Beyond the Boundaries: On Limits, Love, and Lanyards

Scripture: Psalm 51:10; Mark 1:21-28

       I had a vision that I had passed to the next world and found myself standing before St. Peter at the gates of heaven.  Peter stood behind an ornate golden table that held two stacks of paper, one consisting of just a couple pages and the other about three feet high.  Peter said, “Well, Len, before we make any final decisions we will need to review both the strengths and the limitations that you displayed during your time on earth.”  He gestured toward the small stack as he said “strengths” and toward the very tall stack as he uttered “limitations.”

       Deeply concerned, I thought a little show of humility might help my cause, so I said “Well, why don’t we start with my limitations?”  Peter frowned at the giant pile of papers before him, shook his head, and responded, “I don’t know.  We’ve only got eternity to get through them all.”

       Victor Hugo wrote: “There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul.”  Often, when we refer to the infinite capacities of the soul, we mean the immortality that frees us from the bonds of death.  But, because our faith has at its center the promise of redemption, we must believe that even in this life our soul has “prospects greater than the sky,” vast, limitless.  When the Psalmist cries out “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me,” he leaves us with only two possibilities: either we think him a fraud or a hopeless dreamer, or we take seriously his testimony that the Lord can remake us right down to our very heart and spirit. 

       Despite these assurances, however, I suspect that each of us sometimes feels that no dimension of our infinite potential is so fully realized as our potential for messing up.

       Our faith offers us abundant consolations in this respect.  But it also poses some serious challenges.  And, in this sermon, I want to suggest that one of those challenges is that our faith demands that we keep two very different thoughts in mind at the same time, all the time.

The first of these thoughts is that God loves us in a measure beyond our understanding despite all of our weaknesses and shortcomings.  The second is that God nevertheless wants us to change: to know the Father more clearly; to follow the Son more closely; to experience the Holy Spirit more completely.

       And, to complicate things still further, our faith calls upon us to use these two disparate thoughts in order to free us from our limitations, even though we often use them to facilitate our limitations.  I’ll have more to say about the freedom these two ideas can afford us in a minute.  But let’s start by noting some of the perverse and regrettable ways in which we allow these ideas to place boundaries around us.

       Let’s be honest.  Confidence that God loves us just as we are can encourage a brand of self-conciliatory complacency.  We sit mired and stuck in our angers, our jealousies, our biases, our prejudices, our judgments, our false certainties, our indifference to injustice, our inaction toward poverty and hunger and homelessness until we start to feel—oh, dreaded word!—guilty.  We ponder the possibility of change or repentance or renewed dedication.  But then we remember that God loves us—even in all our messiness and inadequacy—and we settle back comfortably into our happy inertia.

       Of course, occasionally we actually make a little progress on one or more of these fronts.  Being human, this typically prompts a bit of self-congratulation, even if spoken to ourselves silently and in the secrecy of our own hearts.  I suspect that God, who misses nothing, takes notice of our modest progress and forgives us our brief flash of pride.  But I wonder if God weeps a bit when He sees how quickly we stall out, declare that we have done what we can, and place stingy boundaries around our efforts to make His kingdom come to this tired old world.

       This past Christmas, Lisa gave me the book Aimless Love: New and Collected Poems by Billy Collins, who was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003.  I highly recommend the book, which brims with wonderful poems, including a personal favorite of mine called “The Lanyard.”  In that work, the narrator remembers attending summer camp as a child and learning how to braid a lanyard, which he gave to his mother as a gift.  The poem continues:

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that is what you did with them,but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips
set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the archaic truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

I do not pretend to know much about God.  But I suspect that God treasures every lanyard that we offer up to Him.  Nevertheless, I think we have to ask ourselves: do we use our confidence in God’s boundless and generous love as an excuse to limit ourselves and to call things “even” when our halting work has really only just begun?

