The Tree with the Lights in It

Scripture: Matthew 2:9-12


“When [the wise men] had heard [King Herod], they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.”

These words come from the New Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible, or the “NRSV” to its friends. Its precursor, the Revised Standard Version (or “RSV”), was published in 1952 and reflected fifteen years of work by a committee of distinguished biblical scholars. After its publication, the RSV was officially authorized for use by a vast array of Christian churches: Protestant, Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox. Indeed, whatever their other disagreements, these churches concurred about the quality and scholarship of the RSV. Another committee—equally distinguished—subsequently brought additional expertise to the text, resulting in the widely respected translation we find in the NRSV.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that all these fancy, highly educated, and deeply spiritual scholars did a pretty shabby job on this particular gospel passage. In these verses, the translators seek to tell us the story of Christmas. But just consider all the things they left out.

They left out the snow, the winter wonderland, and the giant inflatable yard ornaments. They left out the candy canes, the eggnog, and the fruitcake—the last being an omission many of us do not regret. They left out sleigh bells, silver bells, seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, and five golden rings. They left out Santa, Frosty, Rudolph, the Grinch, Ebenezer Scrooge, George Bailey, Charlie Brown, singing chipmunks, and that perenially annoying kid with the drum. They do mention presents, but since only one person got any—and it wasn’t us—they obviously missed the whole point of the passage. They even left out the centerpiece of the story: the thing we put all those presents under, the Christmas tree, the tree with the lights in it.

All kidding aside, it is remarkable to note the many layers of tradition we’ve piled on top of this sacred text over the centuries. Some traditions, like the tree with the lights in it, persist. Others have faded away as the world has changed.

For example, many years ago there was a story told among country folk—like us, I suppose—that on Christmas Eve the oxen kneeled down at midnight, just as they had done before Jesus in the manger. Some farming families honored a tradition of recounting this tale just before they put the children to bed. The great poet Thomas Hardy wrote a lovely piece about this tradition—and what it might mean to us adults. Slightly paraphrased, it goes like this:

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years, yet I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come, see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely farmyard by yonder vale
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

I suspect this explains why many of us cling so tenaciously to our Christmas traditions. They remind us that even in this tired old world there remains a cause for joy and amazement and celebration. So we return to those traditions, even in the gloom of the troubles that surround us, “hoping it might be so.”

Of course, traditions have their complications. Just consider my complicated fifty-two-year-old relationship with the tradition of the Christmas tree.

I have sweet memories of many of those trees. My grandparents, consistent with the fashion of the times, decorated their tree with piles of garland and tinsel until you couldn’t actually see the tree any more. My father, on the other hand, took a somewhat sparser approach in order to emphasize the ancient German ornaments that had been in his family for generations and that were, well, unspeakably ugly.

I remember the tree Lisa and I shared early on when we lived in a small loft apartment in Ann Arbor. We had no room for a real tree, so we adopted one that stood on top of an adjoining office building and that we could see through our living room window. I remember the first tree I cut down for Lisa, and the first trees Evan and J.J. cut down for our family, once they were big enough to work a saw and fast enough to get out of the way when the tree fell down. And I remember the handsome, freshly cut, piney smelling tree we brought into the living room one year that our dog Jackson decided to claim for his own .... I won’t describe how, but I suspect you can imagine.

But there were other years and other trees. There was the tree down the hospital corridor from the room where my grandfather died. There were the trees my family decorated when my father was away and we didn’t know when he’d be coming home. There was the first tree I decorated after my father’s passing, when I no longer had his big mitts clumsily handing me delicate old ornaments with the paint worn off of them. And there was a year of sadness and transition when I had no tree at all. I remember those trees, and those years, as well.

We do a lot of this at Christmas. We look back. We remember. Some years it is our cherished memories that give us the only warmth we find during the holiday season. And sometimes it is our recollection of harder Christmases that makes our current joy even brighter.

But, however we approach the season, we seek out the familiar. We honor our traditions, even in their bittersweet complexity. This is comforting, for sure; but it also gives rise to a problem.
I’m not talking about the problem that we have acquired so many layers of tradition that rediscovering the meaning of Christmas underneath them requires us to engage in something like an archeological dig. That is inarguably true, indeed so true it has become something of a cliché. But I’m talking about a different problem—one that comes from the nature of tradition itself.

Tradition relies on repetition, consistency, and predictability. It has a “now we do this because this is what we always do” quality to it. It lures us into comfortably rehearsed patterns of experiencing the season. We have a list, we check it twice, and when everything on the list has been accomplished we know we’ve finished with Christmas. And then we move on.

But this way of engaging with things conflicts with what Jesus—not the baby in the manger but the “young and fearless prophet”—calls us to do. Over and over again, throughout the gospels, Jesus urges us not to look back but to look forward. He implores us to recognize the work that stands before us—feeding the poor; sheltering the homeless; caring for the sick; comforting the distressed; fighting injustice and bigotry and hatred and violence wherever we find it. He challenges us to see things anew, afresh, as we have never seen them before, as filled with the innate stuff out of which might just come the very Kingdom of God.

Think about what Jesus said. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, he repeatedly invites us to see things in a radically different way. "You have heard it said that you should not commit murder but I am telling you that even anger offends the God of peace." "You have heard it said that we should take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth but I am telling you that revenge and retribution offend the God of forgiveness." "You have heard it said that we should embrace our neighbors and despise our enemies but I am telling you that such stinginess of spirit offends the God of love."

And think about how Jesus lived. He did not just have love for people—he had hope for them and faith in them as well. He drew in those that society cast out: the lepers; the unclean; the tax collectors; the prostitutes. He saw them as others did not, and being seen by him in that way transformed them. Society called them cursed; Jesus called them his children; and two-thousand years later we call them blessed; we call them disciples; in some cases, we even call them saints. And if this capacity to see everything and everyone with eyes that are refocused and reborn is fundamental to who Christ was then it must be fundamental to what Christmas is.

In her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard describes what happened when surgeons first discovered how to perform safe cataract operations. Inspired by their success, the surgeons traveled across Europe and America operating on numerous men and women and children who had been blind since birth. Medical historians captured the reactions of these people when they first opened their eyes and saw.

Annie Dillard writes that these newly sighted people can teach us something about how dull our own vision is. Some were amazed by things we take for granted, like the miracle of what our hands look like when they move or the fact that everyone has a different face. One young boy was astonished by the appearance of a bunch of grapes: dark, blue, shiny, with bumps and hollows. A twenty-two-year old girl was so dazzled by the world’s brightness that she kept her eyes shut for two weeks. When she finally opened them, an expression of gratification and astonishment spread over her face, and she couldn’t stop looking at everything around her, all the time exclaiming: “Oh God, how beautiful!”

But my favorite is a little girl who, with her newly acquired sight, found her way into a garden and stood transfixed in front of a tree. For the first time, she saw the sun coming through the branches and illuminating the leaves. She was speechless for a while. But then she turned to the person beside her and said, “Ah, this is the tree with the lights in it.”

Traditions are wonderful things. They bind us together. They comfort us. And I hope nothing I’ve said will keep you from putting cookies out for Santa, or singing along with Elvis’s “Blue Christmas” on the radio, or wondering what the oxen are up to, or sitting quietly to admire the tree with the lights in it.

But I also hope that, as Christmas approaches, you will make time to look forward, to remember not just the cry of the infant Jesus but the call of the risen Christ, to understand that you are an instrument of God’s peace and a messenger of God’s love, to embrace everything and everyone around you with a full and forgiving heart, and to see, really see, as you have never seen before, occasionally even whispering to yourself, “Oh God, how beautiful!”

There is an old and simple story that might help you with this. Maybe you know it. Here’s how it goes. Many years ago there were three wise men. They had a long, hard journey. But when they arrived at their destination, they saw something overwhelming and indescribably wonderful—something that, once seen, changed them forever; something that, once seen, could not be unseen. They bowed down. And, when they traveled on, they followed a new way.

Gracious Lord, who made the star over the stable, who made the tree with the lights in it, and who made even our searching and wandering hearts, grant that in this season, and then in all the seasons of our lives, we might go and see and do likewise.

Amen.

A Dog in the Leaves

Scripture: Matthew 6:25-34, Colossians 4:2-4

I remember sitting in a theology class years ago when our professor asked whether we had any questions we believed our faith could not answer. One eager young man shot up his hand and said “I’ve got lots of them. How about this one: what is the nature of God?” Without hesitation, our instructor—an older woman who had a brilliant mind and a mischievous smile—responded “Oh, that one’s easy. God is perfect love, and perfect justice, and perfect mystery. Are there any other questions?”

Her answer stuck with me. Over the years I’ve given it a lot of thought. And I’ve come to believe that many Christians, and particularly many Protestants, and even more specifically many Methodists, spend a great deal of time talking about love and justice but spend very little time talking about mystery.

In a sense, this is easily understood, especially in the case of us Methodists. We stand on the shoulders of that giant John Wesley, who held that our faith must be informed, shaped, and supported by our capacity to reason. We therefore devote a lot of our attention to reading and studying and discussing and thinking and debating—all important and valuable endeavors.

But I want to suggest to you that this focus on intellectual energy and effort tends to push our sense of mystery to the margins. I want to invite you to rediscover that sense of mystery, if it is missing in action, and to bring it back to the center of your faith. And I want to highlight a dimension of mystery that you might not associate with the idea and that I think we very much need, perhaps during these challenging days more than ever before.

