yearning (ideals rev. 2)
This morning's sermon was a revision of a sermon I preached this summer, with the middle gutted and retooled. If you've read my past sermons, you'll keep bumping into familiar bits.
............................
Yearning
Luke 12: 13-31, Isaiah 43:1-3a
When I was a child, I had this ideal vision of what life would be like as a grownup. When I was very little I wanted to be a fireman: I even had this little red ride-in truck that my Uncle Russ had given me that I would pedal up and down the driveway with great joy. When I got a little older I knew I would eventually become a pastor, but I also knew I wasn't ready yet, so I thought maybe first I would become a teacher like my mom, or maybe an ambassador to an exotic country. So the professions changed, but that's pretty much all that changed. Otherwise my vision of ideal adulthood was pretty stable: I'd have a fullfilling job, a husband, a summer cottage by the sea, maybe some children, and definitely a dog. (...I've got the dog!)
Our society teaches us to look to the future in just this way. From a fairly young age we ask our children, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" -- as we ourselves also plan for their future needs, storing money against the cost of a college education. As adults we're taught to plan for our retirements, hoping to calm our uncertainty with a solid piece of real estate and money in an IRA or 401k. It's only good stewardship to save against a rainy day -- isn't it? -- and we cling mentally to our savings. We're relieved when we've acquired a cushion of resources in case anything bad happens, a house, money tucked away in various plans and accounts. We're anxious when we we don't have these things, and we do worry about our lives, what we will eat, and about our bodies, what we will wear.
Most of us have days or even years in which we are blessedly stunned to have achieved or surpassed some ideal we held. We look at our partner and think, "I can't believe I'm with this wonderful man (or woman);" we interact with our children and think "how amazing that I raised this bright, thoughtful, talented child;" we find ourselves healthy after an illness and our breath catches with the wonder of a body which works almost the way it should work: moments in which we feel ourselves blessed and whole and well, in which our ideals are stunningly realized, and we can get lost in the wonder and joy of it all.
Sometimes those moments seem related to our planning, but usually they are just gifts, like grace, given to us as freely as sunshine on a chilly morning. For myself I know even receiving my M.Div this May, something for which I planned and saved and strived, in the end felt a lot less like a plan I had pursued and realized; it felt a lot more like grace.
......
I think the holiday season is a really hard time of year for many of us.
Most of us are blessed at some time in our lives with a holiday season -- Thanksgiving and Christmas -- in which everything seems right and full, in which we were surrounded by joy and light and love, in which all the pieces came together -- family, friends, children, warmth, food, laughter, spirit -- such that those seasons seem most assuredly to be nothing less than a taste of the Kingdom. Maybe for some of us this will be one of those seasons that you will carry with you, and blessings to you if you antcipate this might be such a year. I wish you joy.
But many folks I know look forward to the holidays with a fair dose of anxiety. [expand...loved ones scattered, no money for a feast, children with one parent for one holiday and not for the other...]
Even if we're anxious about the upcoming holidays, I bet that most of us can reach back in our minds to some Thanksgiving or some Christmas so near to our hearts that we can still taste it and smell it and feel it, a season so suffused with light and joy that we still yearn for it. We carry that feeling around with us, what it feels like when all seems right with the world, what it feels like to love well and to be well loved, what it feels like to be connected, and whole, and full.
And I think maybe that's why this season can be so very hard. Because we walk through the rest of our lives expecting that we will have good days and bad days, expecting that we will have a few meaningful experiences and a lot that just seem incidental, expecting that more often than not we'll get through and get by and that's just how life is. But at Thanksgiving and Christmas the emotional toll is higher, and we are reminded of that taste of the kingdom, and it is easy to feel that we are in exile, at a distance from where we belong, and at a distance from where we want to be.
......