       Alas, we are capable of using the idea that God wants to change us as a limiting principle as well.  This happens in a variety of ways.  For some of us, the magnitude of the work that needs doing serves as an excuse not to try.  We read the words of Jesus and we say:  “Wait a minute.  I am supposed to turn the other cheek to the jerk who offended me, love the enemy who has done me wrong, forgive people not on seven occasions but on seventy times seven, give away my hard-earned money, refrain from judging, have faith that moves mountains, visit the sick and imprisoned, work for peace, serve the poor, and pray with humility?  I—who do not even have the self-discipline to keep my New Year’s resolution to eat fewer potato chips—I am expected to do all of this?”  We declare such a transformation impossible, which, of course, fulfills our prophecy of failure.

       Others of us, daunted by this challenging project, will turn to living life in the passive voice.  We say: “I pray that I will be given courage, strength, clarity of purpose, a generous spirit, a forgiving heart, and all the other stuff I need to do God’s work.  I pray that I will be made into the sort of person God wants me to be.  Here I am!  Use me!”  Sometimes we sound as though we have a sentimental fondness for the good old days when we were inert lumps of clay laying around waiting to be fashioned by the hand of the Lord.

       Through all of these persistent and very human habits of thought we limit ourselves.  We place boundaries around our infinite souls.  We let ourselves off the hook.  Let me be the first to confess: I have not done this seven times.  But seventy times seven.  Times seven.  Times seven.

       And this is a divine and human tragedy, because these two ideas—that God loves us as we are but wants us to change—are given to us for precisely the opposite purpose: to free us; to break our bonds; to help us do things and feel things and know things beyond our most extravagant dreams.

       That God loves us just as we are liberates us from the chains of self-loathing and self-condemnation.  It compels us to love ourselves even when we feel fully persuaded that we do not possess a single loveable characteristic.  It moves us out of the crabbed and confining space of human judgment into the vast and unbounded realm of divine promise.  Because who are we—who are we—to loath this person whom God adores and for whom God gave His very son?

       And that God wants us to change offers still greater freedom.  It assures us that the daunting project ahead does not fall entirely on our shoulders.  We will get some help.  We will get some aid from the one who fashioned the vast seas, and the vaster sky, and that most vast thing of all—our soul.

       Now, as I have suggested, we have a role in this and God’s grace and generosity do not excuse us from trying as hard as we know how.  But do not be surprised if, at some point, God steps in to give you a good, hard yank in the right direction.  This happens, and sometimes it happens despite our resisting and kicking and yanking back.

       I take that to be one of the central points of the story we read together this morning in the Gospel of Mark.  I find it a remarkable story, particularly because of a critical way in which it differs from so many of the other healing stories that appear in the New Testament.  After all, in most of those stories, we encounter someone who pleads for Jesus to heal them, to restore their sight, to let them walk, to make them well.  I am sure that all of us have, at one time or another, prayed in that voice.

       But in this story we encounter a different voice—another voice that also may sound familiar to us.  It is an obstinate, resistant, settled-in-its ways voice.  It is a voice that says: “What have you to do with me?  Why do you want to change me?  How can you hope to destroy what I fear I really am?”  Boundaries?  This man is nothing but boundaries.  And Jesus will have none of it.  He looks inside of that man and he finds the source of that voice and he says, with the power of God Himself behind it, Get out.

       Sisters and brothers in Christ, what boundless potential does Jesus see within you?  What are you doing to see the same infinite promise within yourself that He sees?  How are you helping Him to move you from that which you are to that which you might become?  Are you prepared to discover things about yourself that you never imagined?  Are you ready, like the witnesses of two thousand years ago, to be amazed?

       My friends, there is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is within you.  For it is there, Jesus tells us, that we will find the very kingdom of God.

       Praise Him that it is so.

       And the people said hallelujah.

       And the people said amen.
 

The Fear of God

Scripture: Acts 2:1-4, 12-21

An old story told by trial lawyers goes like this.  A brilliant expert witness had testified on behalf of the plaintiff in a case.  The lawyer for the defendant then faced the daunting task of trying to cross-examine him.  The attorney had given this a good deal of thought in advance and had come up with a plan.  So, when the judge nodded in his direction, the lawyer pulled a book from his briefcase and walked confidently toward the witness. 

“Sir,” he began, “your testimony today is contradicted by a leading authority on the subject.”  He slowly opened the book and smiled.  “That authority is you.  Here, on page 250 of the textbook that you wrote, you say the exact opposite of what you have testified to today!  How do you explain that?” 