Now, on those occasions when we do talk about the mystery of our faith, we usually do so in one of two voices. One of those is the voice of consolation. This is the voice we use when we encounter things that seem to us horrible and unjust and inexplicable.

Storms destroy entire communities; accidents claim the lives of innocent victims; infants come into the world with terminal illnesses. Just recently, a good friend of ours lost a 48-year-old niece to cancer. We look at these things and we struggle to reconcile them with our vision of a God who is perfect love and perfect justice, and we quickly find ourselves in that space called perfect mystery. We take some hard comfort in that mystery, in our understanding that we cannot understand, in our knowledge that, in this life, we see only through a glass, darkly. As Robert Frost puts it, "We dance 'round in a ring and suppose, but the circle sits in the middle and knows."

The other voice we often use when we talk about mystery is the voice of awe. This voice runs toward the somber and venerating, and appropriately so. After all, we reserve this voice for those instances when we encounter something amazing and remarkable—something that touches us to the core and ignites the divine spark that dwells deep in our shadowy humanness.

I heard this voice a few weeks ago. One of my best friends, running an errand in an unfamiliar rural area, was blinded by a glare of light and drove through a barrier at a train crossing. He slammed on the brakes but skidded onto the tracks. The train struck the rear of the vehicle, right behind where he was sitting, flipping it upside down and into a ditch. The car was totaled. My friend walked away with a bruised finger, scratches on his neck, and sore muscles.

My friend served in Vietnam as an Army Ranger. He is no stranger to close calls and is not given to dramatic overstatement. But when he told me that this experience had deeply and fundamentally changed him I could hear that voice of awe. “Why me?” he kept asking. “Why, of all people, would I be saved?”

He told me that he kept thinking of a scene in a movie where an army officer—who, along with many of the men under his command, sacrificed his life to save a single soldier—looked Private Ryan in the eye and said: “Earn it.” Of course, Private Ryan couldn’t really “earn” so great a sacrifice. He could just live as if he were trying to do so. That is all my friend can do as well. And it is all that any of us, saved through the awesome mystery of greatest sacrifice imaginable, can do.

Well, that brings me to the third voice of mystery. I think it is a neglected voice. But it is well worth finding again, hidden, as it may be, somewhere deep inside us, where the child still resides. It is the voice of mystery that sounds in gleeful gratitude. It is the voice of mystery that sounds in over-the-top thankfulness. It is the voice of mystery that sounds in sheer, spontaneous, uncontrollable joy.

We hear this voice in many passages in the New Testament. Sometimes we hear it in the voice of Jesus himself. Think about that familiar passage in the sixth chapter of Matthew—a passage we often read with boring stoic seriousness as if Jesus were instructing us on how to change transmission fluid or separate egg yolks.

But in this passage Jesus tells us of a mystery that can bring us unimaginable joy. Don’t worry, he tells us over and over; don’t worry about most things because most things don’t matter. Just set your sights on the kingdom of God. Just focus on being the beloved child of God that you are. Just believe. Just live as if you were trying to earn it. And, if you do those things—mystery of mysteries, and joy of joys—you will have everything you need.

In a passage from the fourth chapter of Colossians, Paul links these ideas even more explicitly. He urges the people to devote themselves to prayers of thanksgiving. And then he asks them to pray for his own release from prison, so that he can “declare the mystery of Christ.” In these words, the notions of gratitude and thanksgiving and mystery come together, right where they belong.

Indeed, sometimes joy will come out of mystery when we least expect it. You may remember that I mentioned earlier that a good friend of ours lost a 48-year-old niece to cancer. That is a sad story—but it is not the whole story.

You see, at 48 she had lived thirteen years longer than the doctors had originally predicted. She had time to raise her children and to become deeply involved in many aspects of her community. She had a chance to live as if she were trying to earn the life she’d been given—and she wrapped both arms around that opportunity and held onto it as tightly as she could. Perhaps this explains why, to the amazement and mystification and joy of her family, when they held her memorial service some eight-hundred people showed up to celebrate her life and express their love.

I learned a great deal about the joy we can find in mystery from my theology professor. I have learned a great deal about it from friends, and from the friends of friends, and from family of friends. But, most recently, I learned about it from someone named Jackson P. Niehoff. Jackson P. Niehoff is one of our dogs.

So here’s the story. We have a backyard filled with oak trees. When fall comes, the branches empty and a deep litter of leaves blankets the grass. It proves more than we can handle ourselves, with our limited time and aging backs, and so we call for help, which arrives in the form of teams of men with rakes.

This year, the leaves came so suddenly and in such dense quantities that our helpers couldn’t finish their task in one day. So, on their first pass they raked the leaves into giant piles, each many feet deep, which rose from our yard like great brown and orange pyramids. Then they went home to soak their tired muscles and, presumably, to curse the noble oak and to have bad dreams about the possibility of heavy winds that night.

Well, the winds didn't come and so the next morning, when we let Jackson out into the backyard, he discovered the piles of leaves. He thought them unfathomable. He found them deeply mysterious. They had appeared out of nowhere. They defied all his expectations. They inspired awe and wonder and curiosity—and, it turned out, delight.

Jackson barked a few times, backed up, and threw himself into the leaves. He ran and got a stick. He threw it into the leaves and then jumped in after it. Then he ran and got a log and did the same thing.

Each dive into the leaves put everything at risk—he had no idea what he was jumping into or what he’d find there. But he held nothing back. He gave himself over to the indescribable joy of the mystery. And it occurs to me that the collected leather-bound editions of the works of the world’s leading theologians, in all their splendor, were not clothed like Jackson P. Niehoff was on that particular day.

The mysteries of our faith can offer us consolation. They can bring us to places of awe and wonder. They can offer us glimpses of the greatness of God. They can provide us with a deeper understanding of how little we understand after all. Mystery is magnificent. Mystery is sacred.

But we miss something critical if we don’t recognize that God’s mysterious ways can also inspire within us a deep sense of thankfulness and gratitude and joy. After all, mystery is God’s principal method of doing business. Nothing else explains a child in a stable, a savior on a cross, or a body missing from a tomb.

We are called to come to these mysteries with awe and wonder and humility and the confessional sense that we cannot earn what God has given us. That is, after all, what makes it a gift. But we are also called to throw ourselves into this mystery with gleeful, grateful, reckless, joyful abandon—like the birds of the air; like the lilies of the field; like a dog in the leaves.

Amen.

Do the Dance

Scripture: Psalm 100, “A Psalm of Thanksgiving”

"Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come into God’s presence with singing. Know that the Lord is God. It is God that made us, and we are God’s; we are God’s people, and the sheep of God’s pasture. Enter God’s gates with thanksgiving, and God’s courts with praise. Give thanks to God, bless God’s name. For the Lord is good; the Lord’s steadfast love endures forever, and the Lord’s faithfulness endures to all generations."

The eighth chapter of the gospel of Matthew begins with a miracle:

"When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him; and there was a leper who came to him and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.’ Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ Immediately, his leprosy was cleansed. (Matthew 8:1-3)"

This story says a great deal in three short verses. Of course, it says important things about Jesus and about his authority and compassion. But this story also tells us a lot about the man who came to Jesus and bowed down before him.

We know this man had courage and perseverance: he thrust himself into the “great crowds” of people who shunned him because of his leprosy; and he worked his way through that throng to the very feet of Christ.

We know this man had humility: he knelt before Christ and demanded nothing but instead offered a simple confession of faith.

We know this man believed in the power and grace of Jesus: he said as much to the One he knew could look beyond his words and into his heart.

And, of course, we know this man was cleansed and healed.

But there is something we do not know, something the story does not tell us. We do not know what this man did or said when he discovered Jesus had healed him. The story describes his miraculous return to physical health and, thereby, to his community and family, but says nothing at all about his response to this amazing event.

This posed a serious problem for a film director who, in the late nineteen-nineties, set out to make a movie version of the gospel of Matthew that included no words except those that literally appear in the text of the New International Version. Of course, the director could not put words of thanks or praise into the man’s mouth the gospel does not record. Nor could the director finish the scene by having the man walk off as if nothing – let alone nothing astonishing – had happened.

So, as often occurs in our reading of the gospels, the director had to resort to his imagination and his understanding of human nature and come up with something that seemed plausible – but did not contradict what the text does tell us. In my view, the director had a stroke of genius.

The scene closes like this. Jesus reaches out and touches the man, who is enveloped in sack cloth. Slowly the sack cloth is pulled away to reveal the smiling face of someone who bears none of the sores or scars of leprosy. The man begins to laugh, and Jesus laughs with him. The laughter grows, and the man throws himself onto Jesus in a full embrace. They fall to the ground together, rolling in the dirt, celebrating the miracle. It is an expression of thanksgiving that surpasses the capacity of language.

In a book he wrote about portraying Jesus in this film, actor Bruce Marciano recalls a controversy that surrounded the scene when the movie first came out. He notes that some people did not think the scene sufficiently reverent. The image of the healed man tackling Jesus and of them falling onto the ground in joyful abandon offended their sense of propriety. I guess I see their point, and I acknowledge that the director’s vision challenges our assumptions and expectations. But I want to suggest that we may have some assumptions and expectations about the nature of thankfulness that could use a little friendly challenging.

