
It’s not just old people who have this gift, but it does seem to favor the elderly. Maybe that’s because those of us who demand fairness from life burn out at early ages from pounding our fists on steering wheels.
The most wonderful thing about this gift is that it’s yours for the taking. You don’t have to fight anybody, or demand your rights, or even pay your dues.
Dr. William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury, knew how readily available such treasures are. He once told a group of students, “The world, as we live in it, is like a shop window in which some mischievous person has got in overnight and shifted all the price labels around, so that the cheap things have the high-price labels on them and the really precious things are priced low.”
Jesus tried to tell us how the realm of Divine Love works. It’s a kind of economy that seems backwards, where the rule is to appreciate whatever you receive, and give to others more than they deserve. It’s a realm unlike our own families and institutions – an ideal sort of place where newcomers have equal status with old-timers, and no one fights over turf. It’s a remarkable vision, not yet fully realized in which “what’s right is right” and “what’s fair is…” not nearly enough.
When we were playing baseball in the back field, if some knowing soul had come along and tired to explain to us that 40 or 50 years later, it wouldn’t really be significant whether “over the hedge” had been declared out of bounds or not, we would’ve just given him the raspberries.
And when Jesus says that, in eternal terms, the things that seem “only fair” to us are not of real consequence, we are tempted to ignore him as well. But we ignore him at the cost of a very dear treasure – a treasure of spirit – a spirit that is
-not expensive
-not fashionable
-and not fair.
It is so much more.
I watched an interview this week with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and I found myself secretly cheering, thinking how great it would be if someone put a bullet in Vladimir Putin’s head so he would stop killing people indiscriminately with rockets and bombs. The fact that I was thinking about taking a life didn’t seem to matter in the moment. All I could think was: if only someone could get that S.O.B and change the course of human events. With some time to consider, I wondered about my sudden lust for blood. I’ve spent a little time reflecting on that inner dialogue.
Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, that inner dialogue is very similar to the one I was engaged in not long ago about football. For some time I really struggled with whether to continue watching and following the Patriots. I loved football. I played football in high school. But the revelations not only about head injuries, but about violent acts by NFL players off the field got me wondering about my support for the game. It’s a brutal, violent game. I know, I got knocked around enough when I played. And why should any of us be surprised that men who pump themselves up and charge up their aggressive tendencies in order to excel at the sport end up carrying those aggressive tendencies into the rest of their lives? My inner dialogue went like this: Is it possible that one reason I love this sport so much is that it touches some of those same aggressive tendencies in my own spirit? And by watching and rooting, am I not only encouraging all that in myself, but am I supporting a mega-industry that profits from preying on the worst in us?
Now, Vladimir Putin and missile attacks may seem to be a far cry from football players beating up their girlfriends, but there is a common thread that runs through both stories. It has to do not with those “bloodthirsty Russians” or those brutal football players. It has to do with me. And it has to do with you.
When I think about actually shooting Putin in the head or beating up a woman like some football players have done, I couldn’t quite picture myself under any circumstances doing those things, but, with a little imagination I did get disturbingly close. I thought about what might happen if a sadistic totalitarian regime took over the government of our nation – a military/corporate coup that resulted in a dictatorship, throwing out the Constitution and Bill of Rights, taking away all our liberties, herding us like cattle, controlling our minds and dehumanizing people. I imagined myself becoming part of an underground resistance movement of American patriots, doing whatever we could to try to bring down this sham government. I even imagined myself planting bombs. I don’t think even under such extreme circumstances I could bring myself to target centers of innocent civilians, but I think I could be driven to some pretty extreme behaviors.
So what’s the point of this little excursion into the strange workings of Mikey’s mind – to suggest that the violent acts of Putin or an abusive football player are in any way defensible? By no means! But it is helpful to consider how any of us, given the right set of circumstances, might be caught up in behaviors that we would otherwise consider “horrible,” or “crazy.” At least I can envision a circumstance in which I could become a “guerilla fighter,” bordering, one might say, on being a terrorist.
To imagine this may be a little unsettling, but it’s also rather illuminating. It doesn’t get us any farther in comprehending the insane bombing of civilians, but at least it helps to understand some of the anti-American sentiment that we keep hearing from the other side of the globe. Indeed, there are many people on this planet who view our government as the heart of a military/industrial complex that goes around the world trampling on the rights of others and trying to conquer the world. I don’t happen to think they see the complete or accurate picture, but then there may be something for us to learn even from their view of us.
All of this is not a particularly comfortable exercise. But, uncomfortable as it may be, I believe it is one example of the only thing that may, in the end, save us all from destroying each other.
You see, the easy and more comfortable thing to do is to label those you don’t understand as “inhuman,” or “insane,” or “weird,” or “a fool” and leave it at that. It’s what Israelis do with Palestinians and visa versa. It’s what many straight people do with gay people, or some “White” folks do with African American or Hispanic folks. It’s what we do to each other when we bump up against one another about politics or values in conflict. We tend to dismiss one another, because it’s easier – easier than going through the uncomfortable exercise of trying to comprehend another person’s world from the inside out. It’s a habit that leads us into withdrawal and confrontation, carelessness and violence. It’s a pattern of behavior that threatens to tear our entire world apart.
