A Curious Authority Matthew 21:23-32, Philippians 2:12-13

I am a student of authority.
From very early in my life I learned how to enter a room
and immediately discern who IN that room had authority OVER the room.
I’ve always been able to tell pretty quickly the one to whom I should defer.

I grew up with a pretty clear idea who in my life had authority over me.
and that gave me a certain sense of security.
My parents, of course – I said “Yes sir” and “Yes ma’am” without exception.
In fact I said “Yes sir” and “No ma’am” to anyone ten years or more older than me.
Certainly anyone in a uniform or wearing a badge of any kind had authority,
even if it was an 18 year old security guard at the Mall – if he had a badge….

Now, just because I’m very good as spotting the authority in the room
that doesn’t mean I’ve not had my share of opportunities to BE the authority.
In my Boy Scout troop I was a patrol leader, an assistant senior patrol leader,
a senior patrol leader, even an assistant scout master.
And the scouts were great because if you were the one in authority everyone knew it.
They had a little ceremony, gave you a special patch to wear on your sleeve.
If you gave an order and some rabble-rousing Tenderfoot
came back at you with, “Oh, yeah, sez who?”
You could point at the patch on your shoulder and snarl, “Sez me!”

All this is to say that I can really understand where the chief priests were coming from
in this morning’s passage from Matthew.
They were among the elite few in the Jewish religious system who had authority,
ESPECIALLY in Jerusalem.
They had the uniform, they had the fringes and phylacteries showing their rank.
They had the manner, the bearing, the confident stride
that comes with being the alpha male, the top dog.

So you can imagine Jesus was like fingernails on a chalkboard to their existence.
He was a rambling, shambling accident waiting to happen,
threatening to demolish the delicate balance
the chief priests and elders had worked so hard to achieve.

Remember, the events of this passage fall on the Monday
of the last week of Jesus’ life.
Just a day earlier he had entered the city with shouts of “Hosanna” ringing in his ears.
He rode a donkey and he might as well have had a bumper sticker
plastered across that donkey’s backside that read “Question Authority”
He came into town and had people buzzing about him
louder than anybody had EVER buzzed about the chief priests and elders.

Not only does Jesus enter the city in this provocative way
but he immediately climbs the high steps of the temple mount
enters the Hulda gate up through King Herod’s portico
and comes into the temple court – the chief priests’ HOME court .
There he turns over the tables of the money changers and drives them out.
Jesus heals some people and then leaves
before the chief priests and elders can decide what to say to him.
But when the chief priests come to work the next day
Jesus has gotten there first and he’s already set himself up in the temple court.
He’s drawn a crowd and he’s teaching them.

That’s when the chief priests and the elders of the people
come to him and DEMAND to know the very thing I would have wanted to know…
They asked the very question that would have been bugging me to death.
“By what authority are you doing these things,
and who GAVE you this authority?
In other words, where’s your badge?”
Jesus just did not compute for them.
He didn’t fit anywhere in their chain of command.
He wasn’t even on the organizational chart!

“By what authority are you doing these things and who gave you this authority?”
That’s a question from someone who finds great comfort
in keeping the pecking order straight.
It’s a question designed to protect turf and dampen innovation
and maintain the status quo.
It’s a question from someone who for too long
has lived his life according to carefully interpreted external social cues
instead of the internal movement of the Spirit.

“By what authority are you doing these things and who gave you this authority?”
The problem with the chief priests
is that they seem to only recognize one kind of authority.
In their system authority is bestowed on you by being born into the right family,
jumping through the appropriate hoops;
conforming to a certain role, mastering all the code words, the secret handshake.
And if you are INSIDE the elite circle you’ve got juice.
If you are OUTSIDE the elite circle you’ve got Zilch. Nothing. Nada.
They didn’t know what to do with Jesus whose authority was NOT a family legacy,
NOT earned through years of jumping through hoops.
They didn’t know what to do with his kind of authority that didn’t come with a uniform
but which simply infused his being,
bubbling up from within and instantly recognizable even to his enemies.