Every year I have another birthday, and there's nothing like a mid-life birthday to make us take stock of where we are, and where we thought we'd be at our age. Somehow despite the intervening years I carry around in my head an ideal little life-plan which holds something of those childhood ideals, and sometimes I realize how very different my life is from what I'd imagined. Mind you, my life is full of blessings for which I am immensely grateful. Nevertheless, some of you know my mom has alzheimers: this week she actually looked straight at me and asked where Jamie was. Only for a moment, but even one moment is too many. Alzheimers is a degenerative disease, so she'll have more of them.
My idealized fortisomething Jamie was never in any of my imaginings caring for a deteriorating alzheimers patient. My mother, who worked her whole life at a solid teaching job with benefits and a pension, visualized a retired life full of friends and travel and summers on the Cape; her plans never anticipated that she wouldn't recognize those friends or remember that she's retired or know what house she lived in. Our best-laid plans fall apart, moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal, and with one stroke, in the blink of an eye, all our building and saving and storing can be rendered worthless.
All too often we find ourselves in moments and situations which *don't* match our hopes and dreams, and in these moments I think it's easy to feel alienated or afraid or angry, to wonder where we went wrong, how the decisions we've made could possibly have led us to this point and this place that we never imagined we'd come to.
......
Christianity has at its centre this radical idea that Jesus was fully human and fully divine at the same time. And often we think of this as a one-time thing, zap, Jesus was born and he was both human and divine, *poof*, over and done with. But I think when we make it so easy, a little magic God did once, we're missing something pretty important. Because a big part of what it is to be human is to walk through every day, some of them good days with lovely good moments and some of them bad days with very bad moments, and to not know the span of our lives and lives of those we love, to not know if our children will turn out the way we hope they will, to not know if our retirement will be as we imagine. Most people on most days inhabit a world of uncertainty.
Jesus is many things: we proclaim him as LORD and we know him as our saviour. But we also hold him up as the ideal human being, as our model for what it means to be human.
Jesus didn't marry. He didn't buy a little cottage on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and start a perfect family with gorgeous children and a cute dog. I think this is not because there is something wrong with marriage or children or dogs or cottages by the sea. But we already carry pictures of these things in our mind's eye; we don't need another model of that sort of ideal.
Jesus was born into a family of craftsmen: Joseph was a tekton (Mt 13:55) -- often we say 'carpenter,' but the Greek really means a builder of houses whether of wood or stone, a sort of master builder and general contractor. And Jesus was the eldest son, heir to the family contracting business: he had the skills to build a house. And yet he didn't build himself a home: Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.
He had the skills and the family connections to build himself a home and yet he didn't do it. All the security that that brings: to have work and the knowledge that one will have a place to sleep, the means to marry and to support children and ensure that they will grow up with opportunity -- all the ideals that people have shared through the millenia -- Jesus did not do any of those things.
I think it's very very important that God doesn't come to us only in power and might and omniscience, but that God came to us in the form of someone who didn't lay up treasures on this earth, and so God knows what it's like to walk through one day and another day, some filled with love and joy, and some filled with fear or with pain. Jesus had all those experiences: he attended wedding celebrations flowing with good wine, he sat up late into the night speaking with friends. Yet we know only too well the stories of his sorrow and pain. And that is the miracle of Christianity, that we have a God who really is with us and not just above us. And that God is striving with us and for us on a day-to-day basis, with his ideal and his promise in front of us all.
But now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.
Walking in Jesus' footsteps we're called in every minute to strive not for earthly goods, but for God's kingdom, to base our lives and our politics and our strivings not on this world's ideals, but on God's ideal.
I think we may very well all be in exile. I know I for one am not who I would like to be; and I certainly feel at a distance from who God is calling me to become. I imagine most of you feel the same, and that's only good and right, because I believe that God always calls us toward His kingdom, into the future, beyond where we are.
We are not meant to store up earthly treasures. When our lives don't match some earthly ideal, we are not meant to feel alienated. Jesus' earthly life was full and rich, and yet it very pointedly did not match any societal ideal of house and family.
With Jesus as our model, we are meant to live in the moment, good moments and bad moments, reaching for joy and sharing God's love. As for anxiety, none of us by worrying can add a single hour to the span of our lives. Let us give our anxiety up to God, and live instead, day by day, with a vision of God's kingdom sparkling in our eyes.