The witness asked if he could see the book and took it from the lawyer.  He calmly studied it for a moment and then—to everyone’s astonishment—tore the page out of the book.  “Here,” the witness said, handing the volume back to the lawyer.  “This is the revised edition.”

I suppose that all of us create similarly ragtag “revised editions” of the Bible.  We run across passages we love and treat those parts as if they were written in all capital letters, printed in red, and underlined.  We encounter passages that we do not understand or that conflict with our theology and we push those parts to the margins—or excise them altogether.

As you probably know, Thomas Jefferson—who had one of the most brilliant and perplexing minds ever to inhabit planet earth—embarked upon a literal version of this project in the latter years of his life.  Jefferson took a Bible, a razor, and some glue, and cut and pasted the four gospels so they consisted of a single text to his liking.

This volume reflected the moral philosophy of Jesus, but omitted any references to his divinity or to supernatural events.  Jefferson was intrigued by the resulting book.  You may find it less interesting, however, if like me you have developed a certain fondness for the miracles that Jesus performed and, not incidentally, for his resurrection.

Still, I don’t want to criticize Jefferson for doing to the text physically what most of us do to it mentally.  In this respect, permit me to offer a personal example.  A phrase appears repeatedly in the Bible that, for most of my adult life, has made me unhappy and uncomfortable whenever I have stumbled upon it.  As a result, for many years I intellectually and emotionally edited it out of the Bible with the same ruthless precision shown by Mr. Jefferson and his razor.  That phrase is: “the fear of God.” 

Now, if the phrase “the fear of God” troubles you then you will spend a lot of your Bible-reading time feeling troubled.  Phrases that are commonly translated as “the fear of God” appear throughout the Old Testament.  The words appear in the first book of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis) and in the last (Malachi).  Verses in both Psalms and Proverbs describe the fear of God as the very foundation of wisdom.  Prophetic books, such as Jeremiah and Isaiah, include numerous references to the fear of God—and, of course, the prophets strongly suggest that we would be better off if we had a lot more of it. 

The phrase appears throughout the New Testament as well.  We find it in Mary’s magnificat—her beautiful song of praise in the first chapter of Luke: “His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.”  It appears in several of Paul’s letters.  And the book of Acts tells us this about the state of the church at the time of Paul’s conversion: “[T]he church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and was built up.  Living in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.”

Many biblical scholars have observed that “fear” is not a particularly good translation of some of the Hebrew and Greek words that are used in these passages.  They suggest that those words are closer in meaning to “reverence” or “awe” than they are to “fear” as we ordinarily understand it.  Indeed, a number of translations of the Bible—such as the New International Version—make a concerted effort to find better ways to express what the ancient texts seem to be getting at. 

Whatever words we choose, however, it seems to me that two things are clear and important.

The first point is this: the experience being described in these passages is completely consistent with the idea that God loves us, comforts us, and wants us to know a peace that passes all understanding.  Many of these passages make this plain by explicitly linking the “fear of God” with those ideas.  So, as you might have noticed, the passage I quoted from Acts a moment ago describes believers as living in both the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit.  Or consider this passage from the eighth chapter of Isaiah: “[T]he Lord of hosts, him you shall regard as holy; let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.  He will become a sanctuary for you …”

This juxtaposing of the overpowering and intimidating with the protective and caring appears throughout the scriptures.  One of my favorite examples is a subtle one, from the fourth verse of the beloved 23^rd Psalm: “I fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff—they comfort me.” 

The “staff” referred to here is, of course, the long hooked pole (sometimes called a “crook”) that shepherds used to prevent sheep from wandering too far from safety; it was an instrument of help and comfort.  In contrast, the “rod” to which the psalm alludes was a weapon—a club of such strength and size that it could be used to beat back large wild animals.  You might recall that a shepherd by the name of David once remarked—on his way to fight a Philistine named Goliath—that he had killed both lions and bears while tending his flocks.