If we, as a Christian church, can’t find ways to practice and model a new way of being, then I fear all hope may be lost. I tend to think that we might be the last best hope for saving humanity from itself. My vision of the church at its best is that of a laboratory, where people find the safety to experiment in new ways of learning how to love one another. In the special environment of this laboratory we call the church we have an opportunity to set aside our usual fears and revulsion, to do things like imagining what it would be like to be someone else – maybe even our most dreaded rival, to mix a little understanding with a little temperance, or compassion, or humility and see what comes of it.
That’s the course that the Apostle Paul was trying to set the Roman church on. He knew firsthand the human tendency to line up and take pot shots at each other over intensely held differences. He had spent plenty of time doing it himself. Some believed it was a betrayal of the faith to eat meat that had been sacrificed to pagan gods, and since that included just about all the meat in the marketplace, they were driven to vegetarianism as an act of social and moral conscience. Others in the same church saw this as excessive behavior and most likely branded the non-meat-eaters as extremist flakes (or whatever the appropriate pejorative would have been for that day).
Paul, in a true spirit of behavioral experimentation, offers several ways for these opposing sides to look at it. First, he suggests to the meat-eaters that the vegetarians are “weak,” and therefore need their understanding and support. He says, “Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables.” Then he suggests that God is on both sides, so they must not judge one another. He says, “Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them.” He then offers the possibility of considering each other to be more similar than different, perhaps as a way of getting folks to look at life from the other’s point of view. He says, “those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.” He then suggests that we’re all in this life-boat together, so why not enjoy the ride, and keep track of what really matters. Paul writes, “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” Finally, he removes from each of them the responsibility for judgment. He says, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.”
That’s five different ways of trying to forestall the tendency to demonize and attack each other, or shun and exclude each other. Obviously, Paul is setting out a series of ways of looking at our human differences, and suggesting that we try them on to see which one fits.
It’s sound advice. And it calls us to take part in nothing less than the refinement of humanity. It’s a grand and noble undertaking, and it’s extraordinarily difficult and fraught with hazards. But it may just be that if you and I can get it right, there’s hope for Israel and Palestine; if we can figure out a new way of being here at the corner of Elm and Memorial, maybe the Western capitalists and the Islamic fundamentalists can learn to understand one another; if you can comprehend your wife’s pressures and problems, or grasp the motivations behind your daughter-in-law’s angry outbursts, or if I can find a way to stop shaking my fist at drivers who get in my way, there just might be hope for the world.
Stranger things have happened: “In April 1995, Bud Welch’s 23-year-old daughter, Julie Marie, was killed in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City along with 167 others. In the months after her death, Bud changed from supporting the death penalty for Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols to taking a public stand against it. In 2001 Timothy McVeigh was executed for his part in the bombing.” Bud Welch says that, “Three days after the bombing, as I watched Tim McVeigh being led out of the courthouse, I hoped someone in a high building with a rifle would shoot him dead. I wanted him to fry. In fact, I’d have killed him myself if I’d had the chance.” But after spiraling down the rabbit hole of grief and hatred that made him turn to the bottle, Bud finally came to the realization that what he was doing wasn’t working. He had to do something different. He looked up Timothy McVeigh’s family and went to visit. As he stood speaking to the bomber’s father, Bill, and sister, Jennifer, he happened to see some photos on the wall and saw a picture of Timothy at his high school graduation. Looking at the old picture of his son, Bill McVeigh allowed a tear to roll down his face. And in that instant Bud Welch was transformed. He recognized the same love of a father for his son that he had known for his daughter. Bud writes, ‘When I got ready to leave I shook Bill’s hand, then extended it to Jennifer, but she just grabbed me and threw her arms around me. She was the same sort of age as Julie but felt so much taller. I don’t know which one of us started crying first. Then I held her face in my hands and said, “look, honey, the three of us are in this for the rest of our lives. I don’t want your brother to die and I’ll do everything I can to prevent it”’.”
Sometimes, extraordinary differences can be resolved; monumental barriers can be knocked down; life-long biases can be overcome. But it starts with simple things like resolving to walk a mile in the other person’s shoes before branding him a lunatic, or simply recognizing that this world is made to be full of many different kinds of people, so who are we to question the Creator’s judgment?
In 1969 Sly Stone set the words, “different strokes for different folks” to music in the song, “Everyday People.” It was a song about acceptance written in the heady days of “flower power,” when most of the members of my own generation thought the world was about to learn from all the bloodshed and violence and emerge into a new day of peace and love. It may have been youthful idealism, and certainly more than a bit off target, but there was a spark of wisdom beneath it all. Indeed, unless we can get down to the business of learning from our differences and overcoming our instinctive judgment and hostility, we will condemn the world to the fate of endlessly repeating its mistakes until there is no one left to care.
It all begins right here in this place. I hope you will join me in seizing the opportunity to experiment in this “laboratory of love” that we call the church.
Reading today’s passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans got me thinking about the old Brothers Grimm fairy tale “The Frog Prince.” You know how it goes. The young princess sat down by a cool spring playing with a golden ball, which rolled into the water. A frog appeared and struck a bargain with her: if she would love him and let him live with her, he would get the ball. Of course, she thought he would never be able to get out of the spring anyway, so she agreed. The frog got the ball, the princess went home, and the next day, he showed up at the door, expecting to move in. She slammed the door on him, but her father, the king, heard her story and told her she had to keep her end of the bargain. The frog came in and ate at the table, and stayed for three nights, whereupon he miraculously turned into a handsome prince. He explained to the princess that he had been enchanted by a malicious fairy who turned him in to a frog until some princess should take him out of the spring and into her home for three nights. The two were married and lived (as in all fairy tales) “happily ever after.”
