The Last Word

 

The Last Word

 

Children’s Message, Sermon, Pastoral Prayer, and

Benediction

 

Suttons Bay Congregational Church

 

December 6, 2020

 

Children’s Message

 

            Parents are different in lots of ways, but there are some things that many of them have in common. One of those things is that most parents like to say something to their children just before their children leave to go someplace else.

            For example, when their children go to bed, parents say things like “sweet dreams” or “go to bed you sleepy head.” My father always said “goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.” That may not have been the best message to help a child relax and doze off. How could I sleep and fight off bedbugs at the same time?

            Or when children go to visit a friend or relative, parents say things like “be good” or “mind your manners” or “don’t let your grandparents spoil you.” That last one usually doesn’t work.

            And parents don’t stop saying these sorts of things even when their children grow up. When their grownup children leave to go back to their own houses, parents say things like “stay in touch” or “let us know if you need anything” or “don’t forget to call.” Or “don’t forget to call.” Or “don’t forget to call.”

            Now, parents do all these things because there’s something they want their children to know. You see, all these words basically say the same thing. They say:  no matter where you go next, no matter where you are, I’m thinking about you.

And that’s true whether you’re going to bed, or going to school, or going to visit, or going to raise a family of your own.

            Now, what I want you to notice is that your church family does this, too.

At the end of every service, we say something called a benediction—a fancy word for a blessing—over everyone, including you. It is the church’s way of saying that no matter where you go next, no matter where you are, we are thinking about you. And so is God, who is your parent, too.

            I have a favorite Bible verse about this, and it comes from the first chapter of the book of Joshua. Will you say it along with me as a kind of prayer? I’ll say each sentence and then you can repeat it.

So say this with me: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. For the Lord God will be with you wherever you go.”

            Amen.

Sermon

Scripture: James 5

 

Let me tell you a story.

As most of you know, I have been practicing law and teaching at a law school for a very, very long time. My first argument in the Michigan Court of Appeals, which took place about 250 years ago, played out in a strange and memorable way. The lawyer for the opposing party had not filed his brief within the deadline set by the court rules. As a result, he lost his right to oral argument and I would be the only lawyer participating.

            When you check in at the Court of Appeals on the day of your argument, the clerk gives you a form that asks how long you plan to speak. The rules give each side up to half an  hour. Because I was inexperienced, and didn’t know what else to do, I wrote down “30 minutes.”

            When my case was called, the presiding judge on the three-judge panel looked at the form and raised an eyebrow. He said: “Uh, Mr. Niehoff, you’ve indicated that you’ll need the full half hour to argue your case today. Is that right?” I said that yes, I would. He continued: “And you’re aware that the opposing counsel did not file his brief on time, so we won’t be hearing any argument from him?” I said that yes, I was. He went on: “And you know that you won in the trial court, so all we have to do is affirm the ruling below?” I said that yes, I did. He concluded: “But you’re still sure that you’ll need the whole thirty minutes to argue?” I said that yes, I was.

            At this point, the presiding judge put his hand over the microphone on the bench, turned to the judge to his right, and said in the loudest stage whisper I’ve ever heard: “I think we should affirm, what do you think?” That judge responded: “Affirm.” Then he turned to the judge to his left and repeated the question. That judge, too, responded, “Affirm.” By virtue of this little exercise, I knew that, without saying a single word, I was going to win the appeal by a vote of 3-0.

            The presiding judge took his hand off the microphone, smiled at me, and said: “Well, Mr. Niehoff, you can go ahead and argue if you like, but in all candor it may not improve your chances.” I didn’t have much experience but I did have a modestly operational brain. So I smiled back at him and said: “In conclusion, I thank the court for its time this morning.” To this day, it was the most effective closing argument I’ve ever made.

*

            We all understand the importance of the words that we say last. For example, we traditionally say something kind, encouraging, or affectionate when we part company with someone—such as “see you soon” or “take care” or (these days especially) “stay safe and well.” Indeed, if someone parts from us by simply walking away or hanging up or disconnecting it feels abrupt and jarring—and communicates its own kind of message.

The words we say last can make a significant difference in what happens next. A minister friend of mine always gave his adolescent children the same parting instruction when they left the house. He simply said: “Remember who you are.” He wanted that phrase ringing in their memory when they met with the pressures and temptations they would inevitably confront and would have to navigate.

Over the years, I’ve gone back to that idea many times. Indeed, if you wanted a single phrase to return to again and again for strength and direction, it might be hard to come up with a simpler and more powerful one than “remember who you are.” Unless, perhaps, it is “remember whose you are.”

            Countless stories have come down to us of the last words spoken by famous people shortly before they passed from this world to the next. If that person had a keen wit, the anecdote may even be funny. For example, just before he died Bob Hope’s wife asked him where he wanted to be buried. He replied: “Surprise me.” And Oscar Wilde, physically failing in a shabby room in a Paris hotel, reportedly declared: “That wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do.”

            But the last things that someone says can be profound and rich in meaning. Every Good Friday, we pause to consider what we by tradition call “the seven last words of Christ” on the cross. Of course, there were actually more than seven of them. And they were not his last words at all, because Jesus spoke also as the risen Christ.