“By what authority are you doing these things and who gave you this authority?”
In typical fashion, Jesus answers the chief priests’ question with a question.
He asks them if John’s baptism was from heaven or was of human origin.
He traps them in their own narrow definition of authority
and they can’t, for the life of them, figure out how to wiggle away.
To drive his point home, Jesus tells them a parable,
just a little story that gets directly to the difference between their kind of authority
built on knowing the right words
and his kind of authority built on doing the right thing.

Don’t leave here thinking Jesus was an anarchist.
He certainly questioned hollow authority,
the kind of empty authority that’s based on privilege and bullying.
But he was all for the organic kind of authority that puts God’s will into action.

That’s the key here, putting God’s will into action.
That’s the source of genuine authority;
the kind of authority that is instantly recognizable in every culture
in every level of society.
Jesus’ tells the chief priest that this kind of authority is available
even to traitors and prostitutes once they catch a glimpse of God’s kingdom
and begin to live accordingly.

Basically, Jesus’ seems to have a view of authority
that says, “You’ll know it when you see it.”
Of course, this makes me nervous because it seems to have nothing to do with age,
or social position
or uniforms or badges.
When I walk into a room, If I go by Jesus’ definition of authority
I can’t simply look for the usual external cues
that let me know to whom I should defer.
I have to wait, and watch, and see if the person’s actions match her words
and if her actions seem to line up with what I know of God’s will.
Jesus says, you’ll know it when you see it
And from what I know of Jesus there are bound to be some surprises.

Two examples:
Many of you have read the book Three Cups of Tea
that tells of Greg Mortensen’s incredible efforts to build schools
and to educate girls in the high mountains of muslim-controlled Pakistan.
By all accounts he was a mess when he started his work.
He was living in his car half the time, a sort of vagabond mountain climber
who’d grown up the child of missionaries,
grief-stricken over the death of his younger sister.
It was on a botched mountain climbing trip that he stumbled into a Pakistani village
and was so touched by their hospitality that he pledged to come back
and build them a school.
He had no standing to do this. He had no powerful connections.
He had no leverage by which to bend others to do his will.
I’m not even sure he would have claimed it was God’s will.
It was just something he had to do. And he did.
and now 15 years after making his promise there are 78 schools
in Pakistan and Afghanistan as a direct result of his efforts.
That is authority.

On a smaller scale and closer to home,
there is a man in Winston-Salem, NC named Keith Smyre.
Keith washes and details cars for a living, traveling the city to do it.
He has regular places he goes and people love to watch him work.
He works with great energy, literally dancing as he works,
and he exudes joy with every swipe of his sponge.
In an article about Smyre, one woman is quoted as saying,
“His energy and enthusiasm is contagious.”
She goes on to say, “He doesn’t just wash my car.
We have lots of discussions about religion and faith.”
WHAT? She talks religion and faith with the guy who washes her car?
He has no seminary degree but he does have authority.
It is organic to the way he lives his life. You can’t miss it.

It’s a curious thing, this authority of Jesus,
this authority that comes not from military might or political intimidation,
not from wealth or club membership or University degree.
Paul comes about as close as anyone describing the source of this authority
when he writes to his friends in Philippi urging them to follow Jesus’ example.
Don’t imagine selfish ambition is going to get you what you want, Paul writes.
Don’t rely on your own conceit to give you that authority you’re looking for.
But follow Jesus’ path of humility and service,
doing God’s will,
enduring even the darkest times with the sure and certain knowledge
that just as God took Jesus from the despair of the cross
and exalted him to the place of ultimate authority,
God will give us each the authority we need to do God’s will.
That’s the only thing worth doing anyway.
And you don’t even need a badge.

God's Odd Calculus Exodus 16:1-8, Matthew 20:1-16

Imagine a world where the value of pi did NOT equal 3.1415926525…,
or the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle
was NOT equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides,
or, God forbid, ax squared + bx + c did NOT equal 0?.
Alright, most of you out there are saying to yourself…”So?”
But you engineers…you engineers understand that the world as we know it
would be very different if these classic mathematical formulas didn’t hold true.
We rely on their constancy.