[prayer]
............................
Yearning
Luke 12: 13-31, Isaiah 43:1-3a
When I was a child, I had this ideal vision of what life would be like as a grownup. When I was very little I wanted to be a fireman: I even had this little red ride-in truck that my Uncle Russ had given me that I would pedal up and down the driveway with great joy. When I got a little older I knew I would eventually become a pastor, but I also knew I wasn't ready yet, so I thought maybe first I would become a teacher like my mom, or maybe an ambassador to an exotic country. So the professions changed, but that's pretty much all that changed. Otherwise my vision of ideal adulthood was pretty stable: I'd have a fullfilling job, a husband, a summer cottage by the sea, maybe some children, and definitely a dog. (...I've got the dog!)
Our society teaches us to look to the future in just this way. From a fairly young age we ask our children, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" -- as we ourselves also plan for their future needs, storing money against the cost of a college education. As adults we're taught to plan for our retirements, hoping to calm our uncertainty with a solid piece of real estate and money in an IRA or 401k. It's only good stewardship to save against a rainy day -- isn't it? -- and we cling mentally to our savings. We're relieved when we've acquired a cushion of resources in case anything bad happens, a house, money tucked away in various plans and accounts. We're anxious when we we don't have these things, and we do worry about our lives, what we will eat, and about our bodies, what we will wear.
Most of us have days or even years in which we are blessedly stunned to have achieved or surpassed some ideal we held. We look at our partner and think, "I can't believe I'm with this wonderful man (or woman);" we interact with our children and think "how amazing that I raised this bright, thoughtful, talented child;" we find ourselves healthy after an illness and our breath catches with the wonder of a body which works almost the way it should work: moments in which we feel ourselves blessed and whole and well, in which our ideals are stunningly realized, and we can get lost in the wonder and joy of it all.
Sometimes those moments seem related to our planning, but usually they are just gifts, like grace, given to us as freely as sunshine on a chilly morning. For myself I know even receiving my M.Div this May, something for which I planned and saved and strived, in the end felt a lot less like a plan I had pursued and realized; it felt a lot more like grace.
......
I think the holiday season is a really hard time of year for many of us.
Most of us are blessed at some time in our lives with a holiday season -- Thanksgiving and Christmas -- in which everything seems right and full, in which we were surrounded by joy and light and love, in which all the pieces came together -- family, friends, children, warmth, food, laughter, spirit -- such that those seasons seem most assuredly to be nothing less than a taste of the Kingdom. Maybe for some of us this will be one of those seasons that you will carry with you, and blessings to you if you antcipate this might be such a year. I wish you joy.
But many folks I know look forward to the holidays with a fair dose of anxiety. [expand...loved ones scattered, no money for a feast, children with one parent for one holiday and not for the other...]
Even if we're anxious about the upcoming holidays, I bet that most of us can reach back in our minds to some Thanksgiving or some Christmas so near to our hearts that we can still taste it and smell it and feel it, a season so suffused with light and joy that we still yearn for it. We carry that feeling around with us, what it feels like when all seems right with the world, what it feels like to love well and to be well loved, what it feels like to be connected, and whole, and full.
And I think maybe that's why this season can be so very hard. Because we walk through the rest of our lives expecting that we will have good days and bad days, expecting that we will have a few meaningful experiences and a lot that just seem incidental, expecting that more often than not we'll get through and get by and that's just how life is. But at Thanksgiving and Christmas the emotional toll is higher, and we are reminded of that taste of the kingdom, and it is easy to feel that we are in exile, at a distance from where we belong, and at a distance from where we want to be.
......
Every year I have another birthday, and there's nothing like a mid-life birthday to make us take stock of where we are, and where we thought we'd be at our age. Somehow despite the intervening years I carry around in my head an ideal little life-plan which holds something of those childhood ideals, and sometimes I realize how very different my life is from what I'd imagined. Mind you, my life is full of blessings for which I am immensely grateful. Nevertheless, some of you know my mom has alzheimers: this week she actually looked straight at me and asked where Jamie was. Only for a moment, but even one moment is too many. Alzheimers is a degenerative disease, so she'll have more of them.