The gospels give us slightly different versions of both sets of those last words—the ones spoken on the cross and the ones spoken as our risen Lord. But I am particularly fond of the words of Jesus that make up the last verse of the Gospel of Matthew: “And remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Those words must have given great comfort to his disciples and they should give great comfort to us. After all, if He is with us still, then He speaks to us still.

            The fifth and final chapter of James, to which we turn today as we complete our study of this important book, has been described by scholars as a collection of “closing exhortations.” James here offers a set of parting shots—phrases that he wants ringing in the memories of those early Christians to whom he was writing as they confronted and tried to navigate the pressures and temptations of their world. They are his own version of my friend’s direction to his children: “Remember who you are.”

            This morning, I invite you to notice two things about this final chapter of James that seem to me particularly important. The first concerns its structure. The second concerns the last words that James speaks to us.

Let’s begin with an observation about structure. On a close reading, it seems clear that James does not just direct his comments to one audience. Rather, he has three different audiences in his sights.

            He begins by addressing those who have placed their faith not in God but in material things. He calls them out for living in luxury and pleasure while others suffer. He charges that they have become rich through fraud and through the abuse of laborers.

And he does not mince his words. Recall how the fifth chapter begins: “Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you.” Well, that’s an attention grabber, isn’t it?

            But his tone changes dramatically when he then shifts to address a second audience: those who are struggling and suffering. He tells them to be patient, to be kind to one another, to show endurance, and to strengthen their hearts. He assures them that the Lord is compassionate, merciful, and, most importantly, present in their lives.

            James then turns to his third audience. He addresses everyone together. And he underscores that the way toward redemption lies in love expressed not just individually but in community. He says:

            “Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, so that you may be healed.”

            Now, all this talk of “sin” may fail to resonate with our twenty-first century sensibilities. It may sound old-fashioned, harsh, and “judgy.” For our tastes, it may have too much of the sulfuric scent of fire and brimstone about it.

            And figuring out exactly what counts as a sin may confound us. Years ago, the New Yorker ran a Charles Barsotti cartoon on this theme. It depicts a  smiling St. Peter saying to a man being interviewed at the gates of heaven: “No, no, that’s not a sin, either. My goodness, you must have worried yourself to death!” As you might imagine, the man looks very relieved; I myself find it a very consoling idea.  

Talk of sin may make us think of those specific lists of prohibitions that we find in many of the letters of Paul: “Don’t do this, or this, or this. And certainly don’t do that.” In this sense, the concept of sin takes on a kind of regulatory quality, a detailed code of conduct that requires our obedient compliance.

This view of sin reminds me of another New Yorker cartoon where a man with less good fortune is standing in front of the devil at the gates to the infernal pit and saying: “Why wasn’t a list of these sins made available to me and why wasn’t I allowed to have it examined by my own expert.” Alas, I doubt that it works that way.

            Now, I do not want to argue against the concept of sin as a set of particularized prohibitions. That sort of specificity may prove useful to those who seek very direct guidance with respect to discrete issues and behaviors. And, as another minister friend of mine was fond of observing, the Bible is a holy book of sacred commands, not a self-help guide of friendly suggestions.

            But it also holds true that scouring the Bible for detailed instructions can lead us astray. The theologian Robert McAfee Brown liked to tell the story of the man who believed that the Bible would tell you precisely what to do if you simply opened it and randomly pointed toward a verse. One day the man flipped open the scriptures, stuck his finger on a page, and read to his disappointment the phrase: “Judas went out and hanged himself.” Appalled, the man gave it another try. This time, he hit on: “Go and do likewise.”

            Also, this concept of sin as a list of specific prohibitions has its limitations. It can distract us from the big picture and lead us into disputes over details. I have often been struck by how many times in his letters Paul has to include the kind of instruction we find in the second chapter of second Timothy: “Have nothing to do with stupid and senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels.”

            And I don’t think that in this passage James has those sorts of specific prohibitions in mind when he refers to sin. Remember that he is talking here about what heals a community. I don’t believe that he envisions that happening by people getting together and saying “I was an idolator” or “I was licentious” or “I was a drunken carouser”—you know, the sorts of things people merrily disclose on social media these days. 

            In my view, to connect the concept of confession with the idea of healing, as James does, we need to think about sin in a different, broader, and more complex way. I suspect that James may be using the idea of sin in that other sense. And I believe that this other understanding of sin aligns particularly well with our current circumstances and the challenges before us as a society and as individuals.

            This other way of thinking about sin views it as consisting of those actions and states of mind that run against the central and new commandment that Jesus gave to all of us: to love one another. When we love one another, when we build a community of mutual support and respect, we serve the Kingdom of God. When we judge and antagonize one another, when we destroy community for the sake of our personal agendas or tribal loyalties, we sin.

            Now, I want to emphasize that this is not necessarily a “kinder and gentler” understanding of what it means to sin. I am not advocating for a weakened, mushy, comfortable conception of sin that cuts us all sorts of endless breaks. To the contrary, I suspect that this idea of sin actually holds us to a higher moral standard.