Certainly, in our relationship with God we often feel a thankfulness that is deep and quiet. We may experience this most keenly in those moments when God’s presence in our lives shows itself in some unexpected and unmistakable way. When this happens we may find ourselves on our knees, with our heads bowed, silenced in wondrous gratitude. In this connection, it may be worth remembering that the word “gratitude” has a close relationship with the word “grace.” Indeed, as a matter of linguistics, gratitude comes from grace. Perhaps this holds true as a matter of theology as well.

I’ve noticed that there can be a fair amount of this solemn thankfulness during the Thanksgiving holiday. Everyone’s having a perfectly good time until somebody says “and now let us all be thankful.” In response, we get very still and respectful and we lower our heads and we recite our blessings in hushed tones. I don’t mean to make light of this. The reverential voice of thankfulness has a calm beauty to it and has an important place in our faith.

But thankfulness has many voices. Surely, it can have the soft voice that whispers gratitude. But it can also have a voice that sings – and sings loudly. It can have a voice that laughs. It can have a voice that cheers. It can have a voice that celebrates. It can have a voice that calls us to dance.

We hear this voice of joyful thanks over and over again throughout the Bible. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul says “[s]peak to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. Give thanks always for all things to God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul has it exactly right; it is in the Psalms that this voice of celebratory gratitude comes through most clearly and irresistibly.

So our text for today, Psalm 100, calls us to “[m]ake a joyful noise to the Lord, [to] [w]orship the Lord with gladness, [and to] come into God’s presence with singing.” Psalm 79 declares “[w]e your people and sheep of your pasture will give you thanks forever; we will show forth your praise to all generations.” Psalm 92 exclaims “you, Lord, have made me glad through your work. I will triumph in the works of your hands.” And, in words that seem remarkably descriptive of the film scene between Jesus and the leper, Psalm 30 cries exuberantly “[y]ou have turned my mourning into dancing; you have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness; to the end that my glory may sing praise to you, and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.”

Of course, we are made in God’s image and so it should not surprise us to find passages in the Bible where God, too, seems to exhibit joy and thankfulness. Indeed, Jesus tells us a story about just such an occasion. You all know it. A man had two sons, and one wandered away and wasted his life. And when the prodigal son returned, the father felt such deep thankfulness that he threw the entire household into an extravagant celebration. When that child came home, he turned his father’s “mourning into dancing.” And so it is when we come home as well.

In a recent popular movie, actor Steve Carell plays Evan Baxter, an ambitious junior congressman who gets elected on the campaign promise that he’ll change the world. Morgan Freeman plays the role of God, who hears Evan’s promise and decides to offer him some guidance. Specifically, God orders Evan to build an ark, and helps him along by providing tools, wood, pairs of animals, and a book called “Ark Building for Dummies.”

Evan has a funny habit he displays from time to time throughout the film. Whenever things go well for him and he feels thankful and excited he declares that he has to “do the dance.” He then breaks into a series of moves that make everyone who’s watching him grin from ear to ear. Indeed, “the dance” has an infectious quality to it and people who are around Evan when he starts up tend to join along. In one particularly memorable scene, God and Evan share a moment of celebration that they close by agreeing to “do the dance.”

At the end of the film, God stares into the camera and holds up a stone tablet. He solemnly announces that he has added an eleventh commandment to the existing ten. The commandment, of course, is this: “Thou shalt do the dance.”

I think the film has great charm and some wonderful messages. I do, however, quibble with this aspect of its theology. You see, God does not need to add an eleventh commandment to tell us to “do the dance.” God has been telling us that all along. The idea that we should find the voice of joyful thankfulness is not a new one. It is thousands of years old. And it is as young and as fresh as ever.

Look around you life. See the blessing of friendship. And do the dance. See the blessing of family. And do the dance. See the blessing of a congregation devoted to serving the Lord. And do the dance. See the blessing of living in a community where people care about each other. And do the dance. See the blessing of citizenship in a country where we enjoy tremendous freedom. And do the dance.

Watch the leaves change color. And do the dance. Feel the cool fall wind on your face. And do the dance. See an elderly couple holding hands. And do the dance. Hear the sound of children’s laughter. And do the dance – and grab their hands and invite them to dance along. They will, you know.

In all things praise God. And in God’s name, and to God’s glory, and for God’s pleasure – do the dance.

“For the Lord is good; the Lord’s steadfast love endures forever; and the Lord’s faithfulness endures to all generations.”

Amen.

Shout Into the Darkness

Scripture: Mark 10:46-52


On the surface, it seems like a simple feel-good story. Bartimaeus is blind. He asks Jesus to restore his sight. Jesus does so. The headline reads: “Bartimaeus Healed!”

But when we look more closely we discover that this is actually a very complex story. We discover that it is a story dense with meaning and layered with subplots. We discover that it is a story overcast by shadows of human bias, selfishness, and cruelty. And we discover that it is a story about what faith looks like and what faith calls us to do.

I will candidly tell you that this is one of my favorite stories in the Bible. I will confess to you that “blind Bartimaeus,” as the poet Longfellow called him, is one of the figures in the history of our faith that I love the most. And, here, I hope to help you find in this story what I have found in it. To do that, I want to walk through the story with you, because, in my view, it deserves that sort of close attention.

The story begins by telling us that Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho. Of course, Jesus visited Jericho a number of times and interesting and important things always happened on those occasions. Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River near Jericho; he was tempted in the mountain range that adjoins Jericho; it was in Jericho that Zacchaeus climbed a tree to get a better look at Jesus; and Jesus set the parable of the Good Samaritan on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. If the story takes place in the vicinity of Jericho, then something big is about to happen. And it does.

So we’re told that as Jesus and a “large crowd” were leaving Jericho they passed by a man named Bartimaeus, who was sitting on the side of the road. The text gives us several pieces of information about Bartimaeus. And that information helps us understand what comes next.

Of course, Mark tells us that he was blind. Apparently, he was not blind from birth because later in the text he asks Jesus to let him see "again." But clearly he had been blind long enough to find himself in desperate straits.

Mark also tells us that Bartimaeus was the son of Timaeus. Now, if you look Timaeus up in most biblical commentaries it will tell you this about him: he was the father of Bartimaeus. Of course, that doesn't help much since Bartimaeus literally means "son of Timaeus." But here's the point: Timaeus was nobody special, and neither was Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus did not come from a family of wealth and stature; he did not come from a family that had the resources to support someone who had become blind.

Perhaps this explains something else Mark tells us about Bartimaeus. He was a beggar. He did not have a way to sustain himself. So, every day, he had to suffer the shame and indignity of pleading with people to help him. And we can rest assured that these pleas were regularly met with ridicule and scorn and disdain.

Now, before we go any further, we should pause here to ask some pointed questions: What kind of society would allow this to happen? What kind of society would have so little regard for the health, the well-being, and the dignity of individual persons that it would fail someone like Bartimaeus? Is that kind of society very different from our kind? How many people like Bartimaeus do we pass on the streets that we travel? All questions worth considering.

Anyway, as Jesus and the crowd passed Bartimaeus he called out—indeed, the text tells us that he shouted out. He shouted: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” He shouted into the darkness.

I think this is terribly important. We obviously don’t know much, if anything, about Jesus’s physical appearance. In one of his most famous sermons, Peter Marshall describes Jesus as striding up and down the streets of Jerusalem, his skin bronzed from walking in the sun, his arms thick and his big hands calloused from work in his father’s carpentry shop. I like the image, although I realize it has little foundation beyond the imagination of a great preacher.

Still, it seems to me likely that Jesus had a remarkable physical presence. It was the kind of presence that could make men drop what they were doing and walk away from their labors when he said nothing more than “Follow me.” It was the kind of presence that made people throw themselves at his feet just so they could touch the hem of his garment.

Perhaps there was something in his eyes. I think about those eyes, sometimes; do you? Imagine being the woman at the well who told Jesus that she had no husband. Imagine Jesus looking at you with those eyes—those eyes that could peer down into the depths of your very soul; those eyes that could see your every infidelity. And then imagine Jesus saying “woman, woman, you’ve had five husbands.”

But Bartimaeus knew nothing of this. He could not observe Jesus and make judgments based on what he saw. He could not peer into Jesus’s eyes and witness the divine spark. He could not look into Jesus’s face and find that it invited confession and offered consolation. He could not watch as the young and fearless prophet went about the business of changing the world.

No, Bartimaeus experienced Jesus as a voice coming from somewhere out in the darkness. That was all he had to go on. In this respect, it turns out that Bartimaeus’s experience of Jesus Christ may be a lot like yours and mine.

So, what did Bartimaeus do? Did he do what we do? Did he sit there and ponder his uncertainties? Did he wait for things to become plain and obvious? Did he pray for light—all the while taking comfort in the shadows?

No. Bartimaeus shouted into the darkness. He called out with as loud a voice as he could muster. He sucked in his breath and threw his whole full-throated voice into the night.

Imagine the courage this must have taken. A hundred times a day Bartimaeus lifted his soft beggar’s voice to ask for help. A hundred times a day Bartimaeus quietly pled for whatever food or drink or money a stranger could spare. And many days—perhaps most days—Bartimaeus got for his trouble a hundred silences, a hundred insults, perhaps a hundred beatings. Life had taught him to ask with fear and trepidation.

But not this time. This time, Bartimaeus did not whisper in shame and terror. He shouted in hope and expectation.