My idealized fortisomething Jamie was never in any of my imaginings caring for a deteriorating alzheimers patient. My mother, who worked her whole life at a solid teaching job with benefits and a pension, visualized a retired life full of friends and travel and summers on the Cape; her plans never anticipated that she wouldn't recognize those friends or remember that she's retired or know what house she lived in. Our best-laid plans fall apart, moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal, and with one stroke, in the blink of an eye, all our building and saving and storing can be rendered worthless.
All too often we find ourselves in moments and situations which *don't* match our hopes and dreams, and in these moments I think it's easy to feel alienated or afraid or angry, to wonder where we went wrong, how the decisions we've made could possibly have led us to this point and this place that we never imagined we'd come to.
......
Christianity has at its centre this radical idea that Jesus was fully human and fully divine at the same time. And often we think of this as a one-time thing, zap, Jesus was born and he was both human and divine, *poof*, over and done with. But I think when we make it so easy, a little magic God did once, we're missing something pretty important. Because a big part of what it is to be human is to walk through every day, some of them good days with lovely good moments and some of them bad days with very bad moments, and to not know the span of our lives and lives of those we love, to not know if our children will turn out the way we hope they will, to not know if our retirement will be as we imagine. Most people on most days inhabit a world of uncertainty.
Jesus is many things: we proclaim him as LORD and we know him as our saviour. But we also hold him up as the ideal human being, as our model for what it means to be human.
Jesus didn't marry. He didn't buy a little cottage on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and start a perfect family with gorgeous children and a cute dog. I think this is not because there is something wrong with marriage or children or dogs or cottages by the sea. But we already carry pictures of these things in our mind's eye; we don't need another model of that sort of ideal.
Jesus was born into a family of craftsmen: Joseph was a tekton (Mt 13:55) -- often we say 'carpenter,' but the Greek really means a builder of houses whether of wood or stone, a sort of master builder and general contractor. And Jesus was the eldest son, heir to the family contracting business: he had the skills to build a house. And yet he didn't build himself a home: Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.
He had the skills and the family connections to build himself a home and yet he didn't do it. All the security that that brings: to have work and the knowledge that one will have a place to sleep, the means to marry and to support children and ensure that they will grow up with opportunity -- all the ideals that people have shared through the millenia -- Jesus did not do any of those things.
I think it's very very important that God doesn't come to us only in power and might and omniscience, but that God came to us in the form of someone who didn't lay up treasures on this earth, and so God knows what it's like to walk through one day and another day, some filled with love and joy, and some filled with fear or with pain. Jesus had all those experiences: he attended wedding celebrations flowing with good wine, he sat up late into the night speaking with friends. Yet we know only too well the stories of his sorrow and pain. And that is the miracle of Christianity, that we have a God who really is with us and not just above us. And that God is striving with us and for us on a day-to-day basis, with his ideal and his promise in front of us all.
But now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.
Walking in Jesus' footsteps we're called in every minute to strive not for earthly goods, but for God's kingdom, to base our lives and our politics and our strivings not on this world's ideals, but on God's ideal.
I think we may very well all be in exile. I know I for one am not who I would like to be; and I certainly feel at a distance from who God is calling me to become. I imagine most of you feel the same, and that's only good and right, because I believe that God always calls us toward His kingdom, into the future, beyond where we are.
We are not meant to store up earthly treasures. When our lives don't match some earthly ideal, we are not meant to feel alienated. Jesus' earthly life was full and rich, and yet it very pointedly did not match any societal ideal of house and family.
With Jesus as our model, we are meant to live in the moment, good moments and bad moments, reaching for joy and sharing God's love. As for anxiety, none of us by worrying can add a single hour to the span of our lives. Let us give our anxiety up to God, and live instead, day by day, with a vision of God's kingdom sparkling in our eyes.
[prayer]