After all, under this definition a person could avoid many of the things that Paul lists in texts like the fifth chapter of Galatians—licentiousness, drunkenness, carousing, and so on—and still qualify as an world-class Olympic-level sinner. This definition recognizes that someone who hates their neighbor is mired in sin, regardless of whether they are also a stone-cold-sober non-carousing maritally-loyal churchgoer. Without love, Paul tells us in that famous passage in first Corinthians, we are just resounding gongs and clanging cymbals—and we remain awash in our sinfulness.

            With all that said, it is important also to stress that James plainly does not want or expect us to shy away from telling the truth in our efforts to foster compassion and community. Remember that he begins his closing exhortations with words like these: “Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out!” This is not the voice of someone who wants us to address the evils of our world by sitting down, shutting up, and looking the other way.

            Now, let’s return to the directive that James gives to us: confess our sins to one another, so that we may be healed. Think about what this requires, particularly if we embrace that second definition of sin that I just described. It means that we must candidly acknowledge the ways in which we have worked against love and community. And it means that healing cannot occur unless and until we have the faith, strength, and resolve to do so.

            Let me also return to my point about structure. Note that James offers this instruction in the last part of his closing exhortations, when he is speaking to all of us. Not just the rich. Not just the corrupt. Not just the oppressive. He knows that—in the sense I have just described—we all sin and therefore all have wrongs to confess to each other and for which to seek forgiveness.

            But James has not quite finished with us. The argument he develops reaches its crescendo in the last line. He says:

            “My brothers and sisters,  if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”

            This is the final thought that James wants to leave ringing in our memories. Yes, we need to confess our own failures of love and compassion. But we also have to work energetically to help others move beyond their failures.

            We hear the same sentiment in a wonderful passage in the tenth chapter of Hebrews: “Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.” We are in this sense called to be Holy provocateurs, or, as the late John Lewis put it, relentless makers of good trouble.  

James calls us to get everyone on a path with a heart. To cultivate everyone’s capacity for grace and forgiveness. To invite everyone to get with a program that comes not from us but from God and from the deep interior veins of our shared humanity.

Whenever we do this, James assures us, it “will cover a multitude of sins.” I find it deeply interesting that James does not specify whose multitudinous sins will be forgiven. He might be talking about ours. He might be talking about those we seek to help. Or he might be talking about both.

I think it’s the last. I think he’s telling us that when we strive toward the Kingdom of God then vast showers of redemption rain down over all of us. Grace works that way. It has its own mysterious methods of going viral. It has its own amplification system. It has its own multiplication tables. What an inspiring message to hear during Advent, in this our season of hope and expectation for the things to come.

            It seems to me that, in the end, James asks us to subscribe to a simple but infinitely powerful creed. And I think Advent offers an excellent time to hear it, to embrace it, and to live it. We might sum it up this way:

I will serve the offices of love.

I will work to build community.

I will confess my failures to fulfill The Great Commandment.

I will do better.

I will speak the truth.

I will provoke goodness.

I will strive to bring others along on this journey.

I will remember who, and whose, I am.

“Now may the words of our mouths, and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable to you, Oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer.”

And the people said: Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

            Our pastoral prayer this morning draws on the words of the great theologian Howard Thurman. I hope they will ring in your memory this week:

            Dear Lord.

            Keep our hearts open this day to all things that commend themselves to us as truth.

            Keep us humble, so that we might remember that we are never free from the possibility of error.

            Keep us at peace, so that deep within ourselves we can be still and be guided and made wise by your spirit.

            Keep us alert, so that we can recognize when our anxieties, our fears, our ambitions, even our hopes and dreams may deceive us into calling truth error, and error truth.

            Keep us diligent, so that we can seek the honesty and integrity that God yields to those who lay bare their lives constantly before him.

Keep our hearts open to the light, so that we might learn to wait for the light, confident that the light will come to cast itself across our paths at the point of our greatest needs.

            Oh Lord, here in the quietness we seek the renewal of the spirit of our hearts and minds that we may be living, vital instruments in your hands, this day and every day.

            Oh Lord, may it be so.

Benediction

            Sisters and brothers in Christ, go forth into this good day with these parting words of commitment ringing in your memory:

I will serve the offices of love.

I will work to build community.

I will confess my failures to fulfill The Great Commandment.

I will do better.

I will speak the truth.

I will provoke goodness.

I will strive to bring others along on this journey.

I will remember who, and whose, I am.

Open your hearts, minds, and eyes that you might seek and find the renewal that is yours for the taking, held out for you in the hands of the most powerful, and most loving, and most powerfully loving force in the universe—who knows your name.

Amen. And amen. And amen. 

Standing At A Distance

 

Scripture: Luke 17:11-19

 

A sermon shared at the Suttons Bay Congregational Church

August 9, 2020

 

 

 

       When Facebook first came on the scene, I didn’t know what to make of it. My trendy friends assured me that I needed to join. They promised that it would help me connect with other human beings; but I didn’t feel particularly disconnected. They said that I’d see pictures of other peoples’ vacations and lunches; but I wasn’t sure I had any interest in doing so. They described all the funny pet videos I’d be able to watch; but I couldn’t imagine a greater waste of time.