Some of the people around him didn’t approve. Mark tells us that “Many sternly ordered him to be quiet.” Why would anyone—let alone “many” people—tell poor Bartimaeus to stay put and shut up? Why would they begrudge him an encounter with Jesus? The text doesn’t tell us.

Maybe they did so out of snobbery and bias. After all, Bartimaeus was a second-generation nobody. He begged for a living. He occupied the lowest rung on the social ladder. Who was he to speak up?

Maybe they said this out of selfishness. They had pressing matters to discuss with this prophet. They had needs. And those matters and needs were more important because, well, they were theirs. Why should they give their time over to someone else—let alone that bum Bartimaeus?

Or maybe “many” people said this because one person said it. That is, of course, how cruelty works, how it spreads, and how it gets out of control. One person says something mean or belittling or spiteful and another person joins in and then another and another. No one stops to think. No one pauses to let their conscience intercede.

This can lead in directions people do not intend. It can lead to tragic consequences. Indeed, it could be argued that this is what led to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

In any event, many people told Bartimaeus to hold his peace. And he ignored them. In fact, he defied them. Mark tells us that in response to their “orders” he cried out “even more loudly.” So there he is: solitary; disrespected; impoverished; blind; vulnerable; defenseless; surrounded by hostility. And yet he musters the bravery to call out to Jesus, louder and louder and louder.
You really have to love the fight in this man.

Apparently, Jesus did. So he stopped and had someone tell Bartimaeus to come to him. And here Mark gives us a fascinating little detail: he tells us that Bartimaeus threw off his cloak and “sprang up” in response.

Maybe that detail doesn’t mean anything. But I’ll tell you what I think it means. I think it means that Bartimaeus—for all his hope and expectation—still harbored some reservations. Bartimaeus still entertained a little uncertainty. Bartimaeus still wondered whether this man—like the hundreds he encountered every day—would ignore him, turn away from him, and keep walking.

But when Bartimaeus realized that Jesus stood waiting for him his hope began to harden into faith. He leapt to his feet. He rushed to Jesus’s side. Bartimaeus, who had spent so many years pleading into the darkness for help, and who had who had good reasons to be skeptical, had found something in which he could truly believe—a savior who heard his cries.

Jesus asked him what he wanted; Bartimaeus said he wanted to see again; Jesus assured him that his faith had made him whole; and Bartimaeus regained his sight. This part of the story resembles many of the other healing stories. But there is a difference here. In my view, it is an important one.

You see, in the overwhelming majority of the healing stories told in the gospels, the story ends when the healing takes place. This holds true for Matthew, Chapter 8, when Jesus heals a man who suffers from leprosy and heals the servant of the centurion; Matthew, Chapter 12, when Jesus heals a man with a withered hand; Matthew, Chapter 17, when Jesus heals a boy who suffers from seizures; Mark, Chapter 7, when Jesus gives hearing and speech to a man who was deaf and mute; Luke, Chapter 13, when Jesus heals a woman who couldn’t straighten her spine; Luke, Chapter 14, when Jesus heals a man who has dropsy; Luke, Chapter 22, when Jesus heals the ear of the slave of the high priest that had been cut off by one of his own disciples; and John, Chapter 4, when Jesus heals a young man of a fever. In all these stories the healing occurs and nothing more is said about it.

This can prove extremely frustrating. For example, the last line in John’s telling of the raising of Lazarus is this: “Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’” Don’t you want to know more? Don’t you want to know what Lazarus did with the life he regained? The story doesn’t tell us.

A few stories do provide some additional details—and they’re delightful and leave us with some wonderful images. For example, in Matthew, Chapter 9, Jesus heals a paralytic, and in John, Chapter 5, Jesus heals a man who has been bed-ridden for thirty-eight years, and in both of these stories the end comes when the man picks up his bed and carries it away. Then there’s the story in Luke, Chapter 8, when Jesus heals a sick child. That story ends when the parents give the child something to eat. Some things never change.

The story of Bartimaeus, however, ends as very, very few others do. Bartimaeus asked for his sight. Jesus gave it to him. But once Bartimaeus received what he wanted from Jesus he did not pick up his cloak and go home. He did not wander off to take care of business. He did not head into town to celebrate. Instead, the story tells us, Bartimaeus followed Christ. That is how this story ends: “Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.”

In my view, that is what makes this such a magnificent story—perhaps the best healing story of them all. All of the healing stories involve miraculous recoveries. All of the healing stories involve people of great faith. All of the healing stories provide examples of people asking something of Christ and receiving it. They are all beautiful and inspiring.

But this story has a twist—one that, like all good twists, comes right at the end. Because it turns out that while Bartimaeus asked for his sight he actually found something better. He found a divine presence behind the distant voice he had shouted toward in the darkness. He found a savior who would stand still amidst the din and clamor of life and hear his cry … and mine … and yours. He found something, many of us would say the only thing, that is finally worth following.

Ah, Amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found. Was blind, but now I see.

Amen.

Understanding in Search of Courage

Scripture: James 3:13-17

Over the years, the New Yorker magazine has featured a number of cartoons with a common theme. These cartoons depict a guru sitting on top of a mountain. He is bearded, gaunt, and sparsely dressed. In front of the guru sits a truth-seeker, some poor soul who has struggled to the top of the mountain in order to hear the sage’s words of wisdom. And, of course, that’s where the cartoons get funny.

In one, the guru offers this advice: “You do the hokeypokey and you turn yourself around—that’s what it’s all about.” In another, the guru asks this of his student: “If I knew the meaning of life, would I be sitting here in my underpants?” I love the cartoon where the guru is glaring at the student and saying “If I told you the secret of making light, flaky piecrust it wouldn’t be much of a secret anymore, now would it?” But my favorite is the guru who shares this jewel of enduring wisdom with the disciple who has come so far to hear it: “All outdoor carpeting can be indoor carpeting, but not all indoor carpeting can be outdoor carpeting.”

We laugh at these cartoons because they correspond with our experience. We seek after wisdom. We usually find something else.

The importance of seeking and finding wisdom constitutes one of the major themes of the Bible, and particularly the Hebrew Bible. Scholars use the shorthand phrase “wisdom literature” to refer to the books of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. And wisdom has a central place in some of the stories we find in Genesis and Exodus and in the verses of many of the Psalms. The Hebrew Bible tells us that wisdom is worth more than gold or silver or rubies and that it is “a tree of life and a blessing to those who lay hold upon it.”

The Hebrew Bible also provides us with a figure we have come to think of as the very embodiment of wisdom—Solomon. Indeed, Solomon’s name has become so closely associated with wisdom and good judgment that we tend to forget that the scriptures express considerable ambivalence about some of his decision-making—for example, his construction of shrines to the gods of foreign nations and his use of forced labor to support his elaborate building programs. Those of us who revere Thomas Jefferson as an inspired architect of political freedom, but despair over him as a slaveholder, know what it means to have such conflicting sensibilities about someone we want to remember as wise.

Wisdom also plays a significant, if less conspicuous, role in the New Testament. In the parables of Jesus, it is the wise man who builds his house upon a rock and it is the wise bridesmaids who bring oil for their lamps as they wait for the arrival of the bridegroom. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus describes himself as one “greater than Solomon.” And in First Corinthians, Paul calls Jesus “the wisdom of God” itself.

Yet, for all this, neither the Hebrew Bible nor the New Testament has much to say about what wisdom is. The scriptures tell us we must get it, but tell us very little about how we’ll know it when we’ve got it. Wisdom comes across as a valued, but vague sort of thing.

In the same vein, great thinkers throughout the centuries have struggled in their efforts to define wisdom, and, as a result, have described it in very different terms. The ancient Roman philosopher Cicero described wisdom as the capacity to discriminate between good and evil. The nineteenth century philosopher Immanuel Kant said that “wisdom is organized life.” The twentieth century philosopher Dietrich Bonhoeffer defined wisdom as the ability to “recognize the significant in the factual.” And the idea that “true wisdom manifests itself through our instincts” was expressed by that prominent twenty-first century philosopher Oprah Winfrey. Just about everybody has an opinion about how wisdom should be defined.

But wisdom seems to elude definition. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once famously said: “[P]erhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly [defining hard core pornography], but I know it when I see it.” Maybe the same holds true for wisdom.

All of which brings us to the book of James—a book that scholars have described as falling squarely within the wisdom tradition of the Hebrew Bible. But James’s writing is remarkable because he does not simply praise wisdom—he attempts to give us some sense of what it is, and what it is not. In the process, James tells us several things about wisdom that are surprising, revelatory, and immensely useful in our quest after this precious virtue.

Let’s start here. James tells us that wisdom is not “envious,” “boastful,” or “selfish.” Wisdom, he says, is “peaceable,” “gentle,” “willing to yield,” and “full of mercy.” Now, this is deeply interesting because James chooses words that we do not ordinarily associate with wisdom. The words do, however, have a familiar ring. They bear a striking similarity to Paul’s words in I Corinthians 13: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.” Wisdom, it turns out, looks a lot like love.

This tells us something important about the nature of wisdom. Wisdom must have compassion. Indeed, the idea of "heartless wisdom" is oxymoronic.

And this also tells us something important about the nature of love, at least as our faith defines it. For, just as James describes wisdom by using words we usually associate with love, so Paul describes love by using words we usually associate with wisdom—as you’ll remember, Paul goes on to say that love “rejoices in the truth.” Love is not warm and fuzzy and soft and mushy and cuddly and gelatinous. It has more spine than that. Certainly, love means caring about others. But it means caring about the truth as well.

