The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
March 4, 2007
2 Lent - C
Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-1
Philippians 3:17--4:1
Luke 13:22-35
A few years ago a Norwegian named Jostein Gaarder wrote a wonderful history
of philosophy disguised as a novel. Sophie’s World, as it’s called, begins with
Sophie, who is fourteen, coming home from school one day. She checks the
mailbox, and in it she finds a plain white envelope with only her name on it. No
stamp, no postmark, no return address. Sophie opens the envelope, and inside she
finds a single sheet of paper with only one thing written on it: “Who are you?”
“Why, I'm Sophie Amundsen, of course,” Sophie says to herself. But then she
begins to wonder, “Would I still be Sophie Amundsen if I had been given a
different name, say, Anne Knudsen? Would I still be Sophie then, or would I be
someone else?”
The next day, another mysterious envelope arrives with this question: “Where
does the world come from?” And that question is followed by others like: “Can
something come from nothing?” and “Is there a basic substance that everything
else is made of?” and “Can water turn into wine?” and “How can earth and water
produce a live frog?” and “Why is Lego the most ingenious toy in the world?”
In between these questions Sophie receives from the mysterious philosopher
other envelopes that contain long discussions of all the questions he poses, and
throughout the book he moves 14-year-old Sophie through the history of the
Western world’s search for knowledge and certainty, from Democritus and the atom
in ancient Greece to top and bottom quarks at the Fermi Lab in Illinois.
Who are you? What is reality? What is the world like? And how are you to
live? the philosopher asks her.
Those of you who were in church last week will recognize these as the
questions of Lent, the very questions Jesus had to come to grips with last
Sunday. If you are the son of God, Satan wanted to know, then why does life
remain such a mystery for you, Jesus? Just turn these stones into bread and grab
the power that sits your fingertips.
But what is power? What is this mysterious experience we call life? And how
are we to live? That’s what lies behind Satan’s questions, and behind Jesus’
insistence that Scripture guide him in his response.
Satan, of course, was speaking for the world. And “if the world is sane,”
says Frederick Buechner, “then Jesus is mad as a hatter,” a little crazy, “and
the Last Supper is the Mad Tea Party.” (in Listening to Your Life)
Jesus is crazy the way Abraham was crazy. Like Abraham, Jesus wants to see
what God has to say. Abraham, you’ll remember, was a man so puzzled by life at
age seventy-five that he packed up and moved to a foreign land because God told
him to and then trusted, against all evidence, that God would give him a son and
a future when he and his barren wife were pushing a hundred. That’s when,
according to the Bible, Isaac was born, and Father Abraham as well.
Buechner reminds us that “when a child is born, a father is born. A mother is
born too, of course, but at least for her it’s a gradual process. Body and soul,
she has nine months to get used to what’s happening. But for even the
best-prepared father, it happens all at once.
“On the other side of the plate-glass window, a nurse is holding up something
roughly the size of a loaf of bread for him to see for the first time. Even if
he should decide to abandon it forever ten minutes later, the memory will nag
him to the grave. He has seen the creation of the world. It has his mark upon
it. He has its mark upon him. Both marks are, for better or worse, indelible.
“All sons, like all daughters, are prodigals if they’re smart,” Buechner
adds. “Assuming the Old Man doesn’t run out on them first, they will run out on
him if they are to survive, and if he’s smart he won’t put up too much of a
fuss. A wise father sees all this coming, and maybe that’s why he keeps his
distance from the start. He must survive too. Whether they ever find their way
home again, none can say for sure, but it’s the risk he must take if they’re
ever to find their way at all. In the meantime, the world tends to have a soft
spot in its heart for lost children. Lost fathers have to fend for themselves.
“Even as the father lays down the law, he knows that someday his children
will break it, as they need to break it if ever they’re to find something better
than law to replace it. Until and unless that happens, there’s no telling the
scrapes they will get into trying to lose him and find themselves. Terrible
blunders will be made – disappointments and failures, hurts and losses of every
kind. And they’ll keep making them even after they’ve found themselves too, of
course, because growing up is a process that goes on and on.
“And every hard knock they ever get knocks the father even harder still, if
that’s possible, and if and when they finally come through more or less in one
piece at the end, there’s maybe no rejoicing greater than his in all creation.
“It has become so commonplace to speak of God as ‘our Father’ that we forget
what an extraordinary metaphor it once was.” (Whistling in the Dark, pp. 47-48)
That is the Gospel according to Frederick Buechner, the good news of a loving
Father who creates us and calls us into a future that is unknown to us, and who
lets us go it on our own when we have an itch to do it that way, as we always
do, and who shares with us the knocks we receive as we do it, and who waits for
us to find our way home again, if ever we will.