There are certain GIVENS in this world we depend on –
theories that have risen up through centuries of scholarly inquiry and reflection
that seem to accurately describe the way things are and ought to be.
But every now and then there is a moment of new illumination;
every now and then there is a sudden crack in a pet assumption
and a radically different reality comes into focus;
Without warning a flat earth becomes round,
and this round earth moves out of the center of the solar system and becomes
just another planet circling the sun,

The initial response to such breakthroughs is usually resistance;
persecution by those who have a vested interest in the old way of seeing.
But once you shift your perspective to the new reality,
everything becomes so much clearer.

The thing that made Jesus such a threat to those in power
was that his teaching and ministry put a big crack in the general assumptions
that kept those in power IN power.
In Jesus, light and color was streaming through, illuminating the dull, gray landscape
and it irked those who liked things the way they were.
In a direct challenge to all the political, economic, social, and religious elements
that characterized the GIVENS of life in Jesus’ day
Matthew reports that Jesus came talking about the Kingdom of God,
NOT as a FUTURE promise, but as a PRESENT reality.
He came amongst them talking about God’s odd new calculus
where the first would be last and the last first.

The first will be last and the last first.
THAT is a huge crack in the given order of things.
Who in their right mind would ever have THAT idea?
It’s AGAINST direct experience.
It’s AGAINST all common sense.
What kind of world could operate in that manner?
Would we WANT a world that operated in that manner?

Jesus tells a parable to illustrate his point;
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning
to hire laborers for his vineyard.
After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage,
he sent them into his vineyard.”
We’re told the landowner did the same thing four more times,
only these times he told the laborers he would pay them “whatever is right.”

Although the end of this parable is a stunning reversal
of the GIVENS of economic theory and good business practice,
UNTIL the end, the landowner behaves very much
according to what many in our business world would call “best practices.”

First of all, we have in this story an engaged landowner.
He is not one to delegate the work of hiring to his manager as one might expect.
At the Darden School they call this MBWA - “Management by Walking Around.”
Second, we need to note that the landowner isn’t particularly generous
in the deal he makes with the first workers.
The usual daily wage was just enough to get by, nothing more.
Though he is eccentric, we can’t accuse him of being economically naïve.
Third, the landowner apparently can’t stand idleness.
Five times he schleps down to the village square to pick up workers.
Nobody who CAN work should sit idle.
Who can argue with that?

So, the workers worked – some fortunate to be hired first thing
and able to enjoy the security as they worked through the day
that when evening came they would have enough to get by until the next day.
The others, however, did not enjoy that security.
They expected less than the usual days wage
which was better than nothing, but not enough to keep them and their families
from slipping deeper into poverty
Still, by virtue of the landowner’s good business practices
and willingness to hire even at the end of the day,
everyone would have something.

We know the rest of the story.
The eccentric landowner sets it up so that the “All Day” laborers
will be last in the pay line
so they can see that everyone present is paid the usual day’s wage.
They are set up to feel the intense discomfort that anybody feels
when a cherished assumption is blown out of the water,
when suddenly 2 + 2 = 5 2/3.
These workers grumbled against the landowner – and who can blame them –
because it hadn’t yet hit them how life in God’s kingdom
where everyone gets what they need
is, in the end, far better for everyone
than a world where some have everything and some starve.

Still, all the Sunday school piety aside
we look at this parable and immediately our defenses go on alert.
A little voice says, “What is this? Communism?”
Another little voice says, “This is a sure fire recipe for a welfare state!”
But look closer.
Jesus doesn’t refute a system where there is a landowner and workers.
And nobody in the parable gets paid for doing nothing.

The landowner is richer than anyone.
But in God’s kingdom that doesn’t make him better or worse than anyone else;
It only means he bears the responsibility for treating the workers of his village fairly.
The point is NOT that he is compelled to pay them the same amount.
But as one who has everything,
he does bear the responsibility for seeing that they each receive enough.


This is the critical difference between the marketplace and the kingdom of God.
In the marketplace it’s every person for him or her self.
In God’s kingdom, we have a responsibility to each other.
In the marketplace we are angry if our portfolio loses money
even if we have enough.
In God’s kingdom, what matters is not my return on investment,
but that all God’s children have enough, not just to get by, but to thrive.

