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In 1785, Friedrich van Schiller wrote a poem titled Ode to Joy. Thirty-nine years later, Ludwig van Beethoven used the poem as the basis for the final movement of his last, and perhaps greatest symphony, the ninth. The music is familiar to almost everyone. The lyrics? Not so much. For one thing, it’s all in German. A number of years ago I set out to translate Schiller’s words into English maintaining the same rhyme scheme and meter, to fit the music. One of the things that made the task daunting is Schiller’s creative use of language. One line in particular I found fascinating. It is “Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum.” It translates, “We trespass, drunk with fire, on heaven your sanctuary.” That word, feuertrunken, is, as far as I can tell, one among many that Schiller invented. Literally, it is “fire-drunk.” Schiller was addressing Joy personified, and in essence apologizing for the way we tend to barge into its holy realms, trampling on its sacred territory, because we get confused; we become intoxicated by that which we think is joyful, but which is not really joy at all. He says that joy is the “daughter of Elysium.” That’s a rather esoteric reference that, for most of us requires some unpacking. Elysium was the mythological paradise of the ancient Greeks, the place where demigods, heroes, and virtuous souls went after death and experienced the joy of beautiful open fields and athletic competitions – sort of like Fenway Park. So joy, according to Schiller, is that offspring, that product of virtue’s reward. He also says that joy holds a great magical power that binds people together and makes us all brothers and sisters, while the patterns and habits of our lives tend to keep tearing us apart from each other. There is, in this amazing poem, profound truth to be mined. Joy is a powerful, even magical, sacred thing – something that rewards us and binds us together; something to be sought, nurtured, and touched with care and respect. And yet, we so frequently miss it, even trample on it like a bunch of hooligans at the ballpark who’ve had too many beers, throwing trash onto the field – drunk with fire.
I can’t reflect on all this without being put in mind of the story of Pentecost. When the early followers of Christ were gathered with a huge crowd of folks from all nations and backgrounds something magical happened to them: a kind of fire that filled them with an amazing spirit and allowed everyone to be connected by a clear understanding of each other’s languages. Bystanders saw all of this and decided they were drunk – drunk with fire, if you will. They leapt to that conclusion because they didn’t have any experience to relate it to. They didn’t have any concept of what real joy was about. They thought joy had to do with the kind of blind recklessness that is characteristic of drunks.
So Peter tried to straighten them out. “Indeed,” he said, “these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit . . . .” Peter was trying to tell them that this Spirit they were observing was not that which trespasses, drunk with fire, onto heaven, the sanctuary of joy; it is a spirit of clarity and unity; it is clear communication (even across the barriers of language); it is the ability to increase one’s vision, and to craft bold dreams; it is a uniting force that binds together people of many cultures, and even slaves, and men, and women.
One of the chief ways, in our post-modern, American world, that we mistake carelessness for joy is by following too literally the advice of the song: “Don’t Worry; Be Happy.” Sometimes we’re scared away from abiding joy by thinking of it as an escape. But the kind of joy that ignited the atmosphere when the apostles gathered in Jerusalem was not a mindless, happy feeling. There was none of that tendency we’ve seen in days gone by to say that God will take care of everything so we can just relax and let go of any responsibility. Peter made it clear that what they were about was just the opposite of turning a blind eye to the realities of the world, it was about vision, and about having the courage to dream big. Issues like global warming seem overwhelming, and it’s easy to stop trying to make a difference however slight, or to write letters, or organize for change. It’s easy to let it all go and just give up. But Pentecostal joy isn’t about yielding to despair, and it isn’t about “Don’t Worry; Be Happy,” it’s about finding hope in vision, and clarity, and common purpose. Joy is the “daughter of Elysium,” that ancient place of heroes who fought the good fight.
Which leads us directly to another way we get blinded about joy: by making our religious experience into an obsessively personal, inward, spiritual thing. We so psychologize the gospel that we see every lesson of scripture in terms of a sort of self-help program. Before you know it, we’ve put ourselves in a kind of spiritual cocoon and turned Jesus’ message of reaching out and sacrificing one’s self for the sake of others into something that’s all about me. I’m as guilty of that as anyone, and, sadly, a number of my sermons might even lead you down that perilous path. But, trust me, that road is indeed full of peril. Yes, each of us needs to spend some time in reflection, prayer, and self-discovery; the journey of spiritual growth is deeply important, but that journey is far more than an inward thing. Intense and consistent absorption with self soon leads to blindness, a special kind of blindness that no longer sees the reality of other people, their needs, hopes, and hurts, a blindness to the true joy of relationship – that bonding with others that is not predicated on self-interest. And when we become so blinded, that’s when we can begin to stumble around carelessly in the dark of our own tiny worlds and wind up trespassing on the sacred sanctuary of joy, smashing its tender beauties. That’s when we get easily confused and think that joy has to do with momentary self-gratification. That’s when we fail to recognize the mystical power of true joy – that spirit of clarity, and vision, and openness to others that binds us together as brothers and sisters.
C. S. Lewis, in the ironic humor of his Screwtape Letters, has Screwtape advising the novice devil about how to keep his subject focused on himself so that he misses that vision and uniting spirit:
“Keep his mind on the inner life,” advises Screwtape. “He thinks his conversion is something inside him and his attention is therefore chiefly turned at present to the states of his own mind – or rather to that very expurgated version of them which is all you should allow him to see. Encourage this. Keep his mind off the most elementary duties by directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones. Aggravate that most useful human characteristic, the horror and neglect of the obvious. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practice self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office.
“It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very ‘spiritual’, that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism. Two advantages will follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards as her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining.”
My message today is for all of us – including, of course, me. Life is full of joy. It is joy to be had for the taking. But our world and our culture are full of false gods, if you will, the things that can be so easily mistaken for paths to joy. They are put in front of you like a smorgasbord: self-absorption, chemical escape, materialism, apathetic withdrawal into the hyped world of media and entertainment. This morning I implore each of us to reject such blinding diversions, to not trespass, drunk with fire, on heaven, the sanctuary of the true joy we seek. That joy is found in community – not the superficial, social exchanges about the weather with polite, artificial niceties shared by people hiding behind masks that so often passes for community, but a real place of encounter, where clear communication happens and our truest selves are known, a place where sins are forgiven and growth and maturity is allowed to flourish, a place where barriers are broken down and cultures and histories are shared and respected, where people of different classes and genders find common ground. When that kind of community emerges from whatever mystical power it is that allows it to happen, the result is a kind of sacred terrain, a holy ground, that calls for us to nurture, honor, and respect it’s inestimable worth. That’s what we’re trying to be here: a place of joy.
Over two hundred years ago, Friedrich Schiller figured a lot of that out. I think he had to have been inspired, and I think Beethoven recognized that.
Let’s sing it together.
So, the Apostle Paul gets arrested for, well, essentially being a Jew in public. The real reason, I suppose, is that he ruined some guy’s livelihood and everybody’s fun by disabusing a slave girl of the idea that she had the power to tell fortunes. Anyway, he and his buddy Silas get beaten within an inch of their lives and thrown in the poky (only one among many times, by the way, that Paul spends time in the slammer). So, let me paint this picture for you (and hear it all as if it were happening to you). You’re arrested on trumped up charges (what we police officers used to call “aggravated existence”). You’re beaten with rods until your back is running with blood from the open wounds. You’re thrown in prison. Then, in the middle of the night, there’s an earthquake and the whole place practically comes down on your head. This is not a very good day you’re having. And how does Paul respond to all this? What’s he doing? Nothing. That’s right. He’s perfectly fine sitting in what’s left of his prison cell, with the doors flung open, and the blood caking on his back. The prison guard, who was apparently cold-cocked by a piece of falling debris, finally woke up and saw the place in a shambles and the doors open. He figures he’s going to be blamed for the prisoners escaping and decides to off himself. That’s when Paul speaks up: “Don’t harm yourself; we’re all here.” Can you get your head around that? The humiliation, the torture, the pain, the blood, the confinement, the earthquake, and Paul is sitting amidst the rubble of the day’s disaster, comforting his jailer with the assurance that it’s all good; they’re all just hanging out. And I want to know, where does someone like that come from?
It’s not me. All it takes to send me into a tizzy is for one minor plan to get disrupted, one thing to go wrong, one disappointment to come my way. A case in point: a few years ago, I left home without my sermon. Now, in the days of living in a parsonage next door to the church building, that sort of thing was never a problem. I might just walk across the driveway and retrieve the sermon before worship. But when you’re living forty-five minutes away, it’s a bit more of a problem. I didn’t realize what had happened until I got into the office and reached into my briefcase for the sermon. I panicked. I told everyone to leave me the heck alone, and I went into overdrive sitting at my computer trying to piece back together whatever I could of what I had written. I was still trying to do this when the ten o’clock hour arrived. People sat in the sanctuary waiting. It was like a very bad dream. When I finally decided I had to stop writing and go with what I had, I printed it out, grabbed it and ran for the stairs. I got to the back of the sanctuary breathless and an emotional wreck, beating myself up for being so stupid. And before I started charging down the aisle, a dear, beloved woman of that congregation said to me, “Relax, Mike; It’s OK.” God bless her. I’m not sure she will ever know how important those few words were in that moment. So, my point in telling all this? It’s simply that the hooley I blew happened because of one silly sermon manuscript left at home. Can you imagine how I would cope with being beaten, arrested, thrown in jail, and then surviving an earthquake? I’d be apoplectic!