It’s the same old story: girl meets frog, frog turns into prince, frog gets girl.
I once thought I was a frog. It’s true. I spent most of my adolescence sitting on the equivalent of a lily pad in my home room class; and when the beautiful princesses of the high school walked by, alas, I could do little more than croak.
But I came up with a great solution to my problem. By my third year in college, I had become a prince! I had the upper-classman tilt of the head. I had learned how to smoke a pipe and wear sweaters. I was cool. And the only problem was that, all along, I knew, deep down inside, that I was still a frog. I knew I might fool everyone but myself.
Isn’t it amazing what we put ourselves through just because we haven’t figured out who we are yet? And I have to confess, it doesn’t all entirely end at age twenty five. There are still moments when I can feel a little like that insecure little boy who always knew he was just one sentence away from saying the wrong thing. There are still times when I feel tough as nails – nothing matters – I can handle anything. And sometimes, that’s a good way to keep from being an insecure little boy.
If you and I look into our own hearts, we can almost surely find some traces of these feelings. We’re trying to escape from our lily pond, and we would so love to be princes and princesses. I suppose that’s why fairy tales are so timeless; they touch very deep and profound chords within each one of us.
Well, I do have some good news. For one thing, you’re not alone. All those other folks around you, including the ones who really seem like princes (or frogs), are asking the same questions deep inside. We’ve got a mutual “self-image” problem.
And what has the church got to say about it? I have to begin by saying that I think it’s high time the church started saying something different than it has for the last several centuries. The medieval Christian church told people they were frogs. They wore folks into the ground trying to make sure that every unacceptable thought and act was covered by the appropriate penance – that proper atonement was made for their sins. Their only hope, miserable wart toads that they were, was, through the magic of ecclesiastical mumbo jumbo, to be again transmogrified into royal lords and ladies. It was from this merry-go-round – acts of grace chasing acts of sin like a dog after its tail – that Martin Luther finally fell off. It was just too doggone much work trying to turn yourself into a prince when the church kept saying you were a frog.
But we haven’t done much better in American Protestantism. The early American revivalist church spent so much time telling people what awful sinners they were and what terrible consequences they would suffer for their sinfulness, that we developed something of a national deep-seated guilt-complex. And now, how many children grow up hearing little more from their parents than how wrong they are: “Johnny, don’t touch that. What’s wrong with you, anyway? Why can’t you learn to behave?” And the church has all too often only reinforced negative self-images by continuing to remind people of all their sins, but rarely lifting up their gifts and potentials.
Then, of course, the church has, as usual, overcompensated. I refer to the incredible wealth of churches these days (both electronic and otherwise) who preach little else than the “power of positive thinking,” and appeal to all those frustrated princes and princesses out there with the ingeniously popular message, “All you have to do is say ‘praise Jesus,’ send in your money, and you will experience a royal metamorphosis the likes of which would make Franz Kafka gasp” – or something to that effect.
For too many years, the church has been waving an impotent magic wand trying to turn princes into frogs, or frogs into princes. It’s high time we stopped.
The Apostle Paul says we’re not frogs. We’re not nothings. We are no less than very temples of Divinity. And Paul appeals to us, “by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.” What’s the phrase that made the rounds a few years back: “God don’t make junk?”
Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” There’s no room here to be valueless. As a child of Divine Goodness, you don’t need to sit on a stump in a muddy creek and fall prey to the first royal snob who comes along expecting you to fetch a stupid ball. You’re not a frog.
But Paul puts the breaks on the other side of our distorted self-image as well. In verse three he says, “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” You’re also no prince.
In the world of the brothers Grimm, there are only frogs and princes and princesses. I’m very disturbed by the way this “fairy tale mentality” is not only alive in our personal lives, but also in our nation and world. After the 60’s, in which we in America turned over the rock that hid our collective racism, and the 70’s, in which we discovered our capacity for injustice in war and corruption in government, we got tired of being American “frogs.” So, especially in the aftermath of 9-11, and the brutality and destruction perpetrated by despots and dictators (like Vladimir Putin), we have now decided that we are the righteous, moral, good and powerful “princes” of the new world order. In the world of fairy tales, as often in the world of adolescence, the only way to vanquish the frog within is to replace him with a prince. Enough of fairy tales!
The truth about human nature is that for most of us, our self-image is so micro-thin that all it takes is a good breeze to nudge us into either self-abasement or self-aggrandizement. And whether one spends life with no sense of worth, or driven by a thirst for success, we all seem to be searching for the same thing: an identity.
Well, Paul refuses to let us take up residence in either the pond or the palace, but he doesn’t leave us without an identity. It’s here in verse four: “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.”
Being members of one another has its advantages over sitting on a rock and croaking, or dashing off on a white charger with robes flowing. For one thing, you can drop the act! What a relief – to not have to be anybody but yourself. That’s what the church has to offer. A place where you can drop the act and be yourself. It is a place of relationships. And in those relationships we are each defined.
We are defined by how we treat one another. We are defined by how we care for and strive to understand one another. And in our so doing, we are defined by our relationship to the body – this body – the body of Christ.