 

       Still, I was most put off by the rather casual use of the term “friend” in connection with the online associations that Facebook facilitates. In the early days of the social media site, a family member enthusiastically gushed to me: “I’ve only just joined and I already have five-hundred friends!” With my characteristic tact, I responded: “No, you don’t.” He said “Yes! I do!” and pointed at the number in his online profile. I said: “Do this. Ask all of those five-hundred people for money and see who sends it. Those are your friends.”

 

       Well, a pulpit is perhaps an awkward forum for confessions, but I will admit that over time I’ve become an enthusiastic Facebook convert. I know that opinions differ about Facebook and I have no interest in evangelizing anyone on its behalf. If you’re not into Facebook, I get it. But—speaking only for myself—Facebook has enabled me to stay in much closer touch with family, friends, and professional contacts who are dispersed around the globe. Also, I like posting pictures of our travels and our lunches and funny videos of our dog.

 

       What surprised me most about Facebook, though, is that it turned out to be a way to establish new connections that have somehow mysteriously transformed into friendships—despite the fact that I’ve never met these individuals in person. They include an Episcopal clergyman in Kansas. A rabbi in Maryland. A Jesuit priest in Washington, D.C. It sounds like a joke where all my new Facebook friends walk into a bar.

 

Speaking of which, my new friends include someone who’s written a book on the favorite cocktail recipes of Ernest Hemingway. A law professor in Indiana. A couple of newspaper columnists. A fair housing advocate. The list goes on and on. Would they all loan me money? Maybe, although following Jesus’s example in the wilderness, I won’t tempt them to disappoint me by asking.

 

For all of its other shortcomings, which are abundant, Facebook has reminded me of something about which I seem to need constant reminding, especially these days: We can maintain deep personal connections with people even when we’re not in their physical presence. Indeed, we can even establish those connections out of nothing more than words, images, and the electronic projection of the human spirit. Physical contact plays such an outsized role in our lives that we can forget about the facility and effectiveness of other kinds of communion.

 

The healing stories of Jesus convey the same message, but in cosmic, mind-bending, soul-changing terms and dimensions. Of course, many of those healing stories involve physical contact. Perhaps the most famous comes in the fourth chapter of Luke, in these stunningly simple words: “At sunset, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them.”

 

In some of the stories, Jesus has very minor physical contact with those he heals. In the eighth chapter of Luke, we encounter a woman who touches the hem of Jesus’s cloak and is instantly cured of her condition. We often remember this story as one about the unimaginable power of physical contact with Jesus. But it’s worth noting that Jesus describes things differently. He says to her: “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”

 

A number of years ago, I helped institute at a church that I attended a regular “healing service.” We met once a week in the evening, listened to each other’s struggles, and prayed. I think everyone agreed that the most important moment came at the end, when we gathered in a circle, our arms around each other, imagining a healing force moving through us like a steady electric current. If sometime I had announced that we were having a no-contact healing service that week, I think everyone would have stayed home.

 

But that would have been a mistake. Jesus knew that we can be in a place of healing intimacy with each other even when we’re not in close physical proximity. He conveys this to us over and over again, including in the gospel’s healing stories.

 

Consider the story of the centurion’s servant, told in the eighth chapter of Matthew and the seventh chapter of Luke. You remember how it goes: a centurion comes to Jesus and asks him to heal his servant, who is gravely ill at home. Jesus offers to go to him, but the centurion dismisses it as unnecessary. In essence, the centurion says: “I have a lot of authority and people do what I tell them to do; but your authority is even greater; so I know that if you just ‘speak the word’ he will be healed.”

 

As with the woman who touched his garment, Jesus celebrates the man’s faith: “I have not found so great a faith, no, not in Israel,” he says. Jesus calls for the servant’s healing. And within the hour, the man recovers.

 

Then we have the story of the Canaanite woman’s daughter, told in the fifteenth chapter of Matthew and the seventh chapter of Mark. Here, a Canaanite woman comes to Jesus and pleads for him to cast a demon out of her daughter, who has become possessed. Jesus simply says that her request has been granted and sends her on her way. No laying on of hands, no hugs or high-fives or garment-touching. It’s as if the woman’s faith alone did all that was needed.  

 

But my personal favorite among these stories comes in the seventeenth chapter of Luke. Here’s what happens. Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem, stops in a village. He is visited there by ten men, all lepers, who because of their illness “stood at a distance.” That was essentially the command of the public health departments of the time: no one should come into physical contact with a leper.

 

They ask Jesus to have mercy on them, he tells them to show themselves to the priests, and as they depart they are healed. Now, I want you to notice that all these men showed tremendous faith. When Jesus sent them to the priests, they didn’t balk, or wait to see if the healing worked, or otherwise test the power of Jesus’s command. They turned, and left, and were healed.