“Don’t harm yourself. We’re all here.” Do those words hit you as hard as they do me? Do you find them extraordinary under the circumstances? I’d like to take a few minutes with you to nose around in this story and try to figure out what a guy like Paul had going on, and how you and I might come by an ounce of whatever it is.
First of all, it’s worth noting that the Apostle Paul was radically and dramatically transformed. He was the reinvention of Saul, the passionate and unrelenting persecutor of Christians. Suddenly, he finds himself in Philippi with the shoe on the other foot. Now, he is the persecuted Christian. He is the one being abused and beaten by “the man.” He knows how this drama plays out because he’s so often been the one handing out the lashes. And it makes me wonder if it takes a transgressor to be the one to come to terms with transgression, if it takes someone who is “acquainted with grief” to be the one who gains perspective on that grief. Maybe Paul had to recognize how he himself was wounded, damaged, by his own hostility and rage before he could accept with the proper perspective the wounds inflicted on him by the rage of others.
It makes me think of guys I have known who were gang members or who spent time in prison for assault, and then later in life, after getting kicked around by the system, beaten up by other thugs, enduring the kinds of hard knocks that only guys in that world know, they have emerged as gentle, even sensitive men, who have an amazing degree of patience and a kind of mellow humor that puts people at ease. Obviously, it doesn’t happen to everyone, but I’ve seen it more than once. There’s something about real hardship and trial that can make one come to terms with oneself and find a degree of wisdom.
You and I could learn from that. What if we took the real struggles of our lives not simply as obstacles to our dreams or disasters to be endured, but as opportunities to see ourselves more clearly, to knock off some of the rough edges, and to gain some valuable perspective?
The second thing that jumps out at me from this story is the prison guard, who has a kind of stunning turnaround himself. He is at his post, dutifully guarding his prisoners. And he’s more than a functionary earning his daily wage; he is so dedicated to his duty that when it appears his prisoners have escaped, he is ready to take his own life. In the very next moment, he pleads with Paul and Silas, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” How do we account for this amazing about-face? We know that before the earthquake Paul and Silas were spending their night in prison praying and singing hymns, and that other prisoners were moved by this. Maybe the jailer was as well. But that doesn’t account for his flip-flop. He was still a loyal soldier right up until the moment he discovered that the prisoners were still in their cells. Here’s what I think: I think he was blown out of his socks by the spirit and presence of Paul, this man who could endure all he had and with the blood crusted on his back, sitting in the rubble of his cell, calmly telling him to take it easy; they were all still there. I think he simply had the same response I have in reading the story: I want a piece of that, whatever it is. The prison guard is me, and he is you.
We find ourselves devoted to our routines and obligations, pulling on the oars of whatever vessel is driving us through the rough waters of our days, dedicated to the values and norms that define us. But there is a secret part of our hearts that yearns to be more, to see more deeply into the essence of life, and to be motivated and sustained by higher principles that give us the grace of a certain peace and power. I think that’s what this jailer saw when he looked into the eyes of Paul, and I think he was prepared to do anything to gain some of that for himself.
Which brings us to the question of just what it was that kept Paul in that prison cell and inspired that guard. I think Paul was one of those rare individuals who not only had visions, but who had a vision. He had a clear sense of what the gospel was calling him to do and be, and he had a dogged determination to live into that awareness. Such vision gives one a sense of what matters and what does not, and it affords an assurance in one’s soul that can’t be swayed by the tides of trauma and trial. It is a special sort of power. For want of a better term, I choose to call it the power of being. For Paul, the stripes of running blood on his back, the prison bars, the earthquake, all were incidental to his central mission, and to the bedrock foundation of his faith. It didn’t really matter to him whether the prison doors were open or locked shut. He was where he was, and he was there for a reason. More than anything, perhaps, he was gifted with the ability to see himself and his world clearly, and to see the divine wonder that lived in every opportunity, even an opportunity born of adversity.
I read some time ago the old classic by Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop. In the very last scene, the Bishop Jean Marie Latour, is speaking to his friend, Father Joseph Vaillant about miracles. “One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love,” he says. “I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from far off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eye can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”1
The good Bishop says what I believe is at the heart of Paul’s power, a power that led him to convert other prisoners, a power that allowed him to endure suffering with grace, a power that his jailer wanted for himself, a power that ultimately cowed the magistrate who had jailed him. It was the power of seeing, with perception heightened by the love and grace of the Lord, “what is there about us always.” It is the power of being fully in the place and time that one finds oneself, but with the perspective of a motivating vision.
So, if I leave my sermon at home next week, will I blow a hooley again? Probably. But I think, like you, I’m trying to find a better way through life. I’d like to use the struggles and misfortunes I’ve endured, and those to come, as opportunities for self-discovery. I’d like to wake up to a deeper reality than the routines, tasks, and worries that fill most of my days. I’d like to have my life touched by Divine grace and love in a way that allows me to see what’s there around us all the time. I’d like to expand my vision and embody some of the power that takes whatever circumstance I find myself in and affords me the peace and presence to see it as part of a larger and more profound truth. I’d like to harness the power of being.
1 Willa Cather, Death Comes to the Archbishop, Vintage, 1990, p. 49.
At a Kirkridge conference a number of years ago, I heard the late, great preacher and teacher, Fred Craddock, relate an experience he had once on an airplane (back in the days when they served meals to everyone on the flight). During boarding a man sat down next to Fred – sixty-ish, very well dressed, and rather imperious in manner – and immediately rang for the flight attendant. When she came the man told her his name and said, “I want to remind you that I am to have a special meal for lunch. When I made my reservation I gave specific instructions about that.” The attendant politely assured him his special meal had indeed been ordered and that, in fact, his would be the first tray served just as soon as they got underway. He seemed content with that, and before long she brought his healthful-looking special meal, a piece of baked chicken, a pear and cottage cheese salad, and whole wheat roll on the side, just as he had ordered. The man was half finished eating by the time the attendant brought a tray to Fred which had on it a piece of baked chicken, pear and cottage cheese salad, and a whole wheat roll on the side. The man looked at Fred’s lunch and with obvious annoyance said, “Well, you seem to have gotten the special meal that I ordered.” Whereupon Fred, looking all around, observed to the man that his meal looked to him like all the other meals that were being served. Flustered and upset, the man began pushing the call button over and over until the attendant appeared. He berated her loudly, “I told you that I had ordered a special meal and you assured me that the order had been received.” She answered, “Yes, sir, I did. You ordered baked chicken, cottage cheese and pear salad, and a whole wheat roll. Isn’t that what you wanted, sir?” To answer that question honestly, of course, the man would have had to understand the difference between the menu he said he wanted, and the special attention and position of privilege he really wanted.
And therein lies my thesis for this morning: Do you really know what you want? That’s the essence of Jesus’ question to a man in our scripture reading for today. Jesus’ dealings with the man by the pool at Bethzatha were so extraordinary that the incident is probably more deserving of a book than a sermon. I’ll try not to preach a book this morning though.
The scene for this drama is set by the description of a sick man (we don’t know the nature of his illness) lying by the pool. This pool is curious enough. There’s something magic and mystical about it. The name of the pool is given by some textual sources as Bethesda, by others as Bethsaida, and yet others as Bethzatha. Archeology has yet to yield any conclusive evidence for it’s location, and the legend of it’s special healing power is murky; one explanitory verse that shows up in some texts is, as most authorities agree, a later addition (in that verse, the pool is said to have been regularly visited by an angel who troubled the water – whoever first stepped into the pool when the waters were troubled was healed of whatever disease he had.)
So, get your mind around this scene if you can. Here is a man, in some undisclosed way terribly ill, who has been essentially living beside this pool, living with this illness, for thirty-eight years. He has waited in the sun and slapped mosquitoes. He has learned the faces and the daily routines and the personality quirks of all his companions. He has begged for bread and learned the complex rules of the small society around the pool, its pecking order and its rituals of interaction. This place has, in many respects become his life. It is a prison for the diseased, but like the long-term prisoner who knows no other life, here he remains, clinging to the legend of the pool, clinging to the hope of a magical cure, clinging perhaps to far more than that.
Any of us who have lived long years with some disease of the heart, or some secret ugliness in our lives or our families, or some character flaw, or persistent failing, knows the truth. We know that such things can become our most familiar companions. We know that, in time, like it or not, our lives are shaped by such things, and we cease to have any concept of who we would be without them. We know the astounding and confounding truth: that, in time, we find ourselves not only clinging to the hope for healing, but clinging to the disease itself. Years spent in therapy can often times seem like little more than the sad but comfortable ritual of lying next to the miracle pool, struggling to get in the water, and never quite making it.
But our condition is far from hopeless. In fact, there may even be something in our comfortable and cherished rituals of infirmity that bears the very hope of our healing.
This man by the pool at Bethzatha was caught in a familiar cycle of helplessness, dependency and disease. Jesus knew it. The scriptural account says, “When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’” That is the most astonishing question perhaps in all the gospels. Between the lines of that question lie countless volumes about human consciousness and psychology. Jesus knew the man was ill. He perceived that he had been there by the miracle pool for a long time, suffering with this chronic disease. He looked into his eyes and knew him. He somehow discerned this man’s attachment to his suffering, and to his little world of struggle by the pool. His question is the last one we expect, but the one most revealing.