We in this country are feeling the miserable consequences of economic practices
that have been motivated largely by greed and self interest.
It’s easy to point our finger at mortgage brokers or Wall Street gamblers
but any of us who benefited from rising stocks or property value appreciation
were willing, if silent partners in the process.
At the same time developing nations are being crushed by rising fuel and food prices.
It’s enough to make me want to ball up in a protective shell
and just ride it out until things recover.

But now, more than ever, is the time for the Church of Jesus Christ,
for those of us who claim citizenship in the Kingdom of God
to speak of an alternative world view
than the one that’s gotten us in this mess.
It’s time for us, not to ball up, but to extend our hand further to those who are hurting,
to those who do not have enough.
Heine Vingerling, our partner who with others has founded orphanages
and feeding programs in Haiti was here visiting a few weeks ago.
He met with our Mission Ministry Team and recounted how it’s never been so bad.
But then he said, “But isn’t it wonderful that God has given us this opportunity
to be the church and to take advantage of this chance to serve in God’s name.”

The first shall be last and the last first.
It’s not so much a program as a state of mind.
It’s hard for us to take it to heart;
it’s so different from our usual way of looking at things, such an odd calculus.
The interesting thing, though, is that, time and time again,
those who have the courage to try God’s new calculus
find that it actually seems to work.

Mark Labberton, a Presbyterian pastor in Berkley, CA
tells of a bakery he goes to sometimes called Bake Sale Betty’s.1
It’s in a bad neighborhood in a run down shopping center
and business after business in that spot has failed – until Betty’s.
Labberton recounts the first time he went to Betty’s with his wife.
They ordered coffee and a pastry to split.
Betty’s husband, the clerk, saw the pastry they almost chose,
and he put that pastry on their plate as well.
“Here,” he said, “I think you’ll really like this. No charge. Just tell me if you like it.”
As they got up to leave, they decided to buy one of Betty’s famous chicken pot pies.
Again, as they went to pay, the clerk also put an entire apple pie in the bag.
“This apple pie goes great with the chicken pot pie,” He said. No charge.

Anybody looking at Bake Sale Betty’s profit margin
might say they’re nuts to give food away like that.
But their only advertising is word of mouth
and whenever they’re open a line snakes out the door.
They could carefully account for every crumb,
calculating the maximum amount the market will bear and charging accordingly.
But they’ve apparently caught onto a new math, an odd sort of calculus,
where the first will be last and the last first, and everyone has what they need.

_____________
1 Labberton, Mark, “Betty’s Secret Ingredient,” Leadership Journal, Summer 2008.

The Place of God Genesis 50:15-21, Matthew 18:21-35

Jack leaned his bicycle carefully against the lamp post.
He’d waxed it that morning to keep it looking brand new
and he didn’t want to smudge or – God forbid – SCRATCH the finish.
Never had a ten year old been so proud of a bicycle.

Jack had only allowed himself to wish for the bicycle, never to expect it,
but his mother had seen him eyeing it in the hardware store window
and, without his knowledge, had taken in extra sewing to earn the money.
With a bit of sympathetic credit from Bailey Jones, the hardware man,
she’d managed to have it parked by Jack’s breakfast chair
the morning of his tenth birthday.

Jack and his best friend Walter popped into the Flour Pot Bakery
where Jack was going to treat Walter to a lemon filled donut, their favorite.
Birthday money was for spending – that’s what Jack thought anyway.
Now that he had a bike, he could get a paper route and earn money to save.

They were only in the bakery for a minute – two minutes tops,
but when they came back outside Jack’s heart leaped into his throat.
In the street Jack saw Jesse Blackwell riding his new bike up and down the sidewalk
popping wheelies to the cheers of his usual gang of three.

Jesse’s father, Burt Blackwell, was the mayor and the richest man in town.
He bought Jesse whatever he wanted
and turned a blind eye to the petty vandalism and cruel harassment
Jesse and his posse perpetrated against the good citizens of the town.