I am so privileged to know all of you. I have come to appreciate the genuineness of your compassion, and the simple gift of your real selves to one another, and to me. This body of Christ is a great model for the world around. If people in our community, our nation, and our world could drop the self-defeating behaviors and the apathetic sense of powerlessness, if all of us around the world could let go of the pomposity, pride and greed, and all simply “be” together in relationship, and if we could all mold that relationship among us after the image of Christ, we might find our lives and our world touched by a grace we could barely imagine, and we might find ourselves, though earthen vessels, to be bearers of a treasure beyond comprehension.
Many of you know the story of how our next hymn came to be written. John Newton was the captain of a slave ship in the eighteenth century. After several years of running slaves from the west coast of Africa to the profitable slave market in the United States, he underwent a conversion. This hymn was the result of his awakening, and has become beloved by people around the world. I’d like to suggest to you, however, that Newton’s words could use a tiny bit of touch-up. The opening phrase, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” is reflective of the frog and prince dualism of the church in his day. I’d to invite you to sing it with me a little differently. Let’s put the emphasis where it belongs: on the saving act of divine grace, not on our own state of worthlessness. Join me in singing these words: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved and set me free!”
Genesis 1:1-5 1 John 4:7-16
I have strayed from the lectionary this morning and offered a couple of scripture readings that are part of what I want share today. I have decided to simply talk with you this morning because what I have to say are things that have been on my heart for some time and come from a very deep place in my head and my soul. The impetus for sharing all this in a sermon grew out of a conversation with Nowell at coffee hour (a lot of things seem to grow out of conversations with Nowell at coffee hour).
Let’s begin at the beginning:
Bereishit bara Elohim
Et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz
V’ha’aretz haiyta tohu vavohu
V’choshech al pnei tehom
These are the opening words of the book of Genesis in Hebrew. The words tohu vavohu, which we usually translate as “without form and void” are very dark and mysterious words. They describe a virtual endless sea of chaotic nothingness. Genesis tells us that God brought order out of this chaos to create all that is.
Well, you and I are co-creators with the Almighty. Quantum physicists today tell us that we create the ordered world around us by observing it. That’s a rather mind-blowing assertion. Let me give you my take on how that happens (it may not entirely jibe with the latest theory of biocentrism, but it works for me).
We, all of us, are every minute of our lives, swimming, so to speak, in a virtual sea of quantum particles, waves, and energy. And we, ourselves, are part of that sea. That vast, endless ocean of tohu vavohu (if you will) connects everyone and everything. We are oblivious to most all of it. That is because we have these five senses that we have developed that limit our perception. For example, our eyes are designed to collect information from a tiny slice of the vast electromagnetic spectrum. We do not see ionizing radiation, including gamma rays and x-rays. We don’t see ultraviolet or infrared light, or microwaves, or radio waves. We do not see free electrons, atoms or molecules of hydrogen, helium, or oxygen. We don’t see background radiation. And perhaps most significantly, we don’t see Higgs bosons that make up the Higgs field, filling all of space everywhere. What we see is that small slice of the electromagnetic spectrum that we refer to as “visible light.” It is only visible because that’s the stuff our eyes are tuned to decipher. And the information from our eyes is transmitted to these magnificent brains of ours (far beyond any current computer’s capability). And our brains, in turn create a picture in our minds of the world around us.
We may also think that we hear everything there is to hear, or smell everything there is to smell. If you think that, just take a walk with a dog sometime. Dogs, by the way don’t see the world the same way we do. They have a different array of cones in their eyes for detecting color. They mostly just see blues, perhaps some yellows, but no reds at all. Everything else is just a dull grey. Have you ever considered how different our world would seem to us if we had different sensing apparatuses? Like bats and dolphins who navigate the world using sonar. Dolphins, by the way, can, with their sonar, detect a school of fish ahead, and have a picture of that school of fish in their heads. They can then transmit a sonar signal to other dolphins who then get the same picture of the school of fish in their heads. Have you ever wondered what the world would look like if we had different kinds of sensing organs, or if the sensing organs we have worked differently? The world would be a very, very different place.
There is so much more out there than we can perceive. But the truth of our existence is that we are connected, each being a part of this grand mix of tohu vavohu. And we, each of us and all of us, are, by the limited perceptions of our senses, creating reality in every moment out of the the tohu vavohu in which we swim. In other words, our separateness is simply a matter of perception. In truth, all is One. We are part of each other, and part of the trees, and the sidewalks, and the sky. The whole of the universe is One.
This is not just me speaking. It was one of the most eminent physicists, Bernard d’Espagnat, who wrote, “. . . we know for sure . . . that, in some respects
at least, the world is non-separable. . . non-separability is now one of the most certain general concepts in physics.” Albert Einstein wrote that: “A human being . . . experiences himself and his feelings as separate from the rest, an optical illusion of his consciousness.” And the famous physicist, Erwin Schrödinger (of “Schrödinger’s Cat” fame), said, “There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousnesses. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind.” How’s that sound coming from a physicist? It seems like Quantum physics is sounding more like Zen Buddhism all the time.
The prophet Jeremiah had an amazing vision. In the midst of hearing the voice of eternity castigating the people of Israel, Jeremiah looked around and experienced everything as, in his words, tohu vavohu. Perhaps he had a glimpse into the truth about this sea of quantum stuff in which we swim: that all is indeed one.