Notably, he does not say, “How can I help you? What can I do for you? Could I give you a hand, helping you into the pool?” He does not check his vital signs, and ask if he has had headaches or nausea. He does not ask if he’s been to a doctor, or if maybe he could give him a ride to the hospital or pay his cab fare. He fixes his gaze upon him and speaks directly to the man’s soul, and to ours: “Do you want to be made well?”
Do you want to be made well, or do want to continue clinging to your dysfunction? Do you want to be made well, or do want to stay here with your familiar circle of friends and enemies and competitors. He gazes upon the man’s life, and upon our own, with the intensity of one who has the power to transform, and asks, “What do you really want?”
Do we know what we want? Do we want to be healed? Do we want to be made whole? Do we want to grow? Or is it more comfortable to live within the safety of our limitations?
The man’s response is very familiar. It is often our answer to the challenging voice of eternal insight. He can’t muster the courage to answer the question. Instead, he stammers and whines about extenuating circumstances. “It’s not my fault. I’ve tried. Nobody will help me. Somebody always manages to jump in ahead of me. Life’s out to get me. I can’t afford it. My car broke down. The sun got in my eyes.”
That’s when the miracle happens. By whatever powers Jesus possessed, he could see through the excuses and the avoidance, and he knew this man was ready. He knew that he had been going around in the same circles long enough to be ripe for a breakthrough. And so he broke through. He broke through the myth of the pool; he broke through the pattern of dependency; he broke through the clinging to the disease, and all the rest. He held the man in his gaze and said, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”
And he was right. The man was ready. He offered no more excuses. He didn’t respond with, “Oh, I can’t do that. I’m sick. I haven’t walked in so long, I’ve forgotten how. If I tried to walk, I’d fall down and hurt myself even more. Everyone would laugh at me for believing I could, and falling on my face.” No, he simply rose to his feet, then and there. And that was that.
He didn’t really know what he wanted. At some level he wanted to be healed. But at another level, he wanted to cling to his excuses for not being healed, and to his disease. He was so like us. It is, after all, such a comfortable thing to live with our diseases of spirit, of mind, and of relationship. It’s comfortable because it’s familiar. We wouldn’t know who we were without the old friends of our inadequacies and the reassuring patterns of our dysfunctional relationships. At some level, we would like to be free of those chains, but life outside the prison of our patterned existence is all too often more frightening than we can bear.
But here’s where the hope lies. There is something within us that keeps us searching for the healing moment. There is something divine in the core of our being that keeps us coming to the pool, even for thirty-eight years, at some level knowing that one day the time will be right, the gaze from our companion will be steady, the voice will be true, and the chains will be broken.
The very circles of our dysfunctional patterns and diseases are themselves a form of searching, of groping in the darkness for the hand of Christ. That’s true for us as individuals. I believe it’s also true for our culture. We may keep clinging to our wasteful patterns, polluting the earth and falling into mindless conflicts, but each time around that marry-go-round, humanity comes a little closer to the moment of casting off our carelessness and animosity to be healed and to become healers.
David Perata, in his book, The Orchards of Perseverance, relates the story of the monk, brother Adam, who complained to his superior that he didn’t seem to be making any progress. He would start in the morning with good intentions, but by night time he would wind up exactly where he was at the beginning of the day. His superior, Dom Frederick Dunne answered, “Well, it might seem that way to you. But actually it isn’t. No, you start out and make the silly little circles and you come back to where you were. But there’s a difference. You’re a little bit higher than you were previously. What you’re doing is spiraling, and you’re goin’ a little bit higher and a little bit higher.”
It may seem that we remain forever conflicted, unable to finally decide or know just what it is we truly want in life, but we are, in working out our patterns and circles, growing ever closer, step by step to finally choosing to be healed. A psychologist friend, the late Merle Jordan, once said he believes people tend to marry the one they can continue to rehearse and relive the key themes and dysfunctions of their lives with, only with a twist. This person offers the hope of finally breaking the old patterns and leading us into a new world.
At the source of it all, however, it is not simply our mate or our own determination that bring us to the point of healing. It is a powerful force at the heart of being, the divine response to the hand stretched out in the darkness, the Spirit of Life urging and calling us on. It is the voice of One whose words thunder down through the generations and encounter us after years of going around in the same old circles, ambushing us at just the right moment, breaking through our excuses and complaints, asking us, “Do you want to be healed?”
If you are ready, “Stand up, and walk.”
If you approached ten people at random walking down the street and asked them to tell you what it meant to be a good Christian, what do you think you’d hear? I’ll bet dollars to donuts that at least eight or nine of them would say things like: Good Christians don’t use swear words, they don’t lie, they don’t cheat on their spouses, they don’t treat people badly.” Let’s face it, most people’s idea of Christianity is basically the Ten Commandments. It’s a whole list of “Thou shalt not’s.” People’s idea of clergy is generally that they’re people who don’t use cuss words (I have to confess that the present party does not qualify in that regard).
I’ve heard arguments for having monuments of the ten commandments up in public places, and for teaching the ten commandments in public schools, and even for replacing our federal laws with the ten commandments, all usually based on the notion that those commandments are the core of Christianity and all one needs in order to live as righteous children of God.
“Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s whatever . . .” It’s as if, by not doing anything awful, you can put up a fence of righteousness around yourself and pitch a claim to blamelessness.
It’s essentially what is behind a simple thing like eye-drops. Most of you may not know that many years ago I had a case of the shingles above my right eye. I wound up with post herpetic neuralgia that, among other things, causes my eye to have difficulty tearing. So, I have for many years been using a certain brand of eye-drops. I recently bought a new bottle and discovered a “new and improved” dispenser bottle. The main improvement seems to be that you can no longer get just one drop in your eye. Hard as you try to do that, you can’t keep from getting two or three drops. It’s a great idea. We consumers go through two or three times as much, wasting a lot of it, but they sell two or three times as much product. Their argument, I’m sure, is basically this: “Hey, we’re not our customers’ priest. It’s not our job to protect them from themselves. We’re in the business of providing eye-drops. It’s not our concern that they are buying more product. It’s good business. There’s nothing in the law that says: Thou shalt not sell products to people that they want to buy. We didn’t break any laws.”
It’s emblematic of a larger issue in our culture. It started, I think, with our economic allegiance to free-market capitalism that sanctified the profit motive and convinced corporate America that when everyone is exclusively pursuing their own interests, then the interests of the society at large will a priori be served. I see every morning when I need an eye-drop just how well that theory has worked out.
But the concept evolved from economics to all areas of life. Somewhere along the way we decided that freedom means: I get to do whatever I want, and so long as I don’t break any laws, it’s all good. We can use and abuse our employees, giving them part-time jobs with low pay and no benefits, so long as we don’t break any labor laws; we can yell and honk at people on the highway and flip them the bird if they get in our way, so long as we don’t run into them; we can give people extreme opinions on TV shows to rile them up and call it “news,” so long as we don’t run afoul of the FCC.
I think our grandparents would be ashamed – those who took great pride in their work, who knew that serving the community and the best interests of your customers was, in the long run, good business, and who lived by notions like “what goes around comes around.” I think they would be appalled at what’s happening in America today.
Those who justify themselves by claiming to never break the ten commandments are missing the point. You can pile up all the “Thou shalt not’s” you want; eventually, you’re going to bump up against a “Thou shalt!”
That’s the message of Jesus in this passage from the gospel of John. It was delivered at the most sacred and intimate moment he shared with his disciples: the last supper in the upper room. And before the weight of the religious authorities and the Roman army would come crashing down on him, he left them with these hallowed words. He said, in essence, that following the ten commandments wasn’t enough. Protecting one’s sense of righteousness by hedging yourself in with obedience to a bunch of “Thou shalt not’s” was not what would define them. He gave them what he said was a “new commandment.” It was not something to avoid in order to maintain ritual purity. It superceded every “Thou shalt not” that had gone before with one enormous “Thou shalt.” It was a requirement to extend yourself, to reach beyond the law, to go further than anyone had ever imagined in caring about and caring for others. He said, “Love one another.” And more than that, he said, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Now that’s a pretty tall order!
His love for us was to be our model. He didn’t love us by not cussing, or not cheating, or not stealing from us. He loved us by giving his very life just to teach us what riches and greatness can be achieved in life by giving of yourself.
And apparently the New Testament writers took him seriously. The commandment to “love one another” is spoken or referred to fourteen times in the New Testament. For example in the first epistle of John: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”
Christianity, according to Jesus is not measured by the ten commandments. It’s not a list of “Thou shalt not’s.” It is one “Thou shalt.”
There is a marvelous allegory for the devotion to which we are called in an account by Dr. Richard Selzer, the former surgeon and professor at Yale School of Medicine. He tells of a husband and wife he encountered after surgery. Dr. Selzer writes, “I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut the little nerve.
“Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wrymouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks.
“‘Will my mouth always be like this?’ she asks.
“‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it will. It is because the nerve was cut.’
“She nods, and is silent. But the young man smiles.
“‘I like it,’ he says. ‘It is kind of cute.’