It is our story. This is who we are and what life is all about, and it all
began thousands of years ago, with Abraham.
Mark Twain said that he once spent $25 to find out his family’s story and
then spent $50 to cover it up! But an old rabbi once said that remembering the
family story is what being a person of faith is all about. “When a Jew says ‘I
believe,’” he said, “what he really means is ‘I remember.’”
On the first night of Passover, the youngest son in each Jewish family asks,
“What makes this night different from all other nights?” And his father says,
“On this night, we remember. We remember our story, the story of our family, the
story of the nation the Lord is building for us. We remember how we were born
and what we are called to be and do. We remember our father Abraham, how Abraham
said ‘Amen’ to the Lord’s promise of a child and a future even when he could see
no evidence for it. And we remember how Abraham’s ‘Amen’ was counted to him as
righteousness, and how God provided the child and built a house for him, and how
God let Isaac and Jacob and Esau go their own ways, because God is a wise
father, and he knew that ‘whether they ever find their way home again, none
could say for sure, but it was the risk he had to take if ever they were to find
their way at all.’
“So, son, on this night we remember. We remember how the children of Israel –
our ancestors, our fathers – we remember how we ran out on the Old Man and later
found ourselves slaves in Egypt, but how, because of his promise, God took us
out of there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and how if God had not
taken us out of Egypt, then we and our children and our children’s children
would still be slaves in Egypt.
“And we remember that even as God laid down the law to us in the wilderness,
as he laid it down time and again after that, he knew that we would break it
trying to lose him and find ourselves. He knew that we would make terrible
blunders – disappointments and failures and sins, and suffer hurts and losses of
every kind. But it was a risk he had to take if ever we were to find something
better than law to replace it. And we remember how even in the Promised Land
itself every hard knock we ever got as we tried to go it on our own knocked God
even harder still.
“That’s what makes this night different from all other nights,” says the
father to the child. “We remember who we were; we remember who we are; and we
remember where our hope is.”
Where is our hope? Do we find our hope in the sanity of the world? Six years
ago the world’s sanity was demonstrated on 9/11. Before that it was demonstrated
in Oklahoma City and in any number of other places around the country. Now, six
years later, are we to find it in that dangerous muddle of politics and raw
power in the Middle East, a volatile brew that extends far beyond Iraq and
Afghanistan with no end in sight, and with China on the move in the Far East and
Hugo Chavez on the move in Venezuela and few cards left to play in Washington
and London, or even in New York and Hollywood?
Is it possible that we are part of the problem? Is it possible that Leonard Pitts was right several years ago – that it’s young, white, male, affluent America, isolated from reality by the apparent security of its wealth, that is in pain and is lost? That it’s young, white, male, affluent America, isolated from reality in what amounts to a wealthy national suburb of a much larger and poorer world, that doesn’t know what to do with its freedom and doesn’t know its way home? I don’t know. But I do think Pitts is right in insisting that we ask that question...
...because we are called to remember. We are called to remember, as the
psalmist warns, that “unless the Lord builds the house, their labor is in vain
who build it.” Unless God is Lord of the future, their life is in vain who will
live it. As ancestors, as fathers and mothers, we are called to trust as Father
Abraham was called to trust – to trust that even though we are barren, God is
not, and God will build his future just as surely as he gave Isaac to Abraham
and Sarah.
But trusting God does not mean doing nothing.
Someone who was born eighty or so years ago said, “Those of us who grew up in
the 1930s have been so busy trying to give our children all the things we didn’t
have that we have neglected to give them the things we did have.”
In the 18th century, Queen Anne raised a man of lowly origins to the peerage
in recognition of his great service to the Crown in battle. Some in the Queen’s
court didn’t like having him there. Imagine it! A duke whose blood was not blue!
So one of the lords whose blood was very blue indeed decided to needle the new
Duke of Marlborough a little. He stopped Marlborough one day and asked him,
“Your grace, whose descendant are you?” And Marlborough said, “Sir, I am not a
descendant. I am an ancestor.”
We are both, of course. We are descendants of Abraham, descendants called to
remember our story, called to remember the great things God has done in the past
to bring us from sin and bondage into life, called to remember the freedom our
Father has given us, and the life it makes possible.
But we are also ancestors, fathers and mothers who, like Abraham and Sarah,
have a future to build. And, like them, we stand in the barrenness of our
present, for there’s not a way in the world that, without God, we can build a
future worth having, any more than Abraham and Sarah could at the age of
ninety-nine.
Trusting God means acting as God gives it to us to act. It means maybe coming
to realize that the Old Man wasn’t so dumb after all, and maybe putting some
stock in what he had to say. As Abraham did, in faith. As Paul did, in freedom,
not neglecting to give our children not only the freedom we have, but also the
faith we have.