And now a word about love. In our epistle reading this morning John says, “. . .everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. …for God is love.” We have a dear friend to whom we were recently talking. She told us about an experience she had long ago as a young mother. Her daughter had a small New Testament that she loved to play with, even before she could read. One day the little girl accidentally tore a small piece out of one of the pages while she was playing with it. Our friend said she picked it up off the floor and read it. It said, “God is love.” That phrase has been a touchstone for her throughout her life. It could be a touchstone for us as well. “God is love.” That’s an amazing statement. He doesn’t say that God loves, he doesn’t say that God wants us to love, he says “God is love.” I take that to mean that the divinity that lies at the Ground of All Being (to use Tillich’s phrase) is pure love. And, therefore, it is love that fuels, motivates, and drives our being.
Ask any biologist what it is that makes the evolution of life forms work, and they might tell you it’s natural selection. But if you press them further about what drives that, they will probably say it’s the survival instinct. So, what is the survival instinct but a love of life and a love of self. I want to survive because I love myself and I love being alive. That’s the blood, as well as the pumping heart, of living things. It’s what makes life work, because, as the biologist will tell you, it’s what makes evolution work. And without that, living things can’t keep hanging on in an often unfriendly world. But the love of life and the love of self are prerequisites for loving others. And it turns out that is built in as well. That same survival instinct leads living beings to love and care for their offspring and then also the members of their family, or clan, or the community of other beings like them (If you are fortunate enough to take this to the extreme of loving even your enemy, as Buechner writes in our bulletin meditation, that is God’s love). Our Area Minister, Rev. Carol Steinbrecher, whom many of you met, recently wrote an article in which she mentioned that even trees have networks of roots that they use to nourish and care for members of their cluster that are in need of nourishment.
In a very real sense, we cannot choose to love or not love; love is simply built in as a part of our core being. Yes, there are people, times, and circumstances when that being is distorted and hatred or violence reign. But that does not destroy the love that is part of our created self. That cannot be destroyed, because it is the spark of divinity that lies within us. Indeed, in those opening verses of Genesis, the ancient Hebrews shared their insight that God created human beings in God’s own divine image and blessed them and saw that it was good. So, we who share that divine spark of divinity are made of love. John said it, you know, God is love. In Colossians, Paul says that “love . . . binds everything together in perfect harmony.” And in 1 Corinthians, he says that “love never ends.”
So where has all this brought us? Well, here’s the conclusion: The latest determinations of quantum physics as well as the findings of biology and anthropology come into remarkable agreement with the insights of the ancients . All of the universe is not a collection of individual planets, stars, objects, or people. All is one. And because of that, you and I are inseparably part of each other. We are bound together in this infinite sea of tuhu vavohu, out of which, we as co-creators with Divinity in every moment are creating order out of the chaos around us through the wonder of our limited but remarkable senses and brains. And at the heart of our being, the divine fuel that drives us and the power that literally gives us life and allows us to sustain that life is love.
Who knew?
Jesus’ command in this passage to go out and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that he had taught them is often called “The Great Commission.” The important words here are “go out.” Jesus didn’t expect his followers to stay in Jerusalem and minister to and support one another. It was time to expand beyond the borders of Israel, beyond their comfort zone and outside of their community.
When we have our own community, it’s easy to get focused on what’s happening within the community and forget Jesus’ command to go out and make disciples. Often this happens without our even realizing it and soon we’re focusing on managing the needs of different members of the congregation, different personal dynamics, and even buildings that are in need of renovation. It’s easy to forget what the mission of the church ought to be – to go out and make disciples, to be present in the community and be a visible example of everything that Jesus teaches us to be. Even Worcester Fellowship has faced this challenge by becoming too insular and losing sight of its original mission.
Several years ago, I was the Prison Ministry Pastor for Worcester Fellowship. I’d like to share the journey of Worcester Fellowship; how Worcester Fellowship started, how it lost track of its mission and then found its way back again. Worcester Fellowship was founded by two women, Liz and Mary Jane, who started their ministry walking the streets, handing out socks and granola bars and connecting with the homeless community. After several months of connecting with the community, Liz and Mary Jane let people know that they would be having worship on Worcester Commons on Sunday afternoons. They had their first worship service on Easter Sunday 2007. No one came, but they continued connecting with people on the streets and started partnering with churches in the area to provide bag lunches. They began to provide lunches and socks each Sunday prior to worship. People started coming for lunch and eventually a few people stayed for worship. Volunteers from the churches that brought lunches started staying. Soon a small community began to form consisting of people without housing, people at risk of losing their housing and people who were comfortably housed and had never experienced homelessness.
As the community of Worcester Fellowship grew, they defined their mission as a church among men and women without homes that is dedicated to ending isolation through pastoral care and nurturing community.
As a core community began to form, members of Worcester Fellowship asked to start various groups. The pastors supported these groups because it was a good way to empower people who really didn’t have a lot of control over their lives. When I first got involved with Worcester Fellowship, there was a Prayer Team, Fund Raising Team, Leadership Team, Art Group, and then we started a Prison Support Group. Because the members of Worcester Fellowship didn’t have a lot of leadership opportunities in their lives, there was a lot of conflict over who should lead these groups and how they should be led. Eventually a lot of the pastors’ time was taken up by attending group meetings and refereeing conflicts. The focus became more on managing these groups and less on providing support and community for people on the streets. As a result, Worcester Fellowship became insular and lost the connection with the homeless community that Liz and Mary Jane worked so hard to build. Even the people who came for lunch but didn’t stay for worship began to feel to feel disconnected. Worcester Fellowship began to be known as the organization that hands out lunch and sock on the commons.