Now, please permit me a digression—although a pointed one.  Over the years, I have seen dozens of printed versions of the 23^rd Psalm that featured decorative images.  In almost every case, the image used to illustrate the psalm was that of a shepherd.  I’ve seen lots of “23^rd Psalm shepherds” with crooks; but I’ve never—ever—seen one with anything that looked like a weapon.  It is as though, in our eagerness to reaffirm God’s love, we have taken the club out of His hands and made Him less scary and intimidating.  My concern is that, in the process, we have also made Him less powerful.

But the scriptures tell us over and over again that there is nothing inconsistent in the notion that God is both infinitely powerful and infinitely loving.  To the contrary, the scriptures insist—insist, mind you—that we recognize both of these qualities; that doing so is the beginning of wisdom; that failing to do so is an initiation into despair.

My friends: the knowledge that “God is love” saves me and comforts me, over and over again, day in and day out.  But the knowledge that God wields a power beyond my wildest imaginings saves me and comforts me, too—even if it also intimidates and unsettles me a bit.  Yes, when I enter into the valley of the shadow of darkness, I want to walk with a God who is love.  But, as the psalmist says, I also want to walk with a God who wields a club—a God whose voice shakes the wilderness, whose lightning lights up the world, whose gaze melts mountains like wax, in the magnificent words of the 97^th Psalm.

And this leads to the second point that I think is clear: sometimes our closest and most intimate encounters with the divine will be unsettling and disquieting—perhaps even frightening.  The scriptures tell us this, too, over and over again.  Consider the women who discovered the stone rolled back before the empty tomb and who encountered an angelic presence.  What was the first thing they experienced?  Well, it wasn’t the joy or excitement or triumphalism that we share on Easter Sunday.  The gospels tell us they were terrified.  Not reverential, not awestruck—terrified.  And if we reflect on their experience we can understand why.

Every once in a while in this life in these mortal skins we get a glimpse of who God is.  Sometimes those are flashes of insight into God’s compassion, forgiveness, direction, and love.  We feel comfort and reassurance settle in on us like a calming afternoon rain and we think to ourselves: “Yes.  There.  I see it.  That is who you are.  That is who you are.”

But sometimes those glimpses are insights into God’s power, grandeur, wildness, and unpredictability—especially in our encounters with the natural world.  We stand on the shores of Lake Superior or the Atlantic Ocean and watch the vast waters roll and roar.  We see a big red-tailed hawk dive dramatically in pursuit of its prey or a stallion break into an unstoppable gallop.  We feel thunder shake the floorboards of our home.  We witness the incredible creative power of birth.  And we think to ourselves: “Yes.  There.  I see it.  That is who you are.  That is who you are, too.”

The great Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman described God as “wild, dangerous, unfettered, and free.”  But in our need to find comfort in Him we tend to tone him down a bit—pardon me, a lot.  The novelist Dorothy Sayers worried that the church has “very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah,” making him “a fitting household pet.”  John Eldredge, in his wonderful book Wild at Heart, tries to rescue God—and Jesus—from this image.  He writes:

Jesus is … no pale-face altar boy with his hair parted in the middle, speaking softly, avoiding confrontation, who at last gets himself killed because he has no way out.  He works with wood [and] commands the loyalty of dockworkers.  He is the Lord of hosts, the captain of angel armies.  And when Christ returns, he is at the head of a dreadful company, mounted on a white horse, with a double-edged sword.

In the gospels we meet a Jesus of infinite love, compassion, and forgiveness.  But I want to suggest to you that if this is the only Jesus we meet then we’ve created our own versions of Mr. Jefferson’s Bible.

With all of that said, think now about the Pentecost experience described in the second chapter of Acts.  Here were the apostles, feeling a bit lost and confused, longing for certainty and direction.  No doubt they wanted to experience something calming, comforting, and gently reassuring.  But that's not what they got.

A sound of violent, rushing wind filled the house.  Tongues like fire descended upon them.  They spoke in strange languages--hold onto that idea: God so seized them that they spoke in unexpected and unfamiliar tongues.  Before everyone’s eyes, they were transformed.  People were overcome with bewilderment and perplexity and, no doubt, some measure of fear. 

I think that this is the fundamental message of Pentecost.  That God does not always come to us as that still small voice of peace and comfort.  That God will sometimes confront us with an awesome display of power, not for its own sake, but because that is what it takes to make something happen. 