Jesse saw Jack and Walter come out of the bakery
and aimed the bike right at them as he pedaled hard.
Just before he plowed into them, he wrenched the handlebars hard left
and skidded on the wet sidewalk.
When Jack and Walter jumped back, Jesse laughed a cruel laugh.

“Nice bike,” he sneered, “For a girl!”
“Jesse, please get off my bike,” Jack stammered.
Jesse mocked him in a falsetto voice, “Jesse, puleeeese get off my bike.”

Jack didn’t know what to do.
He could see his bike was already dirty from Jesse’s muddy shoes.
His mother repeatedly drilled into him
that Christians solve their problems with words, not fists,
and he was paralyzed by her voice in his head
arguing with the rage that erupted from his gut.
Suddenly Jesse swung his leg off the bike, lifted it,
and slammed it down sideways on the concrete.
“This is the cheapest bike I’ve ever seen.
I wouldn’t ride it if you paid me.”
He looked at his buddies and they all laughed a great, loud, humiliating laugh.

When Jesse had gone, Jack gingerly lifted his bike to an upright position.
He winced at the ugly scratches on the frame.
The seat was crooked, but he managed to straighten it
and he thought maybe, except for the scratches, it would be OK.
But when he mounted the bike it only took two revolutions of the wheel
to realize that the pedal was slightly bent.
It was ride-able, but every time he pushed the pedal he felt the wobble.

He could have told his mother, but a ten year old doesn’t run to his mother.
He thought of what she would say to him about turning the other cheek
and forgiving those who do you harm.
He thought of his Sunday school lessons on forgiveness
and his eyes narrowed as he said to himself, “That’s one.”

From that day forward, Jack made it his mission to keep tabs on Jesse Blackwell.
He purposely didn’t get his bike fixed
because the wobble in his pedal served as a constant reminder
of what Jesse Blackwell had taken from him.
Walter and some of his other friends noticed Jack’s apparent fascination
with all things Blackwell,
and thought it peculiar that Jack would make a point to hang out
where Jesse was and to cross paths with Jesse as much as possible.

For Jesse’s part, he became less cruel as he matured,
but he was still very self centered
and he enjoyed immensely the popularity his father’s money could buy.
He never seemed to even notice Jack, but any time he passed Jack without speaking
or any time a loose bit of gravel would pop up from the tire of Jesse’s 15 speed bike
and hit Jack’s shoe
or any time Jesse’s gym bag would accidentally bump against Jack
Jack could be heard to murmur “That’s 52,” or “That’s 87.”

Eventually Walter tired of the fact that Jack never seemed to want to do anything
but be where Jesse was.
Walter and Jack’s other friends went out for the tennis team
or joined the Outdoor Club and went hiking.
Jack went out for football because Jesse went out for football
and he rode the bench all season while Jesse started at quarterback.
Once, in practice, Jesse accidentally hit Jack in the shoulder with an errant pass.
“My bad,” Jesse called.
“That’s 274,” Jack mumbled.

As Jack’s senior year approached an end, his mother was beside herself with worry
that her once bright, happy boy had turned into a sullen loner
who either seemed to hang around aimlessly
or hole up in his room surfing the internet.
Jack had applied to the University where Jesse had a football scholarship
but he hadn’t been accepted due to poor grades.

His mother didn’t know what to do to acknowledge Jack’s coming graduation
since Jack himself had shown no excitement about any of the usual rites of passage.
She begged Walter to invite Jack on the after-graduation beach trip,
and for old times sake Walter issued the invitation,
but Jack turned it down.

It was at graduation practice on Friday
that all the seniors were in the auditorium lining up as they would the following day.
Jesse and some of his chums had smuggled in squirt guns
and, when the teachers weren’t looking,
they were squirting their unsuspecting classmates.

At one point, Jesse pulled his gun and aimed a stream of water
at Lisa Drummond, a cute blonde standing in front of Jack.
Lisa moved aside just as Jesse fired and the stream soaked Jack’s left ear.
He turned to see Jesse grin, shrug, and mouth the words, “Sorry, dude.”
Jack just stared. Then a look of triumph filled his eyes
and a smile of victory stretched his lips.
In a voice loud enough for Jesse to hear, he said, “That’s 491.”
Jesse was puzzled – he’d always thought Jack a little weird anyway –
and he said, “Whatever….”