“All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with [the holy]. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.”1
Jesus does not call us to cover our tracks, and make sure we can be held blameless when things go wrong. He does not call us to a timid, half-hearted commitment to follow the rules. He calls us to be nothing less than the kind of spend-thrift lover that he is. He said there is only one measure by which people will know you are one of his followers. It is whether you go beyond what is expected of you, do more than is required by the law, seek out ways to be concerned for the well-being of your brothers and sisters – your neighbors, even the ones who are your enemies.
Some folks object to the notion that Christians are distinguished by the demonstration of such love. Anyone can be a good and loving person, they suggest. You don’t need to be a follower of Christ to be kind and generous. Well, that’s true. But you also don’t have to be an American to believe in freedom. It’s simply that America is, or at least has been, the greatest promoter of freedom on the planet, so it has always been something of a distinguishing characteristic.
The Church of Jesus Christ leads the way in generosity, in compassion, in offering hope and help, time after time, in every corner of the world, in all circumstances of need and want. Every time there is a disaster, money pours out from our churches around the globe. Every time there is an injustice, there are Christians standing up and speaking truth to power. Every time the forces of greed, hatred, and carelessness rear their heads, there are blessed good people in congregations of faith raising their voices, lifting up prayers, contending with the principalities and powers, offering sanctuary, and putting their lives and resources on the line. That is our calling, that is our identity, and that’s how they will know who we are.
Let’s sing it together.
1 Richard Selzer, Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery, Harcourt Brace, 1996
This morning I’m going to look with you into two passages of scripture that may surprise you. The first is this story of Peter raising the woman Tabitha from the dead. There are a couple of odd things about this tale to begin with. One is that when Peter arrives on the scene and assesses the situation, he orders everyone out of the room. I find that rather peculiar. What is it that he didn’t want anyone to see? Was he somehow aware of medical techniques that today we would recognize as cardiac message, or mouth to mouth resuscitation, and thought others might not understand? For whatever reason, I find it also curious that we are given a thorough account in scripture of what he did in that room all by himself. Does that mean that he told others what he did, after shutting them out so they wouldn’t know? Or are we afforded the omniscient perspective that fiction authors often give their readers? In the balance I take this as a tale related by Luke (who was, by the way, the author of Acts) to encourage the early Christians and bolster their faith. It certainly can be based on some historical experience, but Luke is afforded the right to some degree of embellishment.
What strikes me most, however, is my perception that this story is not so much about Peter performing a miraculous act, as it is about the woman, Tabitha. In this account she is referred to as both Tabitha and Dorcas. Tabitha is the Aramaic and Dorcas is the Greek, both of which mean Gazelle. I find that name significant. In much of the ancient world, and even up to modern times, the gazelle has been a richly symbolic creature. A small antelope with fine features and extraordinary speed (some are able to run at bursts as fast as 60 miles an hour), gazelles have captured the imagination of countless writers. In the Song of Songs the beloved of both a man and a woman are compared to gazelles. Doris Behrens-Abouseif relates that Walid ibn Yazid, an eighth century Umayyad caliph who was also a poet, “dedicated most of his poetry to wine and love. In one poem about a hunting excursion, Walid pursued an antelope, but stopping short of killing her he looked at her neck and her eyes which reminded him of his beloved Salma.” Walid’s poem goes like this:
We caught and would have killed an antelope
That ran auspiciously to the right.
But then it gently turned its eyes and looked –
The very image of your look!
We let it go. Were it not for our love
For you, it surely would have died.
Now, little antelope, you’re free and safe.
So off you go,
Happy among the other antelopes.1
She relates similar accounts of hunters in ancient poetry each sparing a gazelle because of its reflection of his loved one. In short, the gazelle, perhaps the most graceful and lovely of all the antelopes, has for ages been a symbolic object of love; and literature through the ages abounds with stories like this one of gazelles being released from the fate of death because of the profound love they engendered.
So this woman named Gazelle is deeply loved by those around her and they desperately seek help when death overtakes her. Luke makes it clear in his story. He says that the disciples immediately sent for Peter when she died, and writes, “All the widows stood . . . weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them.” And here’s the kicker: the woman “Dorcas, Tabitha, Gazelle” is referred to as a “disciple”. In that patriarchal culture, doesn’t it strike you as remarkable that among the disciples, there was a woman? She was only about two thousand years ahead of her time. But why is she so prominent, so beloved, so highly honored as to be regarded among the disciples? I think the answer is given right off the bat. Luke says, “She was devoted to good works and acts of charity.” Tabitha, Dorcas, Gazelle, was deeply loved, highly valued, and greatly honored for her deeds.
Which brings us to the other remarkable story, the one about Jesus defending himself against accusations of blasphemy. Also a curious thing or two arise here. John writes that it was “the Jews” who gathered around Jesus and started to grill him. Here’s the thing: pretty much everyone in the story was a Jew, including Jesus. So why would John go out of his way to label the antagonists in the story as “the Jews”? Again, I wonder if it’s because this gospel is written to early Christians, and there’s already a separation emerging between the faiths, all of which gives us a signal that we should be looking for a basic lesson in Christian practice here.
But there’s another interesting reference at the beginning of the story. John relates that, “It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon.” This is a lovely image, and a detail that is worthy of note. The portico of Solomon was a high up, double colonnade, with rows of columns supporting a roof (which makes it a better place to walk in the winter). It was on the eastern-most side of the Temple grounds and standing in the portico one could look inward directly at the front entrance of the Temple proper, and turning around the other direction one could look out toward the Mount of Olives and the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus therefore finds himself, both literally and figuratively, standing between the “Holy of Holies” and the place of his most human anguish. It is here that this business of his humanity and divinity is addressed directly. He is confronted with the blunt challenge: “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” He tries his best to make sense for them of his calling and his birthright, but they end up accusing him of blasphemy (which seems to have been their intention from the start) and are about to stone him to death. Here’s where it really gets interesting. Jesus offers the following defense against the charge of blasphemy: “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If those to whom the word of God came were called ‘gods’ – and the scripture cannot be annulled – can you say that the one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world is blaspheming because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’?” That’s an amazing passage of scripture. Jesus is quoting Psalm 82, verse 6 which reads, “I say, ‘You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince.” Jesus is here employing a common technique of the rabbis which was to take a verse of scripture (not infrequently entirely out of context) and use it to develop a more elaborate argument. But even though Jesus may be abusing the original context of the psalm, the point he’s making with it is extraordinary. In essence, he is saying that scripture calls regular people “gods”, so why are they complaining when he says he’s God’s son? In short, Jesus is here giving tremendous support to the Christology of those of us who tend to think that the divinity in Jesus is the same thing as the divinity in all the rest of us – maybe he just happened to have a lot more of it. In other words, in a way, we’re all gods.
Well this was not at all satisfactory to his inquisitors, and Jesus offers the ultimate answer to their challenge. He tells them to look at his deeds. And if he’s doing the Lord’s work, then, once again, what’s the beef? Here we have the parallel with the story of Tabitha, the Gazelle. She was loved and lifted up as a disciple because of her devotion to “good works and acts of charity.” She was doing the Lord’s work. That’s what made her great. And if you don’t mind, on behalf of Jesus, let me say, that’s what made her divine – a god, if you will.
You and I are not afforded an aura of holiness because we show up in church once a week. We do not have halos around our heads because we say beautiful prayers. We do not reflect the divinity of Christ because we believe the right things, or talk about the right things. It is our deeds that make us divine. So, if Jesus contends that scripture says to people, “You are gods”, and he demonstrates his divinity by his works, then this church is full of gods; it is full of Gazelles. I have seen you quietly going to visit those who are alone or in need, quietly caring for one another by clearing walkways and steps, bringing food for the food pantry or donations for refugees, being generous with your financial support of our ministry and mission, showing remarkable kindness and generosity of spirit to others in times of stress or conflict.
Does this mean that you are all perfect, or that we’ve arrived at some state of absolute holiness? Obviously not. We’re all works in progress. And, in fact, whatever divinity resides within us is always a work in progress. But the point is that, so long as that work is going on – the work of Divine ministries of love, and healing, and justice, and goodness – then divinity is alive among us and, I daresay, within us. Look deep into your own heart. I tell you that if you look deep enough you will not see a hopeless failure, a lost soul, a wasted life, an unworthy screw-up; you will see the very image-of-God in which you were created. That image shines from you more and more, as your deeds, like those of Tabitha the Gazelle, like those of Jesus, reflect divine intentions.
No, you are not perfect; you are not a finished product; you are not insignificant; you are not a lost cause. You are – gods.
1Doris Behrens-Abouseif, “The Lion-Gazelle Mosaic at Khirbat al-Mafjar”, in the journal Muqarnas, volume 14, p. 15.
I had an epiphany of sorts one morning. I happened to notice out the window an enormous crow come flapping down onto the garage roof. He probably measured twenty inches from beak to tail — it was an awesome sight. He was perched on the roof ridge with his back to me, black feathers glistening in the morning light, as though he were, from a lofty mountain, surveying his realm. He stood for a long minute, then gently glided off the roof and swept out toward the field behind our house, making a slow, imperious turn before moving on to another corner of his kingdom. I thought to myself, “He must have no natural predators. He’s fast and strong; he can soar up to the heights and quickly dive down on his prey. What could be more powerful than such a huge, intimidating bird?”
