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.