James also tells us that wisdom does not consist simply of an internal thought process. Wisdom must show itself. It must make itself known through the “good fruits” of our “good lives” and our “good works.” Wisdom acts. It engages with the world. It does not sit on top of a mountain in splendid isolation. It does not wait around for things to change.

Perhaps you’ve heard the joke about the couple who had their first child and were very excited to hear him speak. Unfortunately, the child said absolutely nothing for the first year, or the second year, or the third year, or the fourth year of his life. Then, one day in his fifth year, the boy looked down at his breakfast plate and said “The toast is burned.” His parents rejoiced that he had finally spoken, but asked why he had chosen this as the occasion for his first words. “Well,” he said, “everything’s been pretty good until now.” Wisdom isn’t like that. Wisdom isn't passive.

I think that James tells us something else about wisdom, although he makes this point less directly. In my view, James also tells us that wisdom cannot act, cannot engage with the world, and cannot make a difference without courage. Think about it. James tells us that a life of wisdom is one “without a trace of partiality.” That requires us to put aside our comfortable biases and familiar prejudices. And that requires courage. James tells us that a life of wisdom is one without “hypocrisy.” That requires us to put aside our easy compromises and to embrace a life of integrity. And that requires courage.

Perhaps this explains why the great hymn of Harry Emerson Fosdick prays for God to “grant us wisdom, grant us courage.” Wisdom without courage is pointless intellectual self-absorption. And courage without wisdom is an unguided missile.

In reflecting on this over the past few weeks, a phrase kept running through my mind that I think has some utility here. The phrase, in its original Latin, is “fides quaerens intellectum.” It is St. Anselm’s definition of theology, and it means “faith in search of understanding.” It occurred to me that this may suggest a potential definition of wisdom, a definition completely consistent with what James tells us here. Wisdom, I propose to you, is understanding in search of courage.

So, would you be wise? Well, there are your marching orders: just stop being selfish and ambitious and boastful and false and earthly and unspiritual and partial and hypocritical; and just start being good and peaceable and gentle and merciful and righteous and pure. Does anyone have any questions?

Well, that leads us to James’s final point: wisdom—true wisdom—comes “from above.” It comes from God. We know it exists. We know that because we see it and sometimes we are the beneficiaries of it and occasionally we even have it. And we know we can’t achieve wisdom on our own. We know that because we know a bit about ourselves and about what human nature is like. That much wisdom, if no more, God has already conferred upon us.

So this passage from James can lead us to a better understanding of wisdom and can help us know it when we see it. I’d like to demonstrate this by telling you a story that is somewhat obscure in this context, but makes the point. As many of you know, I teach law school classes and am an enthusiastic student of legal history. So here’s a story from that history for you to consider.

A number of years ago, a suspect was arrested and charged with committing a serious crime. The defendant was tried and convicted without much ado, because there was no question of guilt. There was also no question about what the law required. The crime was a capital offense, so the defendant was sentenced to death and brought before the judge for the imposition of that punishment. The judge prepared to announce the sentence, but before doing so paused for a moment and offered these words to those who had come to observe: “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.”

There you have it. Wisdom. Not boastful or false to the truth. Not earthly or unspiritual. Not envious or selfish or ambitious. Not partial or hypocritical. Just peaceable and gentle and merciful. And pure. And courageous.

Of course, we are a frail and faulty species. So we will spend more time going up the mountain than sitting on top of it. We will spend more of our hours seeking wisdom than finding it. But we can take some consolation from knowing that there is wisdom in the search as well. In this connection, it might help us to remember that there were once three wise men who went on a quest; that they were wise even at the beginning of their journey; and that we therefore do not call them wise because of what they found, but because they had the understanding—and the courage—to go looking for it.

Let us go and do likewise.

Amen.

Blessed Restlessness

Scripture: 3 John 11, 13-14

Inscribed in stone on the south wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. is the text of one of the most famous speeches ever given—Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Over time, the words of this short speech have become ingrained in our national DNA. We know its first sentence: “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” And we know its last ringing phrase: “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Indeed, the speech is so familiar that we often read past a curious statement that appears right in the middle of it. The statement seems out of place in light of what the speech has come to mean to us. And the statement seems marvelously ironic in light of the fact that it is etched into the Indiana limestone of one of the most impressive and recognizable monuments on the planet. The statement is this: “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here.”

This statement was no show of false modesty on Lincoln’s part. In his vast biography of the President, Carl Sandburg says that Lincoln feared the speech would not “come up to public expectation.” And Sandburg reports that, after delivering the address, Lincoln remarked to a friend: “It is a flat failure and the people are disappointed.”

Indeed, many were. A Chicago newspaper suggested that “The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dish watery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.” And a Harrisburg newspaper expressed the hope that “the veil of oblivion [might] be dropped over [the President’s remarks so] that they [would] no longer be repeated or thought of.”

Of course, it didn’t quite work out that way.

Over time, it became clear that Lincoln’s brief, simple, elegant remarks captured something essential about the aspirations of democracy and the nature of self-sacrifice. The speech that everyone thought no one would remember became immortal. And, to compound the irony, the two-hour long oration of Edward Everett, the man actually charged with giving the principal address at Gettysburg that day, has been largely forgotten.

In the second and third letters of John we find a statement even richer in irony than the one that appears in the middle of Lincoln’s famous address. For, in both letters, the author laments the inadequacy of his correspondence and expresses the hope that he will soon have the opportunity to converse with the people to whom he is writing. “I would rather not write with pen and ink,” John declares; I would rather talk with you “face to face.”

It is quite wonderful, really. The author apologizes for the shortcomings of his letters—letters that will find their way into the Holy Bible; letters that will be translated into every known language; letters that will become a part of the best-selling book in the history of the world; letters that will show up in homeless shelters and hospitals, in the mansions of the rich and the tenements of the poor, in obscure rural bus terminals and major urban airports, in spacious hotel rooms and cramped prison cells, in the foxholes of our soldiers, and the foxholes of our allies, and often the foxholes of our declared enemies.

And, while we may smile at John’s statement, we understand it, just as we understand Lincoln’s. For we know what it means to wonder whether we’re making a difference, whether our efforts are changing anything, whether our words are moving people’s hearts, whether anyone hears what we’re trying to say or sees what we’re trying to do or will remember what we have said and done. We know what it means to harbor doubts about whether the good we have done has finally done any good at all.

But there is something inside of us that keeps us at it. There is something in that spirit of ours—which, like the rest of us, is made in the image of the spirit of God—that urges us to keep trying. There is something that moves us to throw our good words and our good works and our good will out into the world despite our doubts. Because it turns out that faith does not just bring us rest. It also brings us restlessness, blessed restlessness, what the great poet George Herbert calls our “repining restlessness.”

Some of you may know a song by the rock group U2 called “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” The title pretty much describes its theme. A while back, I heard an interview with Bono, the lead vocalist of the group, who said that it was a “gospel song.” I knew exactly what he meant. For it is in the nature of faith to look, to seek, to try, to aspire, but also to remain unsatisfied and unsettled, living, as we do, in the unsatisfying and unsettling world as we find it. Our blessed restlessness is the God-given God-driven impulse to refuse to accept conditions as they are and to do the things we can to try to make them better.

Sometimes those will be big things. Sometimes they will be small things. But we persist in doing them because we understand that, at some level, they matter.

The great preacher and author Frederick Buechner seems to delight in stories about small things—often done spontaneously or without fanfare—that end up making a big difference to someone. One day, he says, he was walking along Central Park South in New York City, working his way through the crowds on the busy sidewalk, when a woman going past him said “Jesus loves you.” Buechner reports that she said it in a casual, ordinary voice and kept on walking, but this random gesture had a profound impact him. He writes:

"I [wanted to] catch up with her and say, ‘Yes. If I believe anything worth believing in this whole world, I believe that. He loves me. He loves you. He loves the whole doomed, damned pack of us.’ For the rest of the way I was going, the streets I walked on were paved with gold. Nothing was different. Everything was different … For a moment it was not the world as it is that I saw but the world as it might be, as something deep within the world want to be and is preparing to be, the way in darkness a seed prepares for growth, the way leaven works in bread." (Buechner, The Kingdom of God)

But my favorite of Buechner’s stories concerns one Lyman Woodward, a man about whom you probably know nothing, and about whom Buechner knows only one thing. In 1831, a steeple was added to the New England church where Buechner often preached. The written history of that church reports that, when the construction was finished, “one agile Lyman Woodward stood on his head in the belfry with his feet toward heaven.” Buechner writes:

"That’s the one and only thing I’ve been able to find out about Lyman Woodward, whoever he was, but it is enough. I love him for doing what he did. It was a crazy thing to do. It was a risky thing to do. It ran counter to all standards of New England practicality and prudence. It stood the whole idea that you’re supposed to be nothing but solemn in church on its head just like Lyman himself standing upside down on his. And it was also a magical and magnificent and Mozartian thing to do." (Buechner, The Clown in the Belfry)

So even this ridiculous off-hand stunt ended up making a difference. It found its way into the history of a church. More than a century-and-a-half later, it found its way into a sermon and then it found its way into a book. And, now, it has found its way to you.

I suspect we all have stories like this—stories about little things that people did out of restlessness or impulse but that made a real difference to us. I have an abundance of them. I’ll share a recent one.