Just then my gaze wandered up and I spotted a lone blue jay perched higher up on a small bare tree limb. He had been quietly observing the crow from his superior vantage point. Although Jays can be quite noisy and very aggressive when it comes to smaller birds, this one, in the presence of the crow, was silent. I thought, “No wonder he’s minding his tongue. I would too with a great glistening monster like that gliding around.” Just then, the jay hopped along the branch and back behind a tree trunk. In a moment he re-emerged flying on a beeline towards the back yard, followed immediately by his companion, another jay that had been sitting just out of view behind the tree. I’m not sure that the one jay had been keeping quiet to avoid provoking the crow, or, even more fancifully, had been remaining conspicuous to protect his hidden mate, but it seemed that way. And it was that fleeting fancy that brought to mind a very dependable if often tired truth: It is love – love is the thing more powerful than brute force. But if love has power, what is the nature of that power, and from where is it derived?
Jesus knew a thing or two about the power of love. In fact, you could say that his entire life, all of his ministry, the sum total of his teaching, was about the power of love. He demonstrated that power in his active compassion for those around him — his many acts of healing and feeding and forgiveness. He demonstrated that power in his uncompromising insistence on speaking truth — even when that truth was angry or painful — because he knew that truth is liberating. He demonstrated the power of love when he absorbed all the hatred and slander and abuse that could be thrown at him, and carried it with non-reactive strength and compassionate forgiveness to the cross, so that we could get a taste of divine love — the real thing.
There’s an entire lifetime of lessons and examples and stories about the power of love to be mined from the gospels, but they all seem to be summed up in this account of Jesus and the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias. It’s a warm and wonderful narrative of a miraculous resurrection appearance. It has the disciples bobbing around in the water all night trying to fish, Jesus appearing as a stranger on the shore at daybreak, cooking breakfast for them over an open fire. It’s the kind of tale that leaves you feeling all toasty and cozy inside.
And in the afterglow of that magical breakfast of fish and bread, Jesus seized the moment to teach them something about love. Three times he asked Peter, “Do you love me?” Three times Peter said, “Yes, of course!” And three times, as if to drive the point home, he reminded him that love is more than words. “If you love me, you’ll feed my sheep.” “If you love me, you won’t just say so, you’ll do something about it.”
“If you love me, don’t just send a Hallmark card on my birthday. If you love me, don’t just tell me you’re my best friend. If you love me, don’t just whisper sweet nothings in my ear” — because love is not just talk, it’s power! And the power of love lies in what it does to people — how it changes lives — how it transforms, redeems and nourishes.
The Apostle Paul got the message. Writing to the Christians in Corinth, he admonished them about throwing words around unsupported by actions. He said “the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power.”
How easy it is to say all the right things. How readily the words come to our lips when we want to impress, or to win someone’s favor. What a simple matter it is to talk as if our hearts were in the right place, and our souls were overflowing with goodness, and our hands were clean. I know, because I’m good with words. But I stand convicted along with everyone else in this room of not always living up to the rhetoric.
Speaking as a man, I can tell you this “I love you” stuff is sometimes a real problem. There are those men who just can’t bring themselves to say it at all. So that, if they ever did, their wives might faint dead away. Like the story of the husband who came home from work with a dozen red roses, hugged his wife, and said, “Honey, I love you!” His wife burst into tears. “What a day!” she lamented. “The washer broke down. Junior fell out of his highchair. And now you’ve come home drunk!”
But it’s really not that bad for most of us. For any of us, especially in moments of intense feeling, the words slip off our tongues like butter from a knife: “I love you.” “Of course, I love you.” “Why, you know I love you.” Wasn’t it Telly Savalis who used to say, “Who loves ya, baby?” And we felt the depth of his sincerity, didn’t we?
How often we human beings find it easier to profess our love than to demonstrate it in ways that are meaningful to the person we love. How easy it can be to walk into church on Sunday morning and profess our love of the Lord, our love for all the earth’s children, our love for creation, and then go home to self-absorbed lives, hoarding more possessions, and squandering the earth’s natural resources.
I don’t think many of us are being deceitful when we so easily profess our love, I think we’re mostly just oblivious. We’ve got things all mixed up. We think that love is a feeling — it’s a feeling you have if you’re “in love” with someone, a feeling you develop about a friend, or a feeling you should have toward everyone if you’re a “good” person.
I hope I don’t upset too many applecarts if I say that I don’t think love is a feeling. Love isn’t something you feel; love is something you do.
A wonderful phrase has emerged from the civil rights movement, and it’s been taken over by society at large. It’s the difference between those who “talk the talk,” and those who “walk the walk.” And we all know that each one of us, at one time or another, is guilty of talking the talk we’re not walking.
But we also have our moments, don’t we? There are times when, by the grace of the Almighty, our words and our deeds are clearly in sync, and love’s power seems to flow through our lives, and touch others. You see, the power of love to change the world and save lives is not due to some vague, supernatural influence whereby strong emotions send out cosmic vibrations that alter the course of fate. Love changes everything because of what it compels people to do.
A man I knew many years ago served as an Area Minister in the American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts. His name was Stan Manierre. Stan was a rare and gifted area minister because he had the capacity to be a pastor to pastors unlike anyone I have ever known. He used to just “show up” regularly to visit me and find out how things were in the church and how the ministry was going, and he was always close at hand when there was a need.` I knew he was there for me, and his caring and compassion were always obvious. This capacity was developed, I believe, over the course of a very painful but growth-producing experience.
Stan had been a flier in World War II. His plane was shot down over the Pacific, and he was subsequently captured by the Japanese. The time he spent as a prisoner of war was horrendous. I never heard all the details from him, but I know that he was left with real hurt and deep animosity toward the Japanese. When the war was over, Stan had to find a way to come to terms with his experience. One option would have been to live in bitterness and resentment the rest of his life for all that had been done to him, and all the pain he had endured. Another option would have been to forgive the Japanese and try to move on with life, having nurtured love in his heart.
Stan chose another option. He enrolled as an American Baptist missionary to Japan. He spent many years in Japan, living and working with the Japanese, learning from them, and offering them the love and grace of Christ. When he completed his missionary career, he became an area minister in Massachusetts and began going out and sitting down with clergy to share their burdens and inspire their ministries. His loving heart, his ability to put feet on his feelings, was won in a hard-fought battle of the soul. And because of his real, tangible, caring ministry, many lives have been touched and changed — here and around the world. That’s the power of love!
Every day, you and I are given the opportunity to answer Christ’s question, “Do you love me?” Each moment offers the possibility of responding with more than words.
In the play, My Fair Lady, Eliza is being courted by Freddy, who writes to her daily of his undying love. Eliza’s response is to cry out in frustration:
“Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!…
Don’t talk of stars
Burning above,
If you’re in love,
Show me!
Don’t talk of love lasting through time.
Make me no undying vow
Show me now!”
I submit that if we could ever put away the folly of waiting for some feeling to surface that we might call love, and seize instead every opportunity to do love, a power might be discovered that could change the whole world.
Pierre Teihard de Chardin looked to the future of the human race with hopeful eyes. He saw the great accomplishments of science and technology beginning to blossom, but knew that the greatest power available to us had yet to be tapped. He said, “Some day, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, [we] will have discovered fire.”1
So, the question is before us: are we out to change our lives, and then change the world, or are we just foolin’ around?
Jesus says, “If you love me, feed my sheep.”
1Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “The Evolution of Chastity,” Toward the Future. 1934
Today I am offering some thoughts on the passage you heard from the Gospel of John in which Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” By now, it will not surprise any of you to learn that I understand this as metaphor. But it is not a simple one. This remarkable episode is packed with layers of meaning; it touches on themes that go back to the beginning of time, but are so fresh and alive that they can fill your life with grace and power.
At this time of year especially most of us are not very comfortable with being breathed on. You never know what sort of ugly little viruses are floating around in someone’s breath. But I learned recently that native Hawaiians have a very old and cherished tradition called honi of greeting another person by touching nose-to-nose and inhaling or essentially sharing each other’s breath. When White people first came to the Islands they were revulsed by this practice of breathing into each other’s faces and mouths. But to people all throughout the Polynesian Islands the practice meant sharing that most valued part of oneself, the life Spirit from within. So, the Hawaiian term haole, which is used to refer to foreigners, is thought by many to derive from hā-ole which translates “no breath.” The same folk etymology, by the way, explains the word aloha as deriving from alo-hā. Which means to face or share breath. It is that Polynesian root, hā, that can mean breath, or spirit, or essence of life.
I think it’s no coincidence that peoples all over the world tend to link these concepts. When Jesus breathed on his disciples, what he shared with them was pneuma, a Greek word that also can mean either breath or spirit – not to mention wind. So this “Holy Spirit” that was conveyed to the disciples in this passage from John is also a holy breath, or a holy wind. All of which puts one in mind of the story of Pentecost, when a great wind filled the place where a bunch of people were gathered and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.
The connection of spirit with wind and breath goes all the way back to Genesis. When the Lord Almighty created the world, the writer of this tale says, the Ruah Elohim, the Spirit of the Lord, hovered over the face of the waters. This ruah is also wind, breath, and spirit. And then in the second chapter we are told that the same Lord Almighty breathed into the man he created the breath of life, and he became a living being; in Hebrew, he became a nephesh chaya. So the Divine breath caused the man to become a nephesh – another remarkable ancient word. It can mean spirit, breath, throat, soul, life force, personality, state of mind.