When Warren, the new pastor and executive director, joined Worcester Fellowship, he realized that Worcester Fellowship had become too focused on leading groups and had gotten away from its mission of providing pastoral care and nurturing community to at-risk adults. So we stopped running groups, and started spending more time on the commons. We also started Thursday Café, a day shelter open every Thursday afternoon that provides food, companionship, rest and hot coffee for people on the streets. Thursday Café started off small, but at the end of its second season, it had close to 75 people coming each week.
Spending more time on the commons on Sunday afternoons and providing the Thursday day shelter helped us to become more connected to the community that we were trying to support and helped us to fulfill our mission. We still didn’t have many people stay for worship after lunch, but Thursday Café continued to grow and our presence in the community that we served continued to grow, and make a difference in people’s lives. There were times when someone I hardly knew came up to me after we hand out lunches and said, “You guys are awesome” or we arrived on the commons to set up for lunch and worship and someone who’s never come to worship says to me, “I’ve been waiting for you.” These things remind me that our presence was needed out in the community and on the commons. We made a difference in people’s lives by being visible and present. By showing people that community is possible even when their lives are chaotic and unstable.
Of course we lost some people along the way. We lost people whose main interest was leading groups because it was the only opportunity they had to be a leader and it made them feel important to lead a group. We lost people because they moved on and didn’t need us anymore. Our core group that came to worship shrank, but the number of people that we supported overall grew.
I’ve had people from indoor churches ask me how to get more people to come to church. I always say the same thing. Get out in to the community. Be a visible presence. I’ve come across churches that were struggling to find their direction. Once they discovered what their mission was and stayed true to that mission, they grew. Some grew in numbers of people coming to church on Sunday, but not all. But all of them grew in their purpose and their existence became more meaningful for both the members of the church and the community.
There are some basic commonalities that these churches have. Allen Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk talk about some of the characteristics these churches have in their book “The Missional Leader.” One characteristic is that these churches have re-established traditional Christian practices, such as daily prayer, discernment, and hospitality. Hospitality is an ancient church practice of welcoming the stranger. Today, a stranger can be the person next door, someone from another country, or young people who feel disconnected.
Hospitality doesn’t involve expectations or agendas, but creates a space to listen. This is especially important today when there is so much noise and so much competition to be heard.
People today are longing to be recognized and included. This is one of the most important aspects of Worcester Fellowship’s mission. We would go out into the community and see the people that were so often invisible to the public. We recognized them and gave them worth. Not all church missions will be to provide hospitality or support to people on the streets or in prison, but there are many people disconnected and alone in all of our communities. We just need to discover who they are, listen to them, and find out what they need and how the church can support them.
It’s also important to stay focused. There is so much need today that it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the different groups of people that need support and community. On common aspect of missional churches is that they have a specific mission and they stick to that mission. As the experience of Worcester Fellowship shows, once you lose sight of the mission and try to include too many projects, it’s easy to lose focus and get overwhelmed.
Most importantly, these churches are open to where the Holy Spirit leads them. This is why Jesus included the Holy Spirit is his commission. Through prayerful listening many church communities have been guided to where the greatest need is and have been able to stay focused on what their true mission is.
I invite you this morning to consider what the needs are of your community today. How can you listen to what your community is saying it needs the church to be? How can you as a church respond to those needs?
Throughout his ministry, Jesus used a lot of metaphors to talk about the kingdom of God. In today’s reading, he refers to the Kingdom of God as a mustard seed, yeast, a hidden treasure, a pearl and a fishing net. I don’t know if Jesus told all of these parables back to back like it is in the reading or if the writer of Matthew connect them together himself, but these various images of the Kingdom of God shows that the Kingdom of God can be found in many forms and in many places, sometimes it even comes in unlikely forms and in unlikely places.
Take for example, the mustard seed. The mustard seed creates a plant that can become a weed. It grows quick and is pervasive, very quickly taking over an entire area – taking space and nutrients from the plants around it. As one description of mustard seed puts it, “Mustard is a tiny seed with a lot of spunk. It will grow just about anywhere, is rarely bothered by pests, and is prolific to boot.”
Yeast can be viewed in a similar way. When you mix yeast into the flour, it affects all the flour it comes into contact with, transforming the dough into something it wasn’t before it came in contact with the yeast.
Jesus is saying two things with these metaphors. 1) The Kingdom of God effects everything that is comes into contact with and changes it into something different and new 2) The kingdom of God is in everything, even in the most unlikely places, like among the weeds, in a piece of leavened bread, or among people on the streets.
I’ve seen the kingdom of God in some unlikely places. One of those places is inside the prisons. Some of the state prisons have gardening programs and the inmate plants vegetable and flower gardens throughout the prison grounds. They plant everything from pansies and petunias to sunflowers. Some of the flower stalks grow as large as you and I. The plants and flowers change the environment of the prison grounds from bleak and dreary to bright and colorful. Many staff and inmates feel that the flowers bring a calmer and more positive atmosphere to the prison.