 

Still, only one of the men—a Samaritan, and so a social outcast for an additional reason—shows gratitude. He comes back to Jesus, falls at his feet, and thanks him. Jesus says (we can imagine, almost with a smirk): “and where are the other nine I healed?” Then he commands the Samaritan: “Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well.”

 

It’s funny how experience changes your perspective on biblical texts. I used to think of the nine who did not return to express their thanks as ungrateful oafs. But now, in my COVID-saturated sensibility, I suspect they just wanted to run off and throw their arms around all the family members and friends who they’d had to look at from afar for so long. You know, it’s almost as if someone somewhere had told me to be careful about judging people.

 

These healing stories all reinforce the notion that we do not need physical contact to be in spiritual contact. We can love each other, connect with each other, heal each other, even when we stand at a distance. All we need, every one of these stories tells us, is the faith that this is so.

 

Of course, we do not find this message only in the healing stories. After all, ours is a religion built around the experience of absence as presence. God is elsewhere, and yet with us every day and even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Jesus ascended to heaven, and yet the gospel of Matthew concludes with his promise: “And surely I am with you, even to the very end of the age.” At the center of our belief system lies the conviction that when his followers went looking for Jesus in a tomb, he wasn’t there, he was gone—and yet he walks with us and he talks with us and he tells us we are his own.

 

These days, we all need to make do with less physical contact. But that doesn’t mean we’ve had to make do with less loving connection. To the contrary, in some paradoxical ways COVID-19 has pushed us to places of broader connection, deeper empathy, and a more considered compassion.

 

In that bracing passage in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, Jesus tells us that when we serve the hungry, the stranger, the sick, and the imprisoned it is just as if we are serving him. Those misfortunes may or may not have been part of our personal experience before COVID-19. But, now, all of us are sharing more intimately in these sources of existential instability and anxiety.

 

All of a sudden, we have to worry about how we will get food—and we stand in closer communion with the hungry. All of a sudden, we have to worry about our health and the health of every person around us—and we stand in closer communion with the sick. All of a sudden, we have to worry about where we will be welcomed and admitted—and we stand in closer communion with the stranger. All of a sudden, we have to worry about whether and when we can leave our homes—and we stand in closer communion with the imprisoned.   

 

And, all of a sudden, things we took for granted have become precious to us. A hug. A kiss. A big, sloppy gathering of friends or family. The ordinary has taken on an extraordinary significance. Counting our losses turns out to be a compelling way to count our blessings.

 

But a critical part of the Good News of Jesus Christ is that all of this upending of our normal lives has made us more connected, not less. It has brought us closer together, not pushed us apart. It has expanded our spirits, not shriveled them up. It has magnified the Lord and his place in our lives, not marginalized him.

 

When those ten lepers came to Jesus, the Bible tells us, he found them standing at a distance. But the healing stories demonstrate that physical remoteness is no obstacle to the God who, after all, created space itself. Their faith closed the gap—in an instant. Just as it did for the centurion and the Canaanite woman. They could do all things through Christ, who strengthened them. And we can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us.

 

The healing stories also provide some reassurance that this amazing grace does not depend upon us having arrived at a state of spiritual perfection. Jesus blessed the woman who grasped at his garment, despite her boldness; he blessed the Canaanite woman, despite her bluntness; he blessed the centurion, even though he represented the oppressive power of the Roman government, and the centurion’s servant, even though Jesus had never met him; he blessed the ten lepers, even though only one returned to express his thanks.

 

As the old hymn goes, Jesus blesses me “just as I am,” and you just as you are. He strengthens us and works through us even though we are messy and flawed human beings who are laboring to do better, to live faithfully, and to love unhesitatingly and inexhaustibly. Perhaps, in the Good News that he brings us, that is the best and most welcome news of all: that we are blessed, just as we are. The gravest mistake we could make would be not to hear it and take it to heart.

 

Right now, at this very moment, the most powerful and loving force of the universe is in your company, right beside you. God is no more “remote” than you are from your children, your grandchildren, your friends, your co-workers, your fellow church members, or any of the hungry, homeless, estranged, sick, or imprisoned people that have been placed in our care. Through the movement of our faith and the power of the Holy Spirit, no living soul stands at a distance from us. Not even one.

 

“With God,” Jesus said, “all things are possible.” Even a savior born into poverty. Even a Messiah riding on a donkey. Even an empty tomb, with the stone rolled away. Even human connection, over hundreds of miles. Even intimacy, when communication goes online. Even peace, in the midst of turmoil. Even grace and comfort, in the throes of an often ungracious and discomfiting time. Even love, in the absence of embrace. It’s kind of like magic—only infinitely better, and it’s for real.

 

*

 

Once upon a time, the story goes, there was a terrible sickness. Ten men thought that it meant they had to stand apart from God. But then they learned that their sense of distance was an illusion. And their faith that this was so brought them to a place of wholeness and healing.

 

And so will ours.

 

Praise God that it is so.

 

And the people said: Amen.

 

 

An Ocean of Need

A Sermon Shared Online

May 17, 2020

Scripture: Matthew 6:24-33

         Epictetus was one of the great Stoic philosophers of antiquity. A hard life would seem like good training for such a job, and Epictetus had one, at least during his early years in Rome.