So why should any of us care about all these Polynesian, Hawaiian, Greek, and Hebrew words? It’s because there is a wealth of meaning buried in them. First of all, I find it no coincidence that when Jesus breathed on his disciples so that they received the wind/breath/Spirit of pneuma, the image is immediately called to mind of the Creator breathing into Adam the divine breath, giving him the spirit/breath/life force of nephesh. I think John was intentionally trying to relate the two images. And that this same mystical, divine breath of life described in the tale of creating the first human is now shared with these common people Jesus collected from fishing boats and byways is no small development. It represents a movement of this soul force from the one to the many, from the first to the eternal, from the ethereally divine to the physically human. In other words, we’re not talking about some mysterious hocus-pocus from a dusty old book; this is a power, an animating force, that can be part of your physiological being.
C. S. Lewis referred to the Creator’s “. . . grand enterprise. To make an organism which is also a spirit; to make that terrible oxymoron, a ‘spiritual animal.’ To take a poor primate, a beast with nerve endings all over it, a creature with a stomach that wants to be filled, a breeding animal that wants its mate, and say, ‘Now get on with it. Become a god.’”1
Lewis makes it clear what a difficult thing is being asked of us. It’s contrary to our nature, or so it seems. Indeed, rather, it’s primary to our nature, a nature we spend most of our days, and most of our energies, trying to deny and overcome. This inner force that makes us more than a “beast with nerve endings” or a “breeding animal” has everything to do with some kind of connection to the divine – a connection that has been there from the beginning, but which we lose track of over the course of our lives. Seeking and rediscovering that connection, however you do it, is fundamental to being fully human. For some people this connection is found in prayer or meditation, and, interestingly, a key to such practice is focusing on one’s breathing. Perhaps there is, indeed, something about breath that has to do with Spirit.
Secondly, it’s important to note that when Jesus breathed on his disciples the Spirit of Holiness he did so in the context of a summons for them to follow him. And he immediately said, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” This business of forgiving and retaining sins is a little tricky. I think what he means is that there are circumstances in which we are called to be healers, and circumstances in which we are called to make trouble – the kind of trouble that naturally comes from “retaining” another’s sins. That doesn’t mean throwing their shortcomings in the their faces; I think it means developing the inner strength to reflect evil back on itself, so that it becomes undeniable. Gandhi referred to satyagraha, “soul force” or “love force” – the force of “truth”, that was at the core of his nonviolent resistance movement. It was, in fact just this sort of spirit, this inner power, that allowed him and many others, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and a host of followers, to breathe new and transforming life into death-dealing practices of religious and racial animosity.
This confrontational quality of Spirit is buried in a minor but now famous passage from Proverbs. It was the inspiration for the play (and subsequent movie) “Inherit the Wind”. That title is taken from Proverbs 11:29, which in the King James Bible reads: “He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart.” The presumed meaning of this passage is that, if you cause trouble within your family, you will wind up with no inheritance – just wind. But the word used for wind in this passage is ruah, the same word used to mean the Spirit/wind of the Creator that hovered over the waters in Genesis. So if we read the proverb in another way, one might conclude that making the kind of “trouble in one’s house” that Gandhi or King (or Jesus for that matter) did will lead to an inheritance of Spirit that is a great creative power. In fact, that reading might be even more appropriate for the ultimate outcome of the Scopes trial dramatized in the play. If one is filled with the divine Spirit, one can nurture the inner strength to gently forgive wrongs as well as to gently resist evil.
And finally, it’s both humbling and a little awe-inspiring that these words that mean wind, breath, soul force, Spirit, and life, show up in so many diverse cultures, in different eras, and distant lands. There seems to be something universal about this connection between ourselves and the divine that’s instinctively connected to our breathing, and the breathing of our planet. It’s hard to argue with common principles that emerge from such varied human experiences. Perhaps we need to pay more attention to the wind and what’s blowing in it – to the ways that we foul it and the air we breathe. Can it be that the Divine Spirit is indeed wrapped up in creation itself, and that the ancients were not so far from wrong in sensing that divine Spirit in the wind? That’s a tough concept to grasp. But maybe “grasping” the wind is exactly what’s required of us in this age.
The year 2025 is still something of a toddler, but winter seems to have breathed its last. Each year, spring and summer, it seems, are anticipated with hopefulness, sometimes seasoned with a little dread. But, who knows, maybe in this coming season of warm winds we might all discover new strength and new power for our lives. Maybe we will use the days ahead to find and nurture a spiritual force within that is a profound connection with the divine, and maybe that force of Spirit will embolden us to gently forgive and to gently cause trouble, and maybe we will see ourselves and all of our fellow human beings as one with each other and one with our earth.
Given the prevalence of viruses and bacteria floating around we may not choose to practice the Hawaiian honi, greeting one another by touching nose-to-nose and sharing each other’s breath, but nevertheless in the days and months to come let’s find ways to grasp the wind and share the breath of life.
Let’s sing it together.
You know what really gets me? It’s when a TV series ends the season with a “cliffhanger” episode, and you have to wait until late September or even October to find out what happened. Like the time on West Wing when the season ended with a bunch of shots fired on the President and his staff as they walked to the motorcade and you had to wait four or five months to find out who was shot, who was killed, who survived. That really annoys me. Sometimes I think they do that as a negotiating strategy with their cast. You know: “Go along with our contract offer, or come September it’ll turn out you were shot in the last episode.”
I don’t know if any of you have ever noticed, but the Gospel of Mark ends right in the middle of a story, like one of those season ending cliff-hangers. Except Mark doesn’t come back in September and finish the story for you. He just leaves you hanging.
O sure, there are nice tidy endings to the Gospel, but if you read the fine print, you realize that Mark didn’t write any of them. In some translations, these clever little closures to the story are referred to with headings like “the first alternate ending, the second alternate ending, etc.” In other translations, these add-on conclusions are simply listed in the footnotes with the explanation, “Other texts and versions add the following passage:” and “Other authorities add the following:”
The logical conclusion is that in ancient times people were just as uncomfortable with season ending cliff-hangers as I am. They didn’t like Mark leaving them dangling, so they came up with endings to the Gospel and stuck them on themselves.
What’s really interesting is to see what these uneasy folks added to the Gospel – and therefore what Mark left out. What was added, and what Mark made no mention of, was the women running to tell the disciples, and the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus in the flesh. Mark ends his Gospel with this ponderous curiosity: the women visited the tomb and found it empty. Then they were ordered by this strange young man to go and tell the disciples that Jesus had risen. Mark simply says, “they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
Thus ends the Gospel of Mark. They were afraid, and told no one. Story over. Some biblical scholars speculate that by ending the story with the determination of the women to keep their silence Mark was offering a sort of explanation for the Apostle Paul’s silence about the empty tomb in his letters (which are actually the oldest writings we have in the New Testament). The theory is that the resurrection, to Paul and those in the early church, was more of a metaphor about the spiritual presence of Christ in their midst than about his body getting up and walking out of the tomb.
I don’t know about that, but I guess I’m a lot like those ancient folks who had such a hard time with his ending that they had to add more to the story. I want to see what happens in the next season’s first episode. But on a bit more reflection, I think I like Mark’s unfinished story. Because every story is really unfinished. Mark just makes it a little more obvious.
When the fairy tale’s handsome prince and beautiful girl are married to “live happily ever after” we’re not told what their married life was really like. How the prince got along with his mother-in-law or whether he paid attention when his wife talked to him, or whether the lovely new princess squeezed the toothpaste from the wrong end of the tube, or loaded the dishwasher funny.
Every story is unfinished. And when the sky seems to fall on your head leaving you with a burden almost too great to bear, when a loved one dies too soon, when debilitating disease takes over a life, when a job is lost and a career goes up in smoke, the story is not finished. After every dark night the sun rises, after every bleak winter the flowers emerge, after every ferocious storm the clouds pass. And still the story is not over. There are days yet to be seized, there is life to be embraced, there is love to be found. Every story is unfinished.
That is true for each of us as individuals, and it is true for this interconnected web that is the human family. You and I are part of that web as we move through our days, and we so often go to bed with the notion that what we have done in the day is past and gone. But is it? We rarely stop to consider how every little moment of the past day lives on in the ways that other lives were touched, other experiences altered by our actions and decisions. We have no idea what the consequences of our living have led to. For us, the story of our day remains unfinished.
Fifty years ago, I was a police officer in Aurora, Colorado. I, like other officers, used to supplement my income with off-duty assignments. One such job was walking the concourses of a large shopping mall to provide uniformed police protection. One afternoon while walking the mall, I spotted through the crowd amidst a group of African-American men a familiar black face. Instantly, I blurted out a name. “Zeltee,” I called out, and the young man walking with a group of other young men looked up with a start. It was one of my old track buddies from high school. I hadn’t seen him in five years, and here we were in a shopping mall, almost a thousand miles across the country from that high school, and I picked his face out of the crowd in an instant. That’s not like me. I think it shocked me almost as much as it did him. But then I realized there was more to the story. The group of guys he was with were clearly rattled by this cop calling out to their friend. And Zeltee was noticeably nervous. He spoke to me politely for about a minute and then left the mall with his buddies. I have wondered about that brief incident many times. I’ll never know, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.” What were Zeltee and his friends doing in that mall? What were they so nervous about? Why did they leave so suddenly after encountering me? How was it that I instantly picked his face out of that crowd? Did I stop something from happening? Did I make something else happen? Did that possible change in plans keep something from happening to Zeltee? Did it cause something to happen to him? Did it keep something from happening to someone else? Did that person have an impact somewhere else or on someone else because of what did or didn’t happen that day?