The inmates also plant Morning Glory, which is a vine and like the mustard seed is prolific and grows everywhere. As vines do, the Morning Glory grows up to the top of the fences in the prison covering the fences so that you couldn’t see through them. One day, the Correctional Officers told the inmates that the plants couldn’t block the visibility of the fence and that the inmates would have to tear all the Moring Glory down. Disappointed, the inmates tore down the all the Morning Glory; however, there was a section that was too high for them to reach. So it stayed on the fence, but it was detached from any root system it needed. That piece of Morning Glory continued to live and stay green for days, perhaps weeks afterward. Even the flowers that had bloomed on that piece of the vine remain alive for several days after. I don’t really remember how long the plant survived, but it was long enough that whenever the inmates walked by that section of fence, they would see that Morning Glory still alive despite the efforts to tear it down.
That small plant spoke volumes to the inmate. It showed them that life exists even when death is around them. It represented the presence of a higher power, a presence greater than themselves, the prison staff and even the prison itself. They saw God’s presence in that small, flowering vine. This is how the inmates interpreted the survival of that small piece of plant.
That Morning Glory reminds me of the mustard seed in Jesus parable. It grew out of control in a way that made it interfere with the normal functioning of the prison, but its presence, especially that little piece high up on the fence, showed the inmates and perhaps some of the prison staff that God was present even there in the prison, a place that is often so negative and dark that it is hard to imagine God being present at all. But there is was. That one small reminder that God is with us no matter where we are. Like the mustard seed, a small thing can have a big impact.
Jesus uses these metaphors to show people that God is present in the common things that we encounter in our every daily life. A plant that is also a weed, a treasure hidden in a field, a single mother struggling to make ends meet, a person living in prison or on the street whose brokenness reflects the face of Christ, and in each and every one of us. God is present no matter what anyone experienced in life and what their life circumstances are. These are all the unlikely places where we encounter the Kingdom of God.
These metaphor are also strange and unexpected. They are meant to jar us out of our conventional wisdom and look at the world in a different way. One of the blogs I like to read is called The Walking Dreamer written by Allen Brehm, a Presbyterian minister. In one of his blog posts, Brehm says, God’s realm of justice, peace and freedom in this world is something unexpected. It works contrary to our expectations. Conventional wisdom says that using humility, self-sacrifice and mercy to transform the whole world isn’t the way the world works. In our world money talks. Might makes right. Nice guys finish last. Those who lay down their lives for others become doormats. Humility means weakness. Mercy means being taken advantage of. In a world that works like that, Jesus’ vision of a new realm that would bring justice, peace and freedom seems ludicrous.
Even those who identify themselves as disciples of Jesus often adopt the means of this world to “force” theirs issue. Not content to just continue sowing Gospel seeds, waiting patiently for the harvest, leaving the outcome vulnerable to circumstance, with no guarantees but the promise of faith and hope, many who call themselves Christian take the shortcuts that they see working in this world. They try to guarantee the success of God’s realm by shrewd calculation and slick marketing. They try to ensure the success of their Gospel seeds by any means, including manipulation and deceit. But what they miss is the truth that you cannot promote the justice, peace and freedom of God’s realm by methods that are unjust and unpeaceful and unfree. You may find some success by those means, but it will not be God’s realm that you are promoting. It will much more likely be something of your own devising.
In the midst of all this, Jesus’ strange parables remain as an encouragement to those who will wait in faith and hope. Just like presence of the Morning Glory, the parables of the mustard seed and the yeast in the dough suggest that, despite all obstacles, God’s realm of justice, peace and freedom is here; it is real among us now. These parables point to the promise that one day God’s realm will define all of life in this world. As unlikely as that may sound, Jesus was no fool. I think he knew that his message about God’s realm was unlikely at best—as unlikely as the success of weeds and leaven—and at worst it came off as ludicrous. The “kingdom” that he brought to the people who were looking for it was something different entirely from what they were expecting. What I’ve learned in life is that sometimes something unexpected can be more satisfying than anything we could have imagined. When and where and how we least expect it, God’s justice, God’s peace, and God’s freedom break out in this world in unlikely ways and unlikely places.
This is another joint sermon. It was written with a close friend of mine named John. I got to know John while he was incarcerated at the Concord Prison. He filled in for the Chaplain after the Chaplain moved on to San Quentin and we started writing sermons together. This sermon is different than the healing sermon I did two weeks ago. That sermon I started, John added his comments and I put it all together. This time John started the sermon and I added my reflections to it. A lot of this comes from John.
Miracles are an important part of Christianity and Christian life. If we are to believe that God’s love is present throughout our lives, then miracles are a visible sign of God’s love in our life. Though not all prayers are answered, answered prayers are a part of the miracle dynamic. Miracles and answered prayers are promises that Jesus has made to us as revealed in scripture. The Gospel of John 14:13-14 says to ask for what you need in the name of Jesus and it will be done. In verse 16:24, Jesus re-emphasizes that asking in His name will bring joy. Often, an answered prayer, or a miracle, brings joy.
So how about the miracles that come our way, that we don’t even ask for? Miracles are God’s grace, a reminder that God is thinking of us – even when we aren’t in touch with God. How often do we recognize these miracles as well – miracles? How often do we hear the words lucky, fate, or coincidence; as if trying to separate these miracles from God? What do we consider a miracle? Does a miracle have to be so opulent, so over the top to be considered a miracle or can someone offering a smile or seeing a beautiful sunset be considered a part of God’s love?