The next day graduation went as planned.
The sky cleared at the last minute and the students went through their paces.
Jack’s mother was pleasantly surprised at Jack’s upbeat mood
and she took Jack and his grandparents out to Golden Corral after the ceremony.
Jack didn’t want to linger with his family, however, because he had things to do.
He knew from overhearing Jesse Blackwell as they were lining up
that the QB and his buddies were leaving at four that afternoon for the beach.
Jesse’s Dad had given his spoiled son a new Mercedes convertible for graduation
and Jesse couldn’t wait to let the top down and wind it out on the highway.

At home, Jack carefully closed the door to his bedroom and took up a loose floorboard.
He gingerly removed the hand grenade he’d found advertised on the internet.
You can get anything on the internet, he thought, if you’re determined enough.
The guy he’d bought it from had assured him it was still armed
but that as long as the pin was in it, there was no danger.
Good thing - It had been under Jack’s floor for three years

He put on his hunting jacket with the big pockets
and put the grenade in one pocket and his Bible in the other.
Adrenalin surged through his body making him feel more alive than he had
since his tenth birthday.
Jack opened the door to the sagging storage shed behind their house
and took out his old bicycle.
He’d put new tires on it the night before and they were pumped up tight.
He was too big for it, of course, but he could still balance himself on it.
As he rode it down the street, the pedal wobbling as it had since that fateful day,
Jack let his mind play on all the harassment, all the slights, all the abuse
he had suffered at the hands of Jesse Blackwell.
A single tear of frustration escaped before he bit his lip
and let his right hand rest on the round lump in his jacket pocket.

Jack rode until he reached the park just three blocks from Jesse’s house.
It was 3:45. Jesse probably already had the top down and was loading the car.
Under an ancient oak, Jack reached in his left coat pocket and pulled out his Bible.
It fell open to the passage Jack had read every day for the past eight years.
Tears stinging his eyes he read from Matthew 18, verse 21:

“21 At that point Peter got up the nerve to ask, "Master, how many
times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven?"
22 Jesus replied, "Seven! Hardly. Try seventy times seven.”

Automatically Jack did the math in his head. It was like a mantra.
“Seventy times seven is four hundred and ninety,” He said to himself.
“I have to forgive four hundred and ninety times.
But not four hundred ninety-one.”
With his right hand he reached into his other pocket and pulled out the grenade.
It was Army surplus, olive green. He hefted it to feel its weight.
Replacing his Bible, he used his left hand to pull the metal pin
arming the grenade.
Just three blocks and he would find release.
Just three blocks and he would repay Jesse Blackwell for eight years of torment.

Jack pedaled the bike down the tree lined street,
steadying the handlebar with his left hand, gripping the grenade in his right.
There was no traffic at all
and it was like he was hovering somewhere above the young man on the bicycle
watching himself ride to his destiny.
Jack turned left and found himself on a slight incline.
He was forced to pedal harder, but not so hard he couldn’t do it sitting down.
He started to sweat under the hunting jacket.

One block away as he was pushing the bent pedal in its circuit
the aluminum crank, weakened at the place where it was bent, suddenly snapped.
The force of Jack’s momentum finding no resistance in the broken pedal crank
threw him off balance.
His right foot shot out, his left hand pushed the handlebar crooked,
he started to fall and instinctively his right hand reached out to catch himself….

Jesse Blackwell slammed the trunk and, slipping into the soft leather driver’s seat,
leaned over to give Lisa Drummond a lusty kiss.
He cranked the engine of his new car and listened a moment, loving that powerful purr.

Just then they heard a loud explosion from fairly close by.
“What was that?” Lisa asked, momentarily concerned.
Jesse just shrugged – the world was his oyster.
“Who cares,” he laughed, “We’re outta here!”