Epictetus was born into slavery during the tumultuous reign of the emperor Nero. He was physically disabled, perhaps from birth but maybe because of a severe beating he received from his master—ancient sources disagree.

After the death of Nero, he secured his freedom, began to teach in Rome, and things were looking up. But he had to flee when the new emperor, Domitian, expressed his opinion of the local philosophers by banishing them.

        

Epictetus went to Greece, where he established a school and took on pupils. In fact, the writings we have that are attributed to Epictetus are actually the notes and transcriptions of one of his disciples, Arrian. We owe a great debt to Arrian, even if he just did all that work for extra credit.

 

As the reputation of Epictetus grew, he became a celebrity and eminent people sought him out. True to form, though, he did not allow all the attention to turn his head: he maintained a simple and humble life and had very few possessions.

After his passing, an admirer supposedly paid a handsome sum for his oil lamp, an irony that would have left Epictetus either quaking with laughter or shaking his head in dismay.

         Epictetus makes for excellent reading during hard times. He helps us keep in mind the difference between the things we can control and the things we cannot. He reminds us that we have no power over external events, but that we have almost limitless power over how we respond to them.

And he offers us countless quotable maxims: “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” “There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying about things that are beyond the power of our will.” “First say to yourself what you would be, then do what you have to do.”

         When James Stockdale was a student at Stanford University, he became an enthusiastic reader of Epictetus. Stockdale went on to serve as a pilot in the United States Navy in Vietnam. He carried what he’d learned from Epictetus with him.

When Stockdale’s plane was shot down and he ejected over enemy territory, he realized that he would be taken prisoner of war and held under the worst imaginable conditions. The story goes that as Stockdale descended toward the ground in his parachute, he thought to himself: “Epictetus, here I come.”

         It turned out that Stockdale needed every lesson that Epictetus offered him. He remained imprisoned for more than seven years. He spent four of them in solitary confinement. He was brutally tortured, leaving him with physical difficulties and severe pain for the rest of his life.

Years later, as a vice-admiral and a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Stockdale would acknowledge the critical role that Epictetus played in his mental and physical survival.

*

         In recent months, many of us have felt things fall away from us that had become integral parts of our sense of well-being, our identity, our very existence. We have felt ourselves slowly drifting down into unknown and evidently hostile territory. We have worried about what comes next.

Take the modest pleasure of joining friends for dinner on a Friday night. We have woken up into a world where leaving home poses material risks, where we have to remain distant from people we love, where the local restaurant has closed—perhaps permanently, where our resources are limited, and where we may struggle to distinguish Friday from all the other days of the week, given their dull sameness.

In time, this situation will pass. But we know we will have lost some things that matter to us, if we haven’t already. It doesn’t help that we don’t know with anything like certainty what they will be. Anxiety and uncertainty just love working together.

And those are the losses of the privileged. For the poor and disadvantaged, staying safe, sheltered, and fed posed almost insurmountable obstacles even before the pandemic. The arrival of the virus has brought into plain view the rampant poverty that infects our country, the brittle fragility of so much of our population, and the legions of people who subsist on the fractured and crumbling edges of survival. We all have to get by with less; but some of us started with nothing. What will become of them?

Such times invite us into a closer and deeper kinship with certain ideas, including many that are central to the teachings of Jesus. One of those comes in a familiar passage in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. With all due respect to the grandeur of the King James version, permit me to render it in everyday parlance.

“Look,” Jesus says, “you have a choice. You have to decide who and what you’re going to serve. You can serve God, or you can serve material things, but you can’t serve both. It’s up to you.”

He goes on: “But let me tell you this. You cannot make yourself happy by serving material things. A life defined by all that stuff cannot give you freedom, peace, or fulfillment. To the contrary, having shiny objects at the center of your life just breeds anxiety, because you’ll constantly worry about losing them—and you will.”

He continues: “Freedom and contentment lie in not worrying about tomorrow and what you will lose. It lies in living fully today. It lies in committing your heart to things that cannot be lost.”

“Nature tells us as much. Look at how the birds don’t fret about food—but get fed anyway. Look at how the lilies of the field don’t worry about clothing—but are beautiful anyway. In fact, they’re more glorious than Solomon in his fanciest jewels and robes.”

He concludes: “It’s this simple: I love you. And, because I love you, I need you to know that the more you invest your soul in material things, the more you will worry. The more you worry, the less happy you will be. All that worry won’t get you anything—and it certainly won’t get you anything that matters. It will not add a single hour to your life.”

“So here’s the deal. Life is a series of choices. Every single time, choose first the Kingdom of God instead of all that other stuff. Then everything you really need will come to you.”

Now, in order to tease out what this passage means, and especially what it might mean for us, I need to tell you the stories of three rich young men. The first of them comes to us later in the Gospel of Matthew, in the nineteenth chapter. You know the story.

Jesus encounters a rich young man who isn’t actually a bad guy—although he gets a lot of unfavorable air time in sermons. He has tried to live honorably. He has kept the commandments. Indeed, if we could find any fault in him it’s that he seems a bit too proud of those accomplishments.