Thinking about such things quickly leads to the realization that every decision one makes in the course of a day, every action, every trip you take, and every trip you forego, every encounter with another person, every turn of the steering wheel or decision to pick up the telephone has some result, some impact on the lives of others. And even a seemingly insignificant impact might be momentous. A kind word or welcoming gesture might come at a crucial moment of decision for a person, and their decision might have rippling consequences that lead to changing the course of history.
George Bailey learned it in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. When he was shown in detail what his community would have become had he not lived – how individual lives would have been altered and how those lives so altered would have led to a chain of events that sent the entire town into a destructive tail-spin, it became clear that the impact of his one life was vast beyond his comprehension. Every one of us is part of an incredibly complex web of human interaction, and every one’s life has untold impacts on the lives of others, and on the outcome of the entire human adventure. The old Zen masters were right: separateness is an illusion and in truth all is One. And when you lie down at night, the impacts of your connection to the web of human existence keep reverberating around the community, and I daresay, around the globe. You will never know what those impacts are. Your story is always unfinished.
And when the burden of too many hurts, too many disappointments, too many broken dreams becomes hard to bear, what you do matters. Your decision either to collapse beneath the weight of that burden or to seize yet another day of opportunity may have consequences for good or for ill far beyond your reckoning. And those consequences will remain shadowed and out of your reach. They will never be entirely known. Your story is always unfinished. But the joy of living is not in fairy tale endings where everything miraculously gets tied up with pretty ribbons. True and abiding joy is found by reveling in the story, unfinished though it may be. It is claimed by celebrating your participation in the larger story, the Divine story of the great human adventure.
Mark’s Gospel ends abruptly with the women keeping their silence about what they’ve seen in the garden. Was Mark trying to offer an explanation for the silence about the empty tomb in the letters of Paul? We’ll never know that either. But he was trying to tell us something, and I kind of like that it isn’t entirely clear, that it’s left dangling like the cliff-hanger episode at the end of the season. Because that’s how life is lived, and that’s what Jesus presented to us: the unfinished story of our own existence, the unknown ways in which we change the world with only a word, the opportunity to choose life in the midst of every crucifixion moment.
And in the end, what Mark in his gospel is brilliant enough to hint at, without hitting us over the head with it, is that because the tomb was not the end of the story for Jesus, the tomb may not be the end of the story for us either.
There is plenty of room in an unfinished story for many different endings – plenty of room for different views and different theologies, for literal understandings and appreciation of the metaphor. But because each of us relates the story in our own way, no matter how you tell it, you can stand here this morning, shoulder to shoulder with other folks living unfinished stories, and together proclaim, “Christ is risen! Christ is risen, indeed!
Hallelujah!
Hallelujah!
Hallelujah!”
One of my favorite stories (which I may have used before, but if so it bears repeating) comes from my seminary days at Colgate Rochester Divinity School in Rochester, New York. It’s the apocryphal account of Jesus’ resurrection appearance to a group of seminary students. He approaches them and asks, as he did of Simon Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” And like good seminarians, they respond, “You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of all being — the kerygma in conflict and decision in the humanizing process.” And Jesus says, “What?”
The story is funny because it calls attention to a rather common, and somewhat pernicious tendency among those of us with degrees in theology. We like to cloud the air with a little theological jabberwocky whenever we’re afraid of being on shaky ground. It is a very comfortable thing for a minister in a pluralistic society and a theologically diverse congregation to allude to Jesus in abstract terms like ‘the kerygma in conflict and decision in the humanizing process.” Such intellectualizations allow us to speak about Christ in ways that cover the wide range of theological perspectives and categories that make up just about any congregation. We can maintain a modern world-view and a healthy skepticism while not offending anyone – and confusing everyone.
The only problem is: what are we to do with Easter? What are we to do with this embarrassingly simple story of a man who rose from the dead, confounding our attempts to allegorize the gospel and relativize the Christ? The story is simply this: Jesus was crucified, dead and buried, and rose from the dead. The Bible doesn’t give us much wiggle room to dodge the shock of that account.
The disciples’ first response upon hearing the story was understandable. They may not have been tremendously quick on the uptake, but they had been around long enough and been through enough to know the difference between reality and foolishness. They heard the story of the resurrected Jesus and they decided not to bite. Scripture says they dismissed the story as “an idle tale.”
We are less ready to dismiss the entire story than they, but, if the truth be known, neither are we particularly overcome by it. It is good on Easter Sunday to repeat, “Christ is risen!” It is heart-warming to recall the scriptures; it brings a smile of recognition and the warmth of fond memories. But many of us tend to keep the transforming power of that story at arm’s length. We are, after all, rational, twenty-first century, thinking people. None of us have ever seen someone come back from the dead. And it is a simple thing to value the teachings of Jesus without having to be knocked off our pins by a denial of the degeneration of the human body at death. It’s not that we admit our skepticism out loud. We simply keep it in the back of our minds as a hedge against getting too carried away with religion. We are people of science, and we live in such a reasonable world. The base-line of comfort that allows us to get through our days is the relative dependability of predictable events and the familiarity of the patterns and routines that become our norms. If we lived in a world where the sun might rise or set at any moment, causes might as easily follow effects as the other way around, and people might come back to life as readily as they die, we’d all go out of our ever-loving minds. We are like the people of the village Anatevka in the musical Fiddler on the Roof; we keep our balance through tradition!
But, would it disturb you to learn that our science has revealed the world to be a far less predictable and far more surprising place than we ever imagined? The litany of the bizarre, now embraced by scientific theory, is impressive: sub-atomic particles – the building blocks of existence – seem to be capable of instantaneous ‘communication’ over nearly infinite distances; the subjects of quantum experiments appear to have no objective characteristics at all until observed by the experimenter, as though the act of observation itself were ‘creating’ reality; and the events upon which we so consistently rely in our daily lives are based not upon the dependably precise and ordered actions of electrons, protons and neutrons, but upon the degree of probability that certain occurrences will arise in a virtual sea of sub-microscopic unpredictability.
In short, the brightest scientific minds of our age are telling us that there is far more to existence than you and I can begin to imagine. And that, at its core, reality is not a comfortably known phenomenon; it is more unfamiliar and unsettling than the most far-fetched science fiction. Put in the language of faith: there is something far more wonderful to life than we know.
The sad truth is most of the time we keep ourselves at a distance from that wonder because we are addicted to the familiar. The unknown, let alone the unknowable, is just too uncomfortable a place to live. We wrap ourselves in blankets of custom, and walk through our days holding tightly to tradition, while all around us, unseen, the world is recreating itself with new surprises every minute. It is entirely understandable that we hold tightly to the familiar. It’s not a cause for shame. But it does create a tremendous amount of resistance to allowing ourselves to be surprised by reality, surprised by one another, surprised perhaps by the Lord of Life.
I think it’s our pride that often keeps us from being surprised. We like to feel that we’re smart enough to see things the way they truly are. It is the humble person, the humble heart, the humble church that is open to transformation, to the learning and growth that cannot come from our well-ordered routines and prideful assurances, but only sneaks up on us and startles us by tapping on our shoulders. Karl Barth said that “Wherever graves are, there is resurrection. . . . Broken, the Church can bear its message with its head erect, for the Gospel belongs to the Church that is lost.”1 Barth has put his finger on a profound truth: being a little lost is a prerequisite to being transformed. And it is our pride that keeps us from being at all lost.
For example, men are often shocked, angered and disbelieving when we are told that we have said or done something hurtful to women. We don’t believe that we have done anything wrong. We rarely intend any harm. So if our wives are hurt by something we said or some assumption we’ve made, or women in a group discussion point out that we’ve made a sexist remark, we tend to conclude that they are imagining it or that they are being over-sensitive. How many of us men are willing to look at our own responses as prideful resistance?
What’s more, it’s not only men who take part in that comfortable system. Women buy into it all the time. This all goes on not because any of us are out of whack, malicious, or masochistic. It’s simply that we don’t know any other place of comfort than the places that are familiar.
It’s not a coincidence that the disciples who heard the tale of Jesus rising from the dead were all men. It’s not a coincidence that those who went to do the anointing at the tomb that morning and ran back with the news were women. It’s not a coincidence that the men (who were busy with their important, manly stuff) dismissed what these women had to say. Scripture says, “. . . it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told this to the apostles; but these words seemed to them an idle tale [and we might add the implied phrase: told by foolish women].”
But, surprise, guys! The women were right!
And, surprise, everyone! The story of Jesus was not over after all!
There are things far more wondrous in this life than you can begin to imagine. But we miss them so often because we’re too wrapped up in keeping life predictable.