Nothing is more certain than the truth
that FORGIVENESS is the heart of life in God’s kingdom.
It is the essence of what it means to follow Jesus.
Still, nothing is harder to do
than forgive someone who has done a terrible wrong.
When injustice is done to us or to someone else we care about,
it is our human vanity that makes us suppose
that the scales of justice are in our hands and our hands alone.
If we don’t retaliate, if we don’t make the perpetrator pay,
then our fear is that the universe will be out of balance,
that we or those whom we love will look foolish or be taken advantage of.

Joseph, Jacob’s son, knew differently.
When Joseph’s brothers realized the Egyptian official
who had the power over them of life and death
was the younger brother they had sold into slavery so many years before,
they assumed his revenge against them would be swift and sure.
But Joseph responded to his brothers with words that summarize the heart
of the biblical witness on forgiveness.
“Be not afraid,” Joseph told them. “Am I in the place of God? “

None of us is in the place of God.
If we were, we would know that forgiveness is the only thing
that can set us free from ourselves;
the only thing that can keep us from being consumed by fear.

It’s not for our brother’s sake or our sister’s sake that Jesus urges us not to keep score.
It is for OUR sake.
It is for our sake.

Wooly Poetics Psalm 100, Romans 14:1-12

If you’ve got a few minutes to spare sometime,
standing in the checkout line or on hold with computer tech support,
then you can easily entertain yourself by asking the simple question, “Why?”
Just that. “Why?”
Like, “Why, of all the people in the world, did I marry the person I married?”
Or, “Why did I end up working in D.C. instead of Las Vegas?”
Or, “Why do I find myself a Christian, going to Rockfish Presbyterian Church
instead of a Muslim attending a mosque in Istanbul?”
We in the church file such questions under the heading, “God’s providence,”
but scientifically we may, in the end, simply say, “It’s just random.”
“Our lives are governed by random chance.”
“I zigged when I could have zagged, but that’s the nature of choice
and once I’ve made a choice there’s no going back.”

But even in the world of science, things are not always as they seem.
With the advent of powerful computers and the capacity to see on a subatomic level
even many scientists are beginning to give in to the idea
that beneath the seemingly chaotic and random nature of existence
there is a deeper, more elegant, unanticipated order to things.

In other words, scientists are beginning to catch on to what poets have known all along:
Being able to see the order inherent in God’s creation
simply requires taking a longer view than we might otherwise take;
being patient, opening our eyes a little wider,
entertaining possibilities outside the norm.

It’s a poet in Northern England who has come up with a novel way
to illustrate the deeper meaning beneath seemingly random movements.
Writer Valerie Laws received a public arts council grant of £2000
to create a living poem with sheep.1
She took a haiku poem which reads:

CLOUDS GRAZE THE SKY;
BELOW, SHEEP DRIFT GENTLE
OVER FIELDS, SOFT MIRRORS,
WARM WHITE SNOW.

and she painted one word from the poem on the back of each sheep.
From a raised platform, she then watched the sheep rearrange themselves
as they grazed and slept in a pasture.
She made notes from the groupings she observed,
and from the notes she created new poems.
Some examples:

SNOW CLOUDS THE SKY,
GENTLE SHEEP GRAZE

SOFT WHITE MIRRORS BELOW
DRIFT WARM.

WARM DRIFT, GRAZE GENTLE,
WHITE BELOW THE SKY;
SOFT SHEEP MIRRORS SNOW CLOUDS.

I’m guessing that some groupings were more poetically significant than others.
GRAZE THE DRIFT SKY OVER MIRRORS is a tough sell as a poem,
but generally, I think Ms. Laws makes her point.
There is beauty to be found even in what we might think of as a random pattern.
There is meaning beneath even the most chaotic-seeming series of events.
Ms. Laws’ poetic experiment reiterated what scientists had already discovered.
It usually takes patience and the willingness to take the long view
before the holy and sacred, the beautiful and the meaningful, begins to emerge.

Psalm 100 says,
“Know that the Lord is God, it is he that made us, and we are his.
We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.”
Jesus himself used the metaphor of a flock of sheep to describe his followers,
and he referred to himself as the “good shepherd.”
Author and Lutheran pastor Peter Marty suggests that the church would do well
to think of God as writing poetry with OUR lives.
It’s as though God has marked each of us with a word,
and waits to see how WE will group ourselves.