Perhaps consistent with that theme of pride, the young man wants something more: he wants to be perfect. He asks Jesus how to do it. He probably thought that was a smart and safe thing to do.

But Jesus gives him an answer that he does not like and that might even have struck him as foolish and dangerous. Jesus says: “Well, if you want to be perfect, then go sell all that stuff of yours, give the money to the poor, and follow me.”

You see what Jesus did there: he placed before the young man the same decision that he was talking about back in chapter six. In essence, he declares: “You have a choice. God or material stuff. One will give you freedom and peace and fulfillment, the other won’t. Your call.”

The young man can’t bring himself to give up all the nice accessories of wealth—the robes, the rubies, the Rolexes, the Rolls Royces—so he leaves. Importantly, however, the text tells us that he does so in a state of sorrow.

Think about that for a moment: the instant the young man made the wrong choice a  deep sadness overcame him. So knew immediately that Jesus was right. The magnetic pull of all those sparkly ornaments proved so great that he walked off anyway.

This brings me to our second young man, also rich, but who made a very different choice. Siddhartha Gautama was born into a royal family near the border of Nepal and India about 2,600 years ago. Siddhartha’s parents had extraordinarily high expectations for their child, anticipating that he would someday become a great and powerful leader.

In a well-intentioned but wildly misguided effort to help him fulfill his destiny, they spoiled Siddhartha dreadfully and sheltered him from the problems of the world. As a result, he became thoroughly acquainted with life’s pleasures but remained a stranger to its hardships.

Their plan failed, however, when Siddhartha left the palace and came face to face with human suffering, sickness, and death. Having seen them, he could not un-see them.

These events left Siddhartha with a difficult decision to make—one that should by now sound familiar. He could continue to chase after the material rewards of this world, or he could seek to understand the causes of human suffering and help alleviate them.

He chose the latter course, shed the elaborate trappings of privilege, reduced life to its essentials, and set out on a quest for answers. The answers he found prompted people to follow him in great numbers and, as you know, to call him Buddha.

Buddhism consists of a complex and multidimensional collection of philosophies, beliefs, and texts and resists a quick and tidy summary—indeed, trying to describe it at all runs against some of its foundational insights. But it is fair to say that at the core of Buddhism lies an idea stunningly similar to the one suggested by Jesus in the passages I just discussed.

Buddhism recognizes that our suffering comes from our desires. Our forward-looking striving deprives us of the joys of the here and now, and drives us to commit our thoughts and energies to the finally fruitless task of accumulating things we cannot keep—objects and accolades, prizes and praise, status and stuff.

To be clear, Siddhartha’s search for enlightenment was not some inwardly-focused Olympic-level self-improvement project. The whole point of his undertaking was that he had seen suffering, had empathized with it, and had dedicated himself to addressing it. This fulfills the very definition of  “compassion,” a word that comes from roots meaning “to suffer with”—to understand the struggle of someone else and to exist inside of it with them.

In one of his poems, the Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh gets at these ideas and their interconnectedness in the simplest of language. He writes:

I vow to offer joy to one person in the morning

And to help relieve the grief of one person in the afternoon.

I vow to live simply and sanely,

Content with just a few possessions,

And to keep my body healthy.

I vow to let go of all worry and anxiety in order to be light and free.

Or as the Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn puts it, throw away your self-absorbed mind and “only keep the question: ‘What is the best way of helping other people?’”

Compassion lies at the heart of Buddhism, just as it does at the heart of Christianity—at least when we do it right. Indeed, if it does not, then we have made a different kind of choice than the one to which the founder of our faith calls us. In that case, we have not left the palace; we have just traded one turreted fortress for another.

This brings us to our third rich young man. Giovani di Pietro di Bernadone was born in Assisi in the late part of the twelfth century. His mother gave him that trippingly poetic name while dad was away on business. Upon returning, his father—a prosperous silk merchant and a practical man—nicknamed his son Francesco. We know him as Francis.

As a young man, Francis enjoyed a carefree and indulgent existence. He loved fine clothes, reveled in the songs of troubadours, spent money lavishly, and otherwise more or less constantly threw himself a big party. But, as with the Buddha, the realities of suffering interrupted this perpetual celebration and its attendant fantasies.

Also as with the Buddha, history and tradition have left us with stories of various events that worked to change Francis’s heart. On one occasion, the legend goes, Francis was busily and successfully selling his father’s fine cloth in the marketplace. As he took in handfuls of money and doled out armfuls of beautiful wares, a beggar approached him. Francis looked into his eyes, and saw his despair.

Francis knew that he had to live differently. Against the strident resistance of his family and friends, he cast off his inheritance, took a vow of poverty, and dedicated his life to caring for the poor. After a year, with only eleven followers surrounding him, Francis led the tiny group to Rome and asked Pope Innocent III to recognize the fledgling group as a new religious order devoted to a life of simplicity and service.

