| Note: No sermon is quite the same when you read it. You miss the inflections, the expression that you gain in the hearing. The words below are only a close approximation of the sermon, taken from handwritten notes. Nevertheless, the words (as best as can be deciphered!) are shared with you here. The Webmeister |
Fourth Sunday in Lent The other day I was trying to grab a quick lunch and went into a restaurant near the church. In front of me in line was a woman in a wheel chair accompanied by a young man. She had no arms or legs; she had basically just a torso and a head. I glanced at the cashier and she had that fixed kind of smile you put on when you are trying to will yourself to look normal, as if nothing unusually is right in front of you. I recognized the look because I'm pretty sure that's how I looked. The woman was probably about 35 and I'm ashamed to admit it but one of my first feelings was of revulsion, a little bit the way I felt when I visited a leprosarium in Malawi. I'm not proud of the feeling but it was there. The second feeling I had was one of identification with the woman. I remember thinking, "My God, what would I do if this were me?" And then suddenly I saw the young mana reach around the woman for a purse hanging on the corner of the wheel chair and take out a wallet and put down a credit card which the clerk rang up and then returned the form to be signed. And the young man took the pen lying on the counter and place dit in between the chin and shoulder of the woman and she signed her signature on the credit card receipt. I then ordered and sat down, but all through my lunch I kept looking over at the woman as if just casually surveying the room, but in reality trying to imagine being in her place. She again took up a fork between her chin and shoulder and managed to feed herself. I was amazed. That which had at first repulsed me began to fill me with an admiration for a human spirit. That which I had first viewed only with a fearful pity now filled me with a most powerful desire to quit whining about my paltry problems. As I left the restaurant I pondered the need to look more carefully at the things I'm afraid of or that repulse me, because if you never look closely, you never see the sometimes hidden grace and power that exists at the hearty of life. I was reading an article in Newsweek Magazine about a anew and extremely popular book touted by Oprah Winfrey written by a TV producer from Australia called The Secret. The book is about how to change yourself by controlling what you focus on, what you think about. In other words, if you are trying to lose weight you don't look at fat people. You just don't look at what you don't want to be. It's like you can be infected by bad thoughts. I wonder what would have happened if I had used this technique with the woman who had no arms or legs. If I had refused to look, would I have seen her sign her own name or eat her own food or would I have left the restaurant with a feeling of humility and awe. I often wonder what we miss in life by not paying attention, but I equally wonder what I miss in life by looking the other way and trying to think positive thoughts. What did the German people think when they saw their wretched, beaten, Jewish fellow Germans marched along roads to railway cattle cars. What do any of us see when we look away from anything we think depressing or too hard to think about and then go to sleep at night? Do we also see the power of hope in spite of fear and revulsion? I can never forget the exhibit I once saw at the United Nations building in Manhattan. I was going as a tourist because it was very near the Episcopal Church Headquarters building which I was visiting as an Episcopal seminarian tourist. I entered the main lobby and was met by long rows of blown up black and white photographs of sheared headed children. The eyes were sunken and their faces gaunt in what seemed like "mug shots." And in a sense that is exactly what they were. They were photos the NAZI's took in their mania for recordkeeping of children in the concentration camps. As I walked past these hundreds and hundreds of photographs I suddenly walked into a collection of colored pictures that were framed. They were pictures of trees and butterflies and flowers, of people holding hands and smiling. These were pictures created by the children whose faces were in the pictures in the death camps and saved and stored by the prison guards and then abandoned before the Allies overran the camps. How odd it was, how strange and jarring, how painful and yet wonderful to see the glowing pictures of life and the gray faces of those who had drawn them in spite of the darkness that surrounded them. What I saw at first glance was not what God wanted me to really see when I looked at the woman in the restaurant. What I saw at first glance when I first entered the UN lobby and looked at rows of black and white photos of children was not what God wanted me to see. Who is it that we look away from because we are repulsed or afraid or depressed by at first glance? Who is the person we miss who might give us a glimpse of God? I wonder if this is not what was in the hearts of the "Scribes and Pharisees" who had invited Jesus to dinner in today's Gospel reading. Were they repulsed by the "tax collectors and sinners" that were coming near trying to hear Jesus speak? Were they grumbling because "sinners" were so presumptuous as to imagine that they could actually have any possibility of being loved by God? that they could be so bold as to imagine that God could change their lives? They said about Jesus, "This fellow welcomes sinners and even eats with them. It was at this moment that Jesus tells one of his best stories to the grumbling scribes and Pharisees, a story so full of love and life that I think even a person with a heart of ice would find a melting power. It seems a father had 2 children. The older child had always obeyed what he thought the rules were. The younger child had always been unable to follow the rules. He finally asked for his share of his inheritance and left his home and family. The money ran out and the good times disappeared and the younger son hit absolute rock bottom in his life. But strangely enough (as some who pay attention or know from their own lives, hitting rock bottom may be one of the greatest spiritual gifts you can receive in life) the young man "came to himself" (it says in today's translation). The New English Bible translates the phrase as, "he came to his senses." In other words, he regained his "sanity" or maybe more to the point, for the first time in his life he was sane. He decided that he had to change, that anything was better than where he found himself. And he decided to go back to his father's house and not even claim to be a child, but only a servant. And as he limped down the long road home with this speech running through his head and heart like a song. Jesus said (as he told the story, to the scribes and Pharisees)…The father saw his boy coming down the road in the distance. I wonder if he could tell it was his son by the way he walked or the way he held his head? Had he been looking down that road every day, hoping, praying, waiting, wondering if his child would ever return? I wonder if God looks down the road waiting and hoping and wondering for us? Well, in the story the old man saw the boy and Jesus said that the father's heart was filled with pity and he ran up the road to meet the young man limping home and he threw his arms around his child and held him and kissed him. And the boy began his mantra of unworthiness and repentance, but it was too late… The love and forgiveness had already been dispensed, given not be taken back. And you and I both know the rest of the story. We know about the grumbling and resentment of the older brother. Who thought that he alone held his father's love. And then Jesus finishes his story with words from the old father to his older son. And I like to imagine that as Jesus did he looked straight into the eyes of those scribes and Pharisees at that dinner party. Who were the "older brothers" to those "sinners," they so angrily condemned who came trying to find their way home to the love of God their Father. Jesus appeals to them, the scribes and Pharisees and he appeals to us to look deeper. Look beneath your fear and revulsion. Look longer to see God do a miracle because it is possible for God to transform any life, even your own. It is possible for God to give the grace to a person with no arms or legs to live her life and sign her checks with her chin and shoulder. It is possible for children in the valley of the shadow of death to create pictures of life and beauty. It is possible for a person who has hit bottom to find that God is waiting for him. Jesus appeals to the Scribes and Pharisees. He appeals to each of us just as his story says "The father begged his oldest child." "Son we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and has been found." My dear friends, this is the gospel of Jesus. Let no one tell you otherwise. The gateway to the kingdom is forgiveness. God asks us to never look away from life, but rather have the courage (with him helping) to look deep beneath all we would avoid and there we might see truly and begin to comprehend the true wonder of God's power. Amen. The Reverend James T. Tucker March 18, 2007 *Past sermons may be found here. |
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