You have grouped yourselves, at least on this day, as the congregation
of Rockfish Presbyterian Church.
You are a voluntary organization, not one of you is required to come,
and if you think of the choices that have guided you here as entirely random,
then it’s easy to imagine that it really doesn’t matter if you come or not.

But if poets and scientists and theologians are right, your presence here is NOT random,
God is writing a poem with you here, God has marked your back,
and EACH of you is a critical component of God’s poetic experiment.
Whether you are a tiny preposition in God’s poem
or a complicated twenty-dollar adverb,
if you are not here, the poem is incomplete, its meaning diminished.

Another thing to remember about this kind of poetic experiment,
is that not every grouping will result in profound meaning and unparalleled beauty.
Some Sundays you come to worship and you leave uninspired.
Words fall flat, prayers grate, the deepest feeling you experience is indigestion.
On these days our grouping seems a jumbled mess, a chaotic cacophony.

This is where faith comes in. And patience. The willingness to take the long view.
The richer and deeper the pattern, the more difficult it is to discern right away.
The loudest critics of church life –
the ones most likely to grouse about the church’s irrelevance
or how the church is riddled with hypocrisy,
are the ones who likely have never stayed with one congregation long enough
for the patterns of meaning to emerge.
The patterns of God’s mercy and righteousness are sometimes simple and apparent,
but sometimes they are complex and intricate,
visible only through the long lens of hindsight.

Other than not showing up consistently
what must frustrate God to no end is the way we so willingly limit the vocabulary
we as a congregation offer God to work with as God writes God’s sacred poems.
It is our nature to spend time with people who are like us –
to foster conformity, to exclude those whose habits and practices
seem strange and unfamiliar.
But we have to realize that when we group ourselves with such exclusivity
in this congregation,
when we invite into this space only those with whom we feel most comfortable,
it’s like offering God the vocabulary of the old Dick and Jane Readers to work with
instead of the eccentric, eclectic, soaring lyricism
of King David, or Langston Hughes, or Elizabeth Barrett Browning, or Dr. Seuss.
When we so willingly segregate ourselves from other who are different
It’s like being content with:
ROSES ARE RED
VIOLETS ARE BLUE,
SUGAR IS SWEET,
AND SO ARE YOU.

instead of:
LOVE
LOVE IS A RIPE PLUM
GROWING ON A PURPLE TREE.
TASTE IT ONCE
AND THE SPELL OF ITS ENCHANTMENT
WILL NEVER LET YOU BE.2
On those days when God’s poetry fails to inspire us,
it may be because key words are missing.

The church in Rome was apparently under the misconception
that they would be more useful to God
if they could just trim the branches a bit;
if they could bring more order to their ranks
by being more exclusive about whom they congregated with.
“We don’t need no stinkin’ vegetarians,” some suggested.
“Oh yeah? Well WE don’t want Bambi killers,” others cried.
Some observed the Sabbath strictly as they’d done all their lives.
Others dismissed Sabbath observance as a remnant of Jewish law.
Each thought the other was wrong and should be shown the door.

In the midst of this melee, Paul blew his referee’s whistle,
held up his hand and said, “Stop.”
If Paul had anticipated Valerie Law’s sheep poetry experiment back then
he might have said something like this:
“Look. the church of Jesus Christ is like a herd of sheep.
We’re not that bright.
We keep stepping in manure
But for some reason, God chooses us for God’s own.
Never is there going to be a perfect church.
Never will we come to the point where God’s presence and activity
is one hundred percent apparent one hundred percent of the time.
The way we keep limiting the material God has to work with,
it’s a wonder God is able to do anything with us at all.

But that’s the mystery of the covenant God made way back with Abraham.
And that’s the promise of the communion we celebrate today.
God’s promise is that our lives do have meaning.
and that it’s when we offer ourselves to God and to each other
that the “Why” of our existence comes into focus,
and our life together becomes sheer poetry.

1 Marty, Peter, The Poetry of Sheep: A Metaphor for Congregational Life, The Christian Century,
September 9, 2008, p. 10.

2 Hughes, Langston, Love Song for Lucinda.