If we’re ever going to get anywhere, we’ve got to get out of our “comfort zones.” If we’re ever going to let the intrinsic value of each human being be known and embraced we are going to have to allow ourselves to be astonished by each other! That means approaching one another with fresh eyes, expecting to see something of value where once we might have been dismissive. That applies to men and women; it applies across cultures and races; and it applies to those who find themselves on opposites sides of an issue. If we’re ever going to truly know the wonder of this amazing, Divine creation we live in, we’re going to have to be ready to see and recognize the astounding in the world around us! That means paying attention to the ordinary and expecting to find the extraordinary. If we’re ever going to take the truth of Jesus Christ to heart, and allow it transform our lives, we’re going to have to let ourselves be surprised. And maybe the place to start is to be surprised by the story of a man once dead standing and removing the burial cloths, and the ground trembling and shaking open the tomb. If we can allow our minds to get a little blown by that, then maybe we can begin to see that the power of Love can shake off the blinders of prejudice, pattern and pride, shake off even the scales of death, and make us new!
Our death-dealing patterns of living are not the final answer. The barriers that separate races, genders, cultures, and perspectives are not the end of it. And perhaps death is not a brick wall at the end of the line but a door.
This is the abiding note of hope, that is the consistent theme of all those who have stood before the darkened tombs of life’s desperate moments and been overtaken by grace.
Christ is risen! And in that wondrous event is the clear and unmistakable declaration that there is no defeat from which victory cannot be won. There is no ending which cannot turn into a beginning. There is no death by stale routine that cannot be remade into something grand and noble.
Christ is risen indeed!
Have a glorious Easter.
1 Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, Oxford University Press, 1968, p. 416.
Here’s an idea: what if we put an ad in the paper inviting people to be part of Christ’s church – I mean, the way Jesus envisioned it? I can see it now: “Come join our movement. Here’s your chance to reject your parents, turn your back on your wife and children, hate life, and give up everything you own! And all for the priceless opportunity to be rejected, despised, and crucified, just like Jesus!” Can you imagine it? Folks would be beating down our doors – “not!”
Jesus said a lot of things that we would be unlikely to put on a sign out in front of the church building. But if we’re reluctant to simply “tell it like it is,” we certainly have plenty of company. Can you imagine a presidential candidate whose strategy it was to tell the truth? “Vote for me, folks, not because I can turn the economy around; truth is, a president doesn’t really have much to do with what happens to the economy. And I’ll put forward some legislative initiatives (like health care and limiting “earmarks” and immigration reform), but we all know that very few of them will make their way through congress. I’d like to tell you that I can protect you from random violence, but all the armies in the world aren’t going to stop a determined killer. I’m not a perfect human being; I’ve done some things in my life that I’m not proud of. But vote for me, and I’ll do my best, even though, in the end, a lot of you aren’t going to be very happy with it.
Or, how about an ad campaign for a car: “Buy one of these new Ford Tornados. It doesn’t get anywhere near the gas mileage we’re capable of producing, but then, no other car does either. This car won’t make you more sexy – it won’t get you dates, or make everyone stop and stare when you go by. In fact, most folks will hardly notice you, because you’ll just be one more car on the road. And, after a few years, this nice shiny finish will be full of pits and dings, and you may have even put a crease in the fender. You’re also going to have things go wrong – the struts will give out, and the electronic ignition is likely to get out of whack. But, it will get you from point A to point B most of the time. And, hey, isn’t that what you really need from a car?”
Nobody runs ads like these. I wonder why? Truth is, I have a hard time being totally honest myself – even with myself. Sunday after Sunday I stand before you sharing the words of Jesus. And I soft-pedal, I sugar-coat, I equivocate. I don’t want to make you mad. I don’t want to discourage, disappoint, or upset you. But I do it not just for your sake; I do it for mine. The gospel scares me to death.
I’d rather have a different gospel than the one we have. I’d like to have one that says, “If you get a flat tire, just ask Jesus and he’ll send someone by to fix it for you. If you want to hit a home run, just point your finger to the sky before you step up to the plate and God will make it happen.” I’d rather have a gospel that says, “You have a very good head on your shoulders and you know what it means to care about the right things, so whatever you think is right, don’t worry, you’re on the right track.” I’d rather have a gospel that says, “If you just pray, and smile, and live a moral and righteous life, you’ll be better than everyone else, and the Lord will smile on you.” I’d rather not have the cross sitting on the communion table, because it keeps reminding me of the high cost of discipleship, and distracting me from the benefits of the “power of positive thinking.”
Instead, I’m stuck with a Jesus who says that if you want to follow him, you’d better first sit down and count the cost, because it could demand everything of you – even the things you hold most dear. Instead of a Jesus who meets all my needs, I’ve got a Jesus who gives me needs I didn’t even know I had. Instead of a gospel that confirms everything I already believe and vindicates me in my biases and assumptions, I have one that constantly challenges me to expand my thinking and see things from other people’s perspectives.
If there was one thing that demonstrated Jesus’ divinity, it was his capacity for telling truth. You see, for you and me, for presidential candidates, and for auto makers, what matters most is getting people to like us, getting people to follow, getting votes, getting members, getting sales. For Jesus, all that matters is truth. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” His is not the way that most people choose, his is not the half-truth that sells, his is not the “good life” that we all buy lottery tickets hoping to find.
You and I don’t choose Jesus because his truth is enticing and inviting; he chooses us. And once his truth gets inside you, there’s no escaping it.
There are a lot of churches these days selling a very happy gospel. It’s a gospel all about being nice, and feeling good, and having your needs met. It’s all about smiling, and raising your hands in the air, and saying, “Praise Jesus!” But if you really read the gospels, you don’t find any of those things in there. You find a summons to let go of your own needs, and serve others. You find a call to take up your cross and sacrifice yourself. You find an appeal to follow after a Christ who will lead you through trials, and test you.
This is not to say that there is no value in things like happiness and beauty and pleasure. It’s simply that the pursuit of these things is not the heart of the matter. There is a joy far deeper than mere happiness. There is a fulfillment far greater than simple pleasure. That’s the truth that Jesus brings us. He says that the life he offers is “abundant” life. And, yes, part of that abundance is found in simple pleasures. But the deeper reality is that, even though it’s not always fun or even satisfying, life can be deep, and full of meaning and worth and power. He says you will “know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” I take that to mean that, though it may not be a popular path to take through life, it will be an honest one, and in that honesty you will be released from legions of lies that would otherwise enslave you.
I’ll tell you what I truly believe. I believe that if you and I ever got smart enough to know what we really wanted – what our souls wanted, not our minds and bodies – we’d be clamoring for the gospel – the honest, unpopular, demanding, uncomfortable gospel of Jesus.
Frederick Buechner tells the story of a man he knew who used to keep sheep in the town of Rupert, where he lived. He said, “Some of them he gave names to, and some of the them he didn’t, but he knew them equally well either way. If one of them got lost, he didn’t have a moment’s peace until he found it again. If one of them got sick or hurt, he would move heaven and earth to get it well again. He would feed them out of a bottle when they were newborn lambs if for some reason the mother wasn’t around or wouldn’t ‘own’ them, as he put it. He always called them at the end of the day so the wild dogs wouldn’t get them.” Buechner says, “I’ve seen him wade through snow up to his knees with a bail of hay in each hand to feed them on bitter cold winter evenings, shaking it out and putting it in the manger. I’ve stood with him in their shed with a forty watt bulb hanging down from the low ceiling to light up their timid, greedy, foolish, half holy faces as they pushed and butted each other to get at it. If God is like a shepherd, there are more than just a few ways, needless to say, that people like you and me are like sheep. Being timid, greedy, foolish, and half holy is only part of it.
“Like sheep we get hungry,” Buechner continues, “and hungry for more than just food. We get thirsty for more than just drink. Our souls get hungry and thirsty; in fact, it is often that sense of inner emptiness that makes us know we have souls in the first place. There is nothing that the world has to give us, there is nothing that we have to give each other even, that ever quite fills them.”
Folks, Buechner was right. There’s a hunger deeper than our yen for a BMW and a winning argument. There’s a thirst greater than our unquenchable desire for happiness and distraction. Your soul is hungry for truth – to know truth, to hear truth, to tell truth. And if our church amounts to anything it is to the degree that your soul’s hunger is fed here.
In a very real sense, that’s what Palm Sunday is all about. Jesus rode into town, not like the Presidential candidate who rides in a self-important precession of limousines, but on a donkey. He came willingly and with grave determination into Jerusalem, the heart of the civil and religious establishment that was bent on destroying him, to speak truth to power and suffer the inevitable consequences. When his disciples wanted to join with the crowds in joyously proclaiming him the Messiah, he told them that what was in store for him was a cross, and if they wanted to follow, they were to take up crosses as well. He made it clear that the only way to change the world was to change the very order of things, and make personal self-sacrifice the highest rule.
That’s the gospel truth. It’s the message that doesn’t bring crowds trying to beat down the door to get into the church; it disappoints an disturbs most of us. But if you’re going to build something that abides – like a new kind of world – it will take a movement that runs counter to the culture, and counter even to human nature. And for that, you will pay a price. So, if you want to sign on, sit down first and count the cost.
The ultimate truth of the gospel is this: that no matter how difficult the journey, no matter what trials we are called to undergo, we are never, ever alone. Each and every one of us, like the sheep under the care of a good shepherd, is held and sustained by the hand of the Lord. And that love will not fail us.
We may not soon have anyone running for the presidency who just tells us the truth and lets the chips fall where they may; we may not ever see real “truth in advertizing;” but I’ll make this promise to you today. To the best of my meager ability, I’m going to strive to not run away from the gospel, even though it scares me. I’m going to try to discern Divine truth, and simply tell it, and I’m going to challenge you to do the same.
To tell the truth, it’s all we’ve got.
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