There is a family in our community who, within the past few months, suffered a terrible tragedy. I don’t know the family, but about a week ago I happened to be driving past their house. As I did, I glanced over and noticed that someone—maybe a family member, maybe a friend or neighbor—had hung a basket of flowers on the front porch of their home.

Now, on any other day, this might not have had an impact on me. But on that particular day it seized my attention and left me absolutely amazed. Just think about it. Here is this little family, living in a home that must still be haunted by a dark and unrelenting and inexpressible grief. And yet, and yet on every single day someone goes out onto that porch, walks into the light, cares for the flowers, and throws a clear high note of grace and hope and joy out into the universe.

In a way, the basket embarrassed me. It shamed me to think of the weak and self-indulgent ways I wallow in my own struggles—struggles that seem so trivial compared to what that family has endured. Indeed, the basket even seemed to embarrass the world itself, to call it to task for its meanness of spirit, to shame the petty, profane, bickering, banal culture that surrounds us.

But, much more than this, that messy little scramble of flowers woke me up. It shook me up. It elevated me. It blessed me. And, stranger still, I am sure that, in this, I am not alone.

Oh, all the directions our blessed restlessness can take us. It can call us to give a speech, to write a letter, to remind someone that Jesus loves them, to stand on our heads in celebration, or to hang a bright bundle of flowers on a tired old porch. We do these things, not knowing if anyone will hear what we say, or will read what we write, or will believe what we declare, or will share in our displays of joy, or will be moved to smile by the small splashes of color that we toss out onto the world.

We do these things because God made us to do them, and because when we honor that principle life is good and full, and because when we dishonor that principle life is sad and empty, and because in the end it really isn’t any more complicated than that.

We do these things to sustain us until we can see the ones we love—and, finally, the One who loves us—“face to face.”

We do these things without keeping count or expecting repayment.

We do these things understanding, at some basic level, that there is holiness in our unsettledness, that there is blessedness in our restlessness, and that there is gospel in our struggle to find what we are looking for.

We do these things without waiting for the blessings that follow because, deep down, we know that in the doing of them we are already blessed.

So has it always been.

So will it always be.

And the people said: Amen.

The Uncertainty Principle

Scripture: Hebrews 4:12-13

In February of 1927, a German physicist by the name of Werner Heisenberg made a discovery that had profound and far-reaching implications for scientists. Heisenberg was interested in the measurement of subatomic particles, like electrons. But Heisenberg realized that when he tried to measure the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time the results were always imprecise.

It was this imprecision that prompted Heisenberg’s startling and revolutionary conclusion. You see, Heisenberg came to believe that this imprecision wasn’t the result of some human limitation or mistake. Rather, it was simply in the nature of things. Or, to put it differently, Werner Heisenberg theorized that one of the characteristics of the universe—at its most basic and elemental level—is uncertainty.

This idea—known as “Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle”—shocked the scientific world and gave rise to furious debate among the leading theoretical physicists of the day. From our perspective, this may seem like a great deal of unnecessary fuss. After all, if you want to know whether there is a fundamental uncertainty to things you do not need to ask Werner Heisenberg or Albert Einstein. You can ask a philosopher. You can ask a theologian.

Or you can go to an even better source. You can ask a retired assembly line worker who is worried about losing his pension and his medical insurance. You can ask a fifty-year-old automotive engineer who finds himself unemployed for the first time in his life. You can ask a doctor who has to give hard news to one of her patients. You can ask anyone who has a friend or family member serving in Iraq. You can ask someone who has fallen out of love or who does not seem to be able to fall into love. You can ask someone who’s trying to decide whether to begin chemotherapy, take a failing parent off life support, or lend financial aid to a struggling son or daughter who may spend the money on drugs or alcohol.

You could have asked my father. He grew up in poverty during the Great Depression, dropped out of high school to help support his family, watched both of his parents die while he was still a young man, served in the Second World War and was shot at on two different continents, built a successful business that crashed, spent some time in prison, moved to Detroit the year of the riots, and suffered from ill health his entire life. I don’t think my father ever knew anything but uncertainty.

Yes, if you want to know whether there is a fundamental uncertainty to things, all you need to do is ask an expert. That probably includes just about everyone you know. It probably includes you, too.

And the uncertainty principle I’m describing has a deeply troubling dimension to it. For it is when we most need certainty that we may have the most trouble finding it. It is when we face life’s toughest questions that we may come to wonder whether we can find any answers, or, for that matter, whether any answers exist. And yet we have to live with this uncertainty and conflict and contradiction, because that is where life happens. The writer and naturalist Barry Lopez, in his book Arctic Dreams, puts it this way: “One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. [So] you continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”

The biblical text before us is a letter written to a group that must have been plagued by conflict and contradiction and uncertainty, perhaps as no group has been before or since: the Hebrews of the mid- to late first century of the common era. Imagine their circumstances. They were members of the Jewish faith and followers of Jewish traditions. In all likelihood, their family, their community, their occupation, their very day-to-day existence was intertwined with that identity. But they had come to believe in the divinity of one of their own, a Jew, a man they had never met, a revolutionary who had divided the religious and political authorities of his time, an itinerant miracle worker about whom they had heard fantastical stories and who was said to have risen from the dead.

And who was guiding them in this new faith? Well, it was a motley crew: a ragtag collection of disciples; a former persecutor of Christians who wrote lots of nagging letters and who now called himself Paul; and countless others who claimed to speak with authority—and how was one to know whether they did or did not? How could you tell who to follow or what to do? Indeed, those early Jewish Christians might have sympathized with an observation made by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who once said—probably only half in jest—that “Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”

What the writer of this letter offers to those uncertain people living in those uncertain times is this: God watches you and knows who you are. God sees the thoughts of your mind and the intentions of your heart. God understands you as if you were naked and laid bare before Him and stripped of all pretense and deception. God comprehends your very soul.
Of course, this is not the only time we encounter this message in the scriptures. We run across it periodically and it often comes to us as a kind of warning. God sees everything and judges what He sees. God watches what you do and so you better watch what you do as well.

Now, let us be honest with each other. This message makes us nervous. It intimidates us, maybe even frightens us, perhaps more than a little. And if you have any question about that, try living just one day in a state of constant minute-by-minute awareness of the fact that God is monitoring your past and present and future, observing your every action, and listening to your every thought. It is not an exercise for the faint of heart.

Therefore, most of us, maybe all of us, do not live this way. And we can understand why: this is strong medicine, and so we take it sparingly, and after a while we stop taking it at all. So we conveniently forget that God knows everything we think and do. And, in its own way, this seductive forgetfulness makes life easier and less demanding. But when we cease remembering this basic truth about God’s relationship with us we deprive ourselves of a source of certainty that may help us in some of our uncertain times.

Let me offer an example. In the early nineteen seventies, a study was conducted using Princeton Theological Seminary students as guinea pigs. The seminary students were gathered into a classroom for a discussion period and then dismissed. As the students left the classroom they came across an individual slumped in a doorway and clearly suffering some form of distress. You will not be surprised to learn that the vast majority of those seminary students stopped to see if the individual needed help.

You may, however, be surprised to learn that the students were much less likely to stop if they were told at the end of the discussion period that they were late for an appointment. Under those circumstances, most students bustled past the suffering stranger as if he or she wasn’t there. And, ironically, the seminary students chose to keep their appointment, rather than help the individual, even when their classroom discussion had focused on the story of the Good Samaritan.

Now, we should be fair to those seminary students. Many of them probably just responded to the pressure of the moment without giving the matter any thought. And those who did consider stopping—but didn’t—might have believed that they were making an appropriate choice in morally uncertain circumstances. “Well,” they might have said to themselves, “I have a responsibility to help others but I also have a responsibility to follow the instructions that were just given to me. Lots of people can take care of this stranger. But I’m the only person who can keep my appointment.” We should be fair to those seminary students, if for no other reason than that most of us can see our own decision-making in theirs. Again, let us be honest with each other and admit that we, too, have made thoughtless or self-interested decisions like this and have tried to justify our choices by claiming that we were presented with a complicated and uncertain situation and did the best we could.

On some occasions, such justifications will be true and fair. We will have confronted a situation of genuine moral uncertainty. And we will have made the best judgments we knew how to make, trying our hardest to “lean into the light” as we went along.

But I wonder whether that is the case with the seminary students. I wonder whether the situation they faced really involved any moral uncertainty at all. I wonder whether those students would have walked past the stranger in distress if they had simply remembered that they were making that choice in the sight and in the presence of the living God. I wonder if there are times in our lives when remembering that simple article of faith might help us find some certainty where the temptations of uncertainty have clouded our vision.

Still, there is another—and, in my view, vastly more important—dimension to the idea that God is with us and watching us. It has nothing to do with judgment or correction. It has everything to do with peace and consolation. And it is this: watchfulness is an essential characteristic of love. We know this to be true. We know that this explains why every year millions of parents gather to watch their children play baseball, play soccer, play football, play in the band, play in the orchestra, or even play in the backyard. How will you know if I love you? Check to see if I’m watching.

We are made in God’s image, and so it is with God. God is not the ultimate surveillance program. God does not watch us because He hopes to catch us breaking the rules. God watches us because that is how God finds opportunities to offer us forgiveness and redemption and hope and grace. It is in the knowledge that this is so, and in those opportunities—which arise mysteriously and unexpectedly and in the most improbable ways—that we may find something like certainty even in the midst of the radical uncertainty that surrounds us.