This reminds me of a miracle that I almost missed. Several years ago, while I was in seminary, I took a course on children’s Christian education. One of the assignments I had was to interview children about how they understood God. I interview a co-worker’s daughter. I remember her daughter telling me about a time when she was on an airplane and when she looked out the window, she saw the hand of God in the clouds. I told one of my classmates about this and she said that a boy she interviewed looked up into the clouds and said that he saw the hand of God.
For years, I kept thinking about the hand of God and I wondered why I had never seen it. I’ve had my fair share of inspirational and even miraculous moments, especially in nature, but I had never seen the hand of God. For years, I kept wondering why I had never seen the hand of God and even became envious of these children who had seen the hand of God, while I hadn’t.
A few years later, I was driving down Rt 2, and I noticed that the clouds had a very unusual pattern. They were almost feathery looking. I don’t recall ever seeing clouds that looked like this before and they were fascinating. I kept looking up at the clouds as I was driving. Suddenly, some of the clouds changed shape and they looked like the side of a cupped hand. I thought about the hand of God in the clouds, but I decided that my mind was playing tricks on me and I was just seeing things.
The shape of the hand turned back into clouds, and I thought yep, I’m just seeing things. Then the clouds turned back into the shape of a hand. I was still doubtful of what I was seeing. The clouds continued to change back and forth from clouds into the shape of a hand, and back to clouds. I continue to watch this transformation until my mind finally said, “That is the hand of God.” Immediately, the shape of a hand turned back to clouds and stayed that way.
This moment has always stayed with me, and I really believe that it was God’s way of showing me not only that God was present all around me, but that God knew the desires of my heart even desires I had never spoken out loud.
I also think about how easy it would have been to just think that it was all in my mind and not a sign from God, and I wonder how many other signs I may have missed because I doubted or wasn’t paying attention.
John told me that for a solid decade, while incarcerated at Concord, he kept a record of daily miracles and answered prayers in several volumes. He found that on the days when he wasn’t feeling God’s love, he would open up one of these books and be reminded that Jesus was always taking care of him – that Jesus was right there by his side. Recently, when he was transferred to Shirley Maximum Security Prison, he began that ritual again. In no time, despite being thrown to the roaring lion, Jesus was right there providing people for his protection, friendship and evangelization. When the DA transferred him to the Middleton Jail, the miracles never ceased. John says that Satan can’t hide or mask the miracles that Jesus sends us. Only we can stop the miracles when our secular vision prevents us from seeing and accepting the gifts from above. I asked earlier what is considered a major miracle and what is considered a minor miracle? Maybe our friend Bartimaeus in the Gospel of Mark can help us.
In the story of Bartimaeus, what is the minor miracle and what is the major miracle that occurs? It’s kind of a trick question. Bartimaeus is lined up to see who Jesus is, but unlike all the secular observers, Bartimaeus has a spiritual view despite his physical blindness. Though he can’t see Jesus, Bartimaeus can see that Jesus is from the line of King David, and just in case Jesus doesn’t catch wind of Bartimaeus’ plea for pity, a second call is made, “Son of David, have pity on me.” Even though Bartimaeus has spiritual insight his secular need to call a second time should never be needed if he is calling for Jesus.
Jesus calls Bart and immediately Bart springs forth throwing off his only cloak to join Jesus on the road. Bart approaches Jesus, but not before the secular world tries to silence Bart. Isn’t that a normal reaction from the secular world. They are in such misery not having God in their lives that they don’t want Bart to be well. Raise your hand if you have experienced that. You might have felt that in making your decision to come here today. People may ask why you go to church or say “You didn’t used to go to church,” but as John says “you’re right, I didn’t, but I wasn’t well then either.”
“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asks. How many have been privileged to hear those words? If you haven’t, we need to change that. Right now, make the same request that Bartimaeus is about to make. Teacher, I want to see. That’s it! Transform your secular view to the spiritual world and you will see an endless supply of miracles. No more secular blindness. Just the pure unadulterated love of God. Bartimaeus can see. I want that for everyone here. Jesus tells Bartimaeus “Go your way, your faith has healed you.” So let’s answer one of the earlier questions. What was the major miracle and what was the minor miracle? Both answers are in verse 52. Jesus said, “Go, your faith has healed you.” Immediately Bart received his sight and followed Jesus along the way. If you said that Bartimaeus’ renewed eyesight was the major miracle, you wouldn’t be completely wrong. However, I say regaining eyesight is the minor miracle in this story. The major miracle is that Bart is told by Jesus to go his own way, but Bart instead follows Jesus. He will now see things happen he never thought possible. That’s a great miracle. The secular miracle of gaining eyesight leads to the spiritual eyesight of seeing all that Jesus has for us.
I invite you to ask Jesus for sight. Not for physical sight but for spiritual sight. Where is God leading you, this church, this community right now? What miracles or inspirations from God are around you right now? What miracles or inspirations have passed you by? If God were to take all of your missed miracles and put them in a box, how big would that box be? Would it be a small box big enough to only hold a few missed miracles, or would it be an enormous box, so large you would need a ladder to get to the top of it? You are in a place right now to decide which path you will take. These miracles might be a call to follow Jesus on the way.
Sign up to receive our weekly "What's Happening" email. Send email request to [email protected]