And, above all else, the something that God wants to happen is our awakening, our rebirth, our transformation, our resurrection.  Yes, God can work those changes slowly and peacefully—like a sunrise; like the mist burning off over the mountains; like the gentle progress of the tides. 

But, make no mistake about it, God also knows how to change you with thunder and lightning, with an abruptness that will rattle your soul, at a full gallop, in an instant.  A famous self-help guru once said something like: “It doesn’t take long to change; you can change in an instant; what takes a long time is to get ready to change.”  Well, sometimes God says: “I’d love to wait around, but I need you to be ready, right here, right now.”

So this is what I would say to you: listen carefully for those Pentecost moments in your own life.  Listen attentively for those moments when God so seizes you that out of your bitterness comes the unexpected and unfamiliar language of forgiveness; when out of your grieving comes the unexpected and unfamiliar language of hope; when out of your cynicism comes the unexpected and unfamiliar language of faith; when out of your divisiveness comes the unexpected and unfamiliar language of peace; when out of your protests and persecutions and prejudices comes the unexpected and unfamiliar language of love.  And, in these moments, listen very carefully not just for your own voice, but for His.

If you do, then I think you will hear Him say: “Yes.  There.  I see it.  That is who you are.  That is who you are.”

Amen.

A Mother's Testament

On the Saturday before Easter, Lisa and I found ourselves in one of our favorite places in the world—New York City—with a free evening.  After a little online fishing, we landed two tickets to the Broadway production of The Testament of Mary.  Based on Colm Toibin’s novella of the same name, the one-woman play stars Fiona Shaw and is directed by Deborah Warner. 

Years ago, Lisa and I were fortunate enough to see Shaw in a production of Euripides’ Medea that was directed by Warner.  It was, without question, one of the most powerful, memorable, and unsettling pieces of theater we’ve ever witnessed.  So we were excited at the prospect of seeing the fruits of their latest project together.

We anticipated that The Testament of Mary might shock us and shake us a bit, and we were not disappointed.  Some of the credit here goes to the subject matter of the work.  In the monologue, Mary describes the events that led—with a horrible inevitability—to the crucifixion of Jesus; the unspeakable suffering she witnessed; the confusion and anger she experienced over the things His followers seemed to expect of her.  But most of the credit for the emotional power of the play goes to Shaw.  Her capacity to manifest raw pain and injured rage is, in my amateur judgment at least, unparalleled on the stage.

As with Medea, I would not recommend The Testament of Mary to everyone.  I know many people who would find it too abrasive, too detached from traditional and scriptural portrayals of the mother of Jesus, and too disquieting in its implications.  I myself have reservations about some parts of the play.  But I left the theater with two overarching impressions that I am confident will linger with me and will continue to inform my faith for a very, very long time.

The first impression relates to the loneliness of Jesus.  Certainly, He was often surrounded by crowds and disciples (Mary calls them “misfits” in the play).  But Mary’s description of her son clearly, if for the most part implicitly, offers up an image of a man who kept his own counsel, who moved with his own sense of time, and who was always at the center of things—and yet somehow apart from them.  It is commonplace for us to envision Jesus alone at the time of his temptations or in the Garden of Gethsemane or on the cross.  But I do not think that, until I saw Jesus through the eyes of His mother, I fully appreciated how much of His life must have been haunted by the unique loneliness that could only have belonged to Him.

The second impression relates to His suffering on the cross.  Over the years, I have attended countless Good Friday services that have attempted in one way or another to convey the horrible torture that the practice of crucifixion involved.  I think this is theologically legitimate.  After all, our talk of Jesus dying for us loses some of its force if we forget what this entailed for him as a human being.  But legitimate questions can also be raised as to the point at which graphic depictions of the crucifixion begin to distract us from our understanding of this sacrifice as an act of love and redemption.  I took a pass on Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ for these sorts of reasons.

The Testament of Mary persuaded me that this was the right call.  If you want to try to get your head around the sacrifice that the crucifixion entailed, you do not need to see gory images of nails piercing flesh.  You simply need to hear the act described by the mother of the man being tortured.  On a March night in New York City, I feel like I heard that voice, and I will never forget it. 

For that, I am profoundly grateful.

And I am not just a little changed.