Sadly, many do not do that, says Paul. “Many, of whom I have often told you,
and now tell you even with tears, live as enemies of the Cross of Christ. Their
end is destruction, their god is the belly, they glory in their shame, with
minds set on earthly things.” Paul is not talking about Christians in Philippi
2,000 years ago. Paul is talking about us.
The problem for human beings – for those in Paul’s day, for those in the
wilderness of Sinai, for those in the wilderness today – is freedom. Christ came
to set us free. Christ died to set us free, because freedom is good for us,
essential. Freedom is what makes us more than beasts. Freedom is the risk God
has to take if ever we are to find our way to the life of grace.
“O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of
whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom,” we used to
pray at Morning Prayer. “Love God, and do what you want to do,” St. Augustine
says.
The problem is that we too often hear the second part of that charge, but ignore the first. “Do what you want to do,” Paul and Augustine urge, “but remember that the house will fall, unless it is the Lord who builds it. Remember that perfect freedom is serving God.
Remember that God has set limits for you, and although you are free to ignore
them, it is not necessarily good for you to do so. Freedom means being free not
to do what you are free to do, as well as being free to do it. If you are not
free not to do what you are free to do, then you are not free at all, but merely
slaves to your desires, slaves to your bellies, slaves every bit as tightly
bound to a slavemaster as our ancestors in Egypt.
Having learned to use a knife and fork, we somehow assume that freedom means
we ought to use them more and more, feeding our bellies, since we are free to do
so, far beyond what is good for our bodies. Having learned to use a credit card,
both a personal one and a national one, we somehow assume that we owe it to
ourselves to use them more and more, feeding a beast that can turn and bite us
at any moment. Having learned to read and write, we somehow assume that being a
writer is good, even if we have only gibberish or nonsense to offer and even if
we fail to discriminate between what is good for us to read and what is not.
Having learned to use gunpowder and other explosives, we somehow assume that
that knowledge is a license to kill. In all of it, Paul reminds us, we make
destruction our destiny.
In this way, we are like the little girl who said, “I do, too, know how to
spell ‘banana.’ I just don’t know when to stop!” We do, too, know how to use our
freedom to get what we want. We just don’t know when to stop.
God will not stop us. Because even as God lays down the law, he knows that
someday we will break it, as we need to break it if ever we’re to find something
better than law to replace it. It’s the risk God has to take if ever we are to
find our way home again. Until and unless that happens, there’s no telling the
scrapes we will get into trying to lose him and find ourselves. Terrible
blunders will be made – disappointments and failures, hurts and losses of every
kind. And we’ll keep making them even after we’ve found ourselves too, of
course, because growing up is a process that goes on and on. And every hard
knock we ever get knocks God even harder still if that’s possible, and if and
when we finally come through more or less in one piece at the end, there’s maybe
no rejoicing greater than his in all creation.
“It has become so commonplace to speak of God as “our Father” that we forget
what an extraordinary metaphor it once was.”
Who are we? We are prodigals. The prodigal must stop himself. God will not
stop us. Using the freedom our Father has given us, we must stop ourselves.
“If the world is sane,” insists Buechner, ”then Jesus is mad as a hatter and
the Last Supper is the Mad Tea Party. The world says, Mind your own business,
and Jesus says, There is no such thing as your own business. The world says,
Follow the wisest course and be a success, and Jesus says, Follow me and be
crucified. The world says, Drive carefully – the life your save may be your own
– and Jesus says, Whoever would save his life will lose it and whoever loses his
life for my sake will find it. The world says, Law and order, and Jesus says,
Love. The world says, Get, and Jesus says, Give. [The world says, Use force to
get what you want, and Jesus points us to ‘our Father.’] In terms of the world’s
sanity, Jesus is crazy as a coot, and anybody who thinks he can follow him
without being a little crazy too is laboring less under a cross than under a
delusion.” (from Listening to Your Life.)
We are not just descendants; we are also ancestors, ancestors called to
remember not to neglect to give our children the freedom we have, the freedom to
discriminate between good and bad, the freedom to restrain appetite and desire,
the freedom to love as God loves, and the freedom to share all this with our
children and our children’s children. Is it possible that this is what that
crazy man Jesus meant about the door to salvation being narrow indeed?
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to
you, how often have I longed to take you in my arms and protect you, as a hen
takes her chicks under her wings, but you would not. You choose to go it on your
own. And now your house is destitute, for it has been built not by God, but by
you.” And whether we will ever finally come through more or less in one piece at
the end remains to be seen. Whether we will ever finally come through more or
less in one piece at the end depends, doesn’t it, this Lent and always, on how
we choose to use our freedom.
But the good news is that if ever we do finally come through more or less in
one piece at the end, there’s no rejoicing in the whole creation greater than
God’s.
In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.