And it is in the nature of forgiveness and redemption and hope and grace that those opportunities will come to all of us, no matter who we are or where we’ve been. My favorite contemporary bluegrass musician, a guy named Bill Bynum (who hails from—of all places—Trenton, Michigan) has a song with a wonderful refrain: “Every sinner has a future; and every saint has a past.” God knows this, because, as the Letter to the Hebrews says, “all are naked and laid bare to the eyes” of God. So God watches us; and knows us; and loves us; and comes to us. And that certainty can carry us through times when no other certainty can be found, because it is certainty enough to keep us going.

In an August evening of 1997, musician Neil Peart learned that his nineteen-year-old daughter, who had left that morning for college, had been killed in an automobile accident. Within ten months, his wife of twenty-two years had been diagnosed with cancer and had died of it. These tragedies, one hard upon the other, left Peart empty and desolate, a ghost of his former self. A year later, restless in his despair, Peart set off on a fourteen-month 55,000 mile journey on his motorcycle, searching for a reason to live.

The uncertainty principle, in its most callous and brutal form, had taken control of Neil Peart’s life. Indeed, just before he set out, Peart wrote to one of his friends, “I don’t know who I am, what I’m doing, or what I’m supposed to do.” Shortly after setting off, someone recognized him and asked if he used to be a musician. Peart responded, “I used to be a lot of things.”
Still, Peart pushed on. He “leaned into the light.” And after a while he could say “I did not really believe in a destination called ‘healing,’ but at least I had begun to believe in the road.”
Sometimes that’s all the certainty we can find: the certainty of the road and the search. And then, along the way, we discover the certainty that someone is watching us; that someone is with us; that someone loves us; that someone has come along for the ride; that someone is trying to help us see the signs and the hazards; that we are not going it alone.

And so, sitting in a Nazi military prison in April of 1943, alone but not alone, in the midst of the most uncertain circumstances imaginable, Dietrich Bonhoeffer could write these words: “It is certain that we may always live close to God and in the light of God’s presence, and that such living is an entirely new life for us; [it is certain] that nothing is then impossible for us, because all things are possible with God; [it is certain] that danger and distress can only drive us closer to God. It is certain that we can claim nothing for ourselves, and may yet pray for everything; it is certain that our joy is hidden in suffering, and our life in death; [and] it is certain that in all this we are in a [relationship with God] that sustains us.”

So what of our old friend Werner Heisenberg? Well, in my view he got it partly right. Sure, the uncertainty principle is fundamental. But it is not foundational. And it is not final. Because it turns out that the universe has another characteristic as well: it is under the watchful eye of the One who made it. And so, praise the Lord, are you.

Amen.

Graceland

Scripture: Colossians 2:13-14

I do not believe in ghosts. But, if I did, I would also believe that Memphis, Tennessee has more than its share of them.

That thought crossed my mind recently as I stood in a hallway of the Lorraine Motel, which now houses the city’s Civil Rights Museum, and looked through a large plate glass window into room 306.

As you may recall, room 306 is where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rested briefly, took some coffee, met with fellow civil rights leaders, and joked with friends before stepping out onto the balcony where he was assassinated. That balcony marks the place where one of God’s beloved prophets and poets was martyred. In my view, that balcony is holy ground.

But it was room 306 itself that really captured my attention—indeed, almost hypnotized me. It is a dingy, tired, cramped little space that has been preserved just as Dr. King left it when he stepped onto the balcony. The sheets on the bed are rumpled. Cups are scattered around in disarray. It looks indescribably ordinary.

An exhibit I had passed earlier in the museum left me with the same impression. That exhibit described the story behind Dr. King’s famous letter from Birmingham jail—one of the most significant documents in the history of the civil rights movement. You know some of the lines from the letter: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.” “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” It is a document of signal importance.

Part of the exhibit features a glass case that contains the satchel that one of Dr. King’s lawyers used to carry the letter out of the jail. It is a humble, beaten up old briefcase—another indescribably ordinary thing. One can hardly imagine that this scarred leather bag served as a vehicle to carry words of inspiration to millions of people and multiple generations.

We know that God often chooses to speak to us through indescribably ordinary things. Indeed, at certain times of the year we make it a point to remember that He does so. At Christmas we talk about a stable that was even more dingy, tired, and cramped than room 306. On Palm Sunday we talk about a donkey that was even more humble and beaten up than that scarred leather briefcase.

We might think of the cross in these terms as well. It is a sparse geometric figure, the joining of single horizontal and vertical lines. It can be drawn with two strokes of a pen. It can be signaled with the simple gesture of a hand. It can be made out of two sticks and a tack. In a sense, there is nothing more ordinary than a cross.

Of course, we know that on a dark afternoon two thousand years ago this ordinary thing became the vehicle for an extraordinary message. And we know that this ordinary place became the focal point of extraordinary events. So, understandably and rightly, we glorify the cross.

But when we do so we risk losing sight of just how ordinary, basic, and simple a thing it is. And, more importantly, we risk forgetting that, in the time of Jesus, the cross was a political weapon, a method of state-endorsed terrorism, a means of inflicting unspeakable torture. We risk missing the fact that in its time the cross was a feared and cursed and wretched thing.

And yet—and yet—through His use, God transformed it. God transformed the cross—even the cross. God took this symbol of misery and despair and contempt, this “emblem of suffering and shame,” and turned it into a symbol of eternal life and enduring love, an emblem of audacious hope and amazing grace. How could we believe—how could we believe—that God can so fundamentally transform even the cross itself and yet cannot fundamentally transform us?

Indeed, in this passage in his letter to the Colossians, Paul assures us that God has already begun the work of that transformation. We come to God weak and uncertain and confused and hesitant and jealous and angry—in short, we come to God as human beings, and therefore come to God as human beings have always come, as those undeserving of the love of the one who made us. But God casts all of that aside.

God takes the ledger sheet—the list of foibles and failures and frustrations that we accumulate as we stumble through this mystery called life—and nails it to the cross …. nails it to the cross. God nails it to the cross, and in doing so makes our burdens His. Is there any greater act of love and grace imaginable? Is there any better Good News than this?

Now, there is a subtle difference here between what Paul is saying and what we often hear said. Perhaps you’ve been at a worship service where someone urged you to write your burdens on a piece of paper and throw it at the foot of a cross. Or perhaps you’ve had a well-intentioned friend encourage you to take a burden and “give it to God.”

These sorts of expressions of faith are all well and good, but they may not help us much. We may feel as though we no longer have the strength to carry our burdens, even to the foot of the cross. Or we may hear the kind advice to “give it to God” and think to ourselves “well, I’ve been trying to give this thing away for some time now, but without much luck!”

Paul is saying something different. He is saying that you do not need to carry these burdens to God or give them to God. God has already taken them. God has taken them, and has “nailed them to the cross.”

* * *

Well, I mentioned that I was recently in Memphis, Tennessee, but I didn’t tell you why. Lisa and I were there because Lisa’s mother is a passionate fan of the late Elvis Presley. So, for Christmas, Lisa invited her mother and father to join us for a trip to Elvis’s famous mansion, Graceland.

Now, I have a confession: I’m not all that big an Elvis fan—my father held the view that music went downhill after Bach. But I love my mother-in-law and this is the sort of pilgrimage you make out of love. So off we went.

But, before I talk about the trip, I have one more confession. A few weeks before I was going to preach this sermon I told our senior pastor that my sermon would be called "Graceland." I also told her I had no idea what the sermon would actually be about. I just felt certain that if I was going to a place called Graceland I would have an experience that, as the saying goes, “would preach.” And I think I did.

We drove just south of downtown Memphis and met the tour bus at the building near the parking lot, which houses fourteen different gift shops to meet all your Elvis needs. The bus took us across the street to the mansion, where we fell into a group that got into line with all the other groups. And there we were: the four of us, and every other flavor of humanity that God ever put on this earth. I thought of the Paul Simon song called “Graceland,” where he summarized the diversity of the visitors with the succinct phrase “poor boys and Pilgrims with families.”

Well, there were poor boys and Pilgrims with families. And there were also the young and the old, the fancy and the slovenly, the educated and the unschooled, the gay and the straight, the tattooed and the clean-cut, the hares and the tortoises, the uninitiated and the veterans, the Southerners and the Northerners and the Easterners and the Westerners, the deeply devoted and the mildly curious, the English speakers and the Spanish speakers and the Japanese speakers, the ones who would pause in the Jungle Room to laugh over the shag carpeting on the ceiling, and the ones who would pause at the gravesite to cry over the death of someone who had meant something special to them.

I watched all these people—every one unique, every one with their own hopes and dreams and burdens and problems—work their way through the twists and turns of the various buildings until they found themselves on a winding outdoor path. And I watched as they followed that path until they arrived in the meditation garden, literally at the foot of a tall stone cross. And I thought of the Paul Simon song again. And I remembered these lyrics: “I have reason to believe we all will be received at Graceland.”

I do not know what is on your list. I do not know whether it is a list of things done or undone, words said or unsaid, pain that you have suffered or pain that you have caused, dreams that have been denied or dreams that have been deferred or dreams that have died.

But I know that each of us has such a list, a list of our burdens, a list that is uniquely our own.

And I know this: that no one’s list is greater than God’s power to transform the person who writes it; that God has already taken that list from you; that God has nailed it to the cross; and that God waits to meet you there.