St. Francis has had a profound influence not just on individual lives and the history of the church, but on all of Western culture. Oscar Wilde declared that one of the sad facts of history was that no one since Christ himself had been a true Christian. We hear an echo of the same idea in G. K. Chesterton’s quip that “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”

But Wilde added: “I make one exception: St. Francis of Assisi.” Wilde said of St. Francis: “He understood Christ, and so became like him.”

The poet Vachel Lindsay, another enthusiast for St. Francis, urged us to go forth and do likewise. He wrote:

Would I might wake St. Francis in you all,

Brother of birds and trees, God’s Troubadour,

Blinded with weeping for the sad and poor …

God make each soul the lonely leper’s slave;

God make us saints, and brave.

One could do worse, I suppose, than by beginning every morning by reciting that last line aloud, and then proceeding to try to live it.

         The French philosopher and novelist Albert Camus, an atheist, saw a deep connection between his own view of how to find value in life and that of St. Francis. In one of his journal entries, he wrote:

September 15

In the cloister of San Francesco in Fiesole there is a little courtyard with an arcade along each side, full of red flowers, sun, and yellow and black bees. In one corner,  there is a green water sprinkler, and everywhere the humming of bees. A gentle steam seems to rise from the garden as it bakes in the heat. Sitting on the ground I think about the Franciscans whose cells I have just visited and whose sources of inspiration I can now see. I feel clearly that if they are right then it is in the same way that I am. I know that behind the wall on which I am leaning there is a hill sloping down toward the town, and the offering of the whole of Florence with all its cypress trees.

But the splendor of the world seems to justify these men. I put all my pride in a belief that it also justifies me, and all members of the human race, who know there is an extreme point at which poverty always rejoins the luxury and richness of the world. If they cast everything off, it is for a greater and not for another life. This is the only meaning that I can accept of a term like “stripping oneself bare.” Such terms have always had associations of physical liberty, of harmony between the hand and the flower it touches, of a loving understanding between the earth and those of us who have been freed from human things.

Ah, I should become a convert to this, if it were not already my religion.

Albert Camus spent much of his life thinking about, and seeking after, freedom. He found it one day, sitting in a monastery courtyard, reflecting on those who have dedicated themselves to lives of simplicity and service, pondering the bees and the flowers—more beautiful even than Solomon in all of his glory.

         The current circumstances have given most of us an unexpected and unwelcome crash course in this way of thinking about and experiencing the world.

We have had to cast off non-essentials. We have had to manage our grinding anxieties. We have had to learn to live in the present moment—the radical impermanence of the future leaving us with greater puzzles than we can penetrate or, perhaps, even ponder.

We have had to find freedom, and peace, and compassion in a situation that is constraining, and disorienting, and plays to all of our worst impulses of greed and self-interest.

We do not remember signing up for any of this.

But, to paraphrase James Stockdale: St. Francis, here we are.

What do we do now?

Well, most of us will probably feel like perfection is way out of reach. As an imprisoned felon in one of Father Gregory Boyle’s books says, “I shot perfection in the foot a long time ago.” And more than once, at that.

 Many of us likely see ourselves as closer to the young Siddhartha and the young Francis than to the spiritually mature, older versions. We see more of ourselves in the rich young man than in the Son of God. We know from experience that we all too often walk away from good choices, and sorrowfully, too.

At least this holds true for me. I’m quite sure that I would have been that guy who bought the lamp of Epictetus, probably at a fashionable silent charity auction, then leaving it out ostentatiously for houseguests to admire over appetizers. I’m more likely to sit under a tree for the shade than for enlightenment. And I’m not going to wait breathlessly for LinkedIn to send me an email saying that my next great career move is canonization.

We understand what Jesus and Epictetus and Buddha and St. Francis did, but we still have to ask: How does that apply to us? What can we do?

We can follow instructions, to the best of our ability.

We can focus on the present day and the instant moment within it. We may not be able to keep all of the worries and destructive thoughts out of our heads, but we can respectfully decline to feed them. As Shunryu Suzuki said, “Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don’t serve them tea.”

We can keep asking ourselves: “What is the best way to help other people?” We may not sell all that we have, give the money the poor, and devote the rest of our lives to caring for the disadvantaged.

But we can choose to live toward simplicity. We can choose to live toward compassion. We can choose to live toward service. We all can do all of these things. Every. Last. One. Of. Us.

A story from the Zen Buddhist tradition tells of two masters who met atop a seaside cliff to demonstrate their skill at archery. The first master chose a small target tied to a distant tree, took aim, released the arrow, and hit dead center. The second master slowly and deliberately raised his bow—but then spun around, faced the other way, and let his arrow fly. It sailed elegantly through the air into the ocean. He lowered his bow, smiled at the first master, and said “bullseye.”

We do not need to set our sights on perfection to come closer to the life urged upon us by Jesus, Epictetus, the Buddha, and St. Francis. When we make choices toward simplicity, compassion, and service, we aim at a vast ocean of need. Every arrow we launch in that direction will hit its mark. It will be one bullseye after another.

If we can do these things, then we will be freer. We will be happier. We will be more at peace. We will be better servants of God and humankind.

We will, each in our own way, be saints and brave.

*

And, lo, Jesus said to them: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieve break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.”

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Amen.

And amen.