Amen.

Children of the Promise

Scripture: Galatians 4-5

If you want to learn how to think like a theologian then you must study the sayings of the greatest abstract thinker of our time. I refer, of course, to Hall of Fame baseball catcher Yogi Berra.

Yogi’s thought is not limited by the laws of time and space. So he observed that “The future ain’t what it used to be” and advised “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Nor is his thought constrained by the principles of mathematics. So he noted that “90% of [baseball] is half mental” and once instructed his teammates to “Pair up in threes.”

Occasionally, the concept of human mortality appears to place some parameters around his thinking. This explains his statement: “Steve McQueen looks good in this movie. He must have made it before he died.” But, in general, even death itself poses no serious challenge to Yogi’s reasoning. Hence, this suggestion: “Always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise, they won’t go to yours.”

Yogi understands a great deal about journeys of faith. Perhaps your own is described by Yogi’s trenchant comment “We’re lost, but we’re making good time.” In any event, it is absolutely clear that Yogi has the soul of a theologian. After all, it was Yogi Berra who once answered a reporter’s inquiry by saying “I wish I had an answer to that, because I’m tired of answering that question.” I’m confident that every theologian has, at one time or other, entertained just that thought.

In reading Paul’s letters, I have been struck by how often he had to answer one particular question. He had to answer it over and over again, and I wonder if he ever wearied of doing so. The question comes in different forms. But, at bottom, it always asks the same thing: “Who’s in and who’s out?”

Paul takes on this question again in the fourth chapter of his letter to the Galatians. Paul had personally founded the Galatian church, which was overwhelmingly made up of converts from Celtic paganism. It appears that, after Paul’s departure, some missionaries suggested to the Galatians that their conversion was incomplete and inauthentic because they had not accepted circumcision and other requirements of Jewish law.

This worried the Galatians, who apparently wondered whether their conversion had somehow missed the mark. From our perspective, this might seem rather amusing. We may grant that faith is not a matter of credentials while also acknowledging that conversion under the direction of the apostle Paul is a pretty good credential indeed. In any event, Paul wrote to address their concerns.

Now, there are many striking things about Paul’s answer. For example, in the course of responding Paul alludes to the parallel Hebrew Bible stories of Isaac and Ishmael and says “Now, this is an allegory.” It is a remarkable statement, really. Think about it: here we have Paul interpreting a Bible story and arguing for an allegorical and poetic—rather than a literal—understanding of what it means.

But, in my view the most arresting aspect of Paul’s answer lies in his description of our relationship with God. Paul points to two qualities of that relationship: he talks about its continuity; and he characterizes the relationship as an adoption. There is a lot going on here, so I want to look at these two themes separately. And then I want to talk about how those two themes, particularly when joined together, can comfort, inspire, and challenge us.

Let’s start here: the continuity Paul describes follows necessarily from God’s unchanging nature. Our God, Paul suggests, is a God of Promises—and has shown himself to be so since at least the time of Abraham. In the fourth chapter, Paul describes a foundational promise of freedom that God bestowed upon Abraham and Sarah and their son, Isaac. Paul declares that we, too, are promised and called to a life of freedom. He says: “You, my friends, are children of the promise, like Isaac.”

Of course, this has implications in both directions. Granted, ours is a God of Promises. But ours is a God who expects us to be a People of Promises as well.

So Paul warns that we must not take the freedom God promises us as an opportunity for self-indulgence. Rather, he urges, we must use that freedom to pledge ourselves to God, to the love of our fellow human beings, and to a life of service. If we accept God’s promises, without making any promises in return, we fall into the trap that Dietrich Bonhoeffer brilliantly describes as “cheap grace”—the grace we bestow upon ourselves and that costs us nothing.

It matters greatly to Paul that God has consistently exhibited this quality—that our God is and always has been a God of Promises. It should matter to us, too. It should matter because believing in a God who fundamentally changes—or, more specifically, believing that one kind of God ruled the Hebrew people and another kind of God rules Christians—can lead us into all sorts of problems.

Still, we can and do fall into this sort of thinking. So, perhaps you’ve heard someone say something like this: “The God of the Old Testament is a God of justice, judgment, and anger; but the God of the New Testament is a God of forgiveness, mercy, and love.” Maybe you’ve even said it yourself. Now, reasonable people can disagree about many matters of faith and biblical interpretation. But I’d like to suggest to you that such statements are much more wrong than right—and may even be dangerously wrong.

First, such statements deny a continuity of faith that Jesus himself acknowledged and embraced. Jesus was an observant Jew who taught in the Temple while still a youth, honored Passover, and quoted from the Hebrew Bible. He declared that he had come not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

Jesus teaches us many things about new ways to understand what God wants from us and to think about our relationship with God. And for us Jesus's death and resurrection are defining moments in our relationship with God. But Jesus certainly never declares that God fundamentally changed, that the Hebrew Bible became irrelevant, and that the God who loves justice and who passes judgment became defunct and disappeared and so now we can all breathe a little easier.

Second, such statements deny the reality of the texts. Granted, if you go looking for justice, judgment, and anger in the Old Testament and for forgiveness, grace, and love in the New Testament you’ll certainly find them. But it isn’t that simple.

In fact, the Hebrew Bible includes numerous passages in which God exhibits forgiveness, mercy, and love. Consider how God loved David, despite his conspicuous foibles. Consider how God forgave and embraced Jacob, the troublemaker who misled his father and tricked his brother out of his birthright. Consider how the Psalmist described the God he worshipped just as we describe the God we worship: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

By the same token, the New Testament includes numerous passages in which divine justice, judgment, and anger are put on full display. Jesus turns over the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple, and we cannot believe he does so in a warm and fuzzy way. He shows anger toward the Pharisees who refuse to answer his questions. He repeatedly refers to a time of judgment. Indeed, some theologians, like Albert Schweitzer, have maintained that this idea of divine and final judgment had a central place in Jesus’ preaching.

Now, why does all this matter? Well, it matters because harboring illusions about the Hebrew Bible encourages us to harbor illusions about the Jewish faith and our Jewish brothers and sisters. Throughout history, such illusions have fed one of the greatest evils to bedevil our planet, the evil of anti-Semitism.

And this also matters because harboring illusions about our own scriptures can leave us with a God who does not qualify for the name. To use Richard Niebuhr’s sardonic, and sometimes misused, description, it can leave us with “a God without wrath [who] brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” We may, even if unconsciously, cling to such an image because we find it comforting. But let me ask you this: is there anything less comforting—and more frightening—than the idea of a God who is one thing one day and something fundamentally different the next? How could we place our love and trust in such a God?

Still, Paul recognizes that, while God does not change, our relationship with God can. And he describes those who come into a new relationship with God as God’s “adoptive” children. This idea of “adoption” has prompted a great deal of debate and deserves some exploring.

It turns out that we actually know very little about “adoption” in the ancient Near East. We know that the Mosaic Law did not address it. But we also know that it was fairly common. We know that the Hebrew Bible includes some instances of adoption—Moses was adopted by Pharoah’s daughter and Esther was adopted by her cousin Mordecai. But we also know that such scriptural references are rare and fleeting. Neither the text nor the history of the scriptures gives us much help in understanding why Paul would have used this word.

So we are left to speculate—and we have, for dozens of centuries. Indeed, this question has occupied some of the greatest theologians in history. Thus, St. Augustine argued that “Paul says ‘adoption’ so that we may clearly understand that the Son of God is unique. For we are [children] of God through [God’s] generosity and the condescension of [God’s] mercy, whereas [Jesus] is Son by nature, sharing the same divinity with his father.”

Augustine expresses his point with characteristic clarity and power. But maybe Paul uses the word “adoption” for other reasons as well. Maybe he uses it because it is dense with meaning and suggestion. Maybe he uses it because, in that single word, he could capture a multitude of ideas. Maybe he uses it because this is Paul at his poetic, allegorical best.

So consider these possibilities. We are “adopted” because God has a defining, active role in the relationship. God takes us in. Indeed, God takes us in even if no one else will. Thus, Psalm 27 says “If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.”

We are “adopted” because we can come into a new relationship with God from anywhere, from any place, and from any past. As the first chapter of the Gospel of John suggests, we all have the opportunity to become the children of God.

And we are “adopted” because we are invited into a fundamentally different kind of relationship with God. It is not simply a relationship of obedience. It is a relationship of trust and love.
It is, as Paul perfectly expresses it, a relationship in which we can call the most awesome power in the universe “Abba,” “papa,” “beloved parent.”

Of course, like all allegories and metaphors this one is imperfect. For example, it does not account for the fact that God made all of us and so we are all the created children of God. But we know that allegories and metaphors work in this rough sort of way. When Bob Dylan sings that someone is "like a rolling stone" we appreciate that there are actually more ways in which they're not like a tumbing rock than ways in which they are. Still, the image of "adoption" is a powerful and useful one.

Jesus calls us to make, and honor, these same promises to all our brothers and sisters. This can challenge us and frustrate us and exhaust us. But it can also motivate us and inspire us. And, finally, it can save us.

So we keep at it. We try to make the promises and to keep them. We try to do what we say we will do. We labor long and hard to tend to the family. And in this work we do not, we must not, we cannot rest. For, to paraphrase the words of Robert Frost, we have promises to keep, and miles to go before we sleep, and miles to go before we sleep.

Amen.