May 08, 10:30am (Kevin Westling)
We do not have to get into the practice of surrender, without a doubt we can lead a fine life without it. But if we want to have a spiritual life, if we want to get deeper, it’s all about surrender. I wonder about this… I wonder about the fact that even though I know that surrender is an abiding truth, why I still resist it so dog-gone much. I wonder about an alternative, even now, I still wonder if there is an alternative to surrender. I know there isn’t, but I still wonder about it. It’s like that joke with the punch line: “Is there anybody else up there?”
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Good morning.
I wonder about this…
I wonder about a mostly urbanized,
non-agrarian,
21st century Church
left to utilize
shepherd and sheep images and metaphors.
How we going to do that?
I wonder about this…
I wonder about a time 21 years ago
when Katy and I had climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro
in Tanzania, East Africa.
It took us 4 days of slow walking to reach 15,500 ft.
Altitude is a funny thing,
it affects some people more than others.
Jimmy Carter made it to the top of the mountain,
just over 19,000 feet
but Neil Armstrong didn’t –
it was the altitude.
I was a smoker,
not in great shape
and Katy was a runner and in fabulous shape.
She got altitude sickness and I didn’t.
But at midnight on the fifth day
her lungs started filling with liquid
and our guide, a Tanzanian Lutheran named David,
determined that we had to go down immediately.
Immediately still meant walking,
in total darkness,
walking slowly
down the mountain.
Immediately meant what it did
before the modern era,
before technology
and speed
and rapid deployment of resources.
Immediately meant
David holding her by one arm
and Asyrre, David’s assistant,
holding her by the other arm with the lone light.
Immediately meant
I stumbled behind them in the dark
carrying whatever stuff I was carrying –
behind Asyrre
holding a 19th century style kerosene lantern.
Climbing Kilimanjaro
is not really climbing, it is hiking.
At that altitude,
even at the 12,500 feet of the camp
to which we were descending,
there are no trees.
It is a moonscape really.
Deep red and yellow soil,
almost like dust,
blanketing everything as if velvet;
and boulders the size of Buffalo 3-story houses
hap-hazardly strewn across the landscape
from a long ago volcanic eruption –
all of it looking
like a Salvador Dali painting, at least by day.
At night…
it was like a space walk –
so dark,
so very dark
and so many, many stars seemingly so close above.
Shooting stars traipsing across the dome of the sky,
but you didn’t have to squint
or be patient to see them.
Noises in the night:
animals,
imagination,
ghostly spirits dancing upon the unseen rocks?
You get the picture.
An utterly alien place
with its strange landscape hidden in the darkness,
and the anxiety and anguish of some unfamiliar illness
and my utter powerlessness to help.
But there they were,
David and Asyrre,
shepherds,
leading us,
yeah through the valley of the shadow of death,
and suddenly,
strangely,
oddly…
I feared no evil.
From somewhere,
somehow,
I trusted our shepherds.
That is the first
and perhaps only time,
I have understood that word, “shepherd.”
“Shepherd” came to mind,
as did the 23rd psalm,
while we walked, one hazardous step at a time,
across a steep and treacherous valley
that I remembered in my mind from earlier that day
but could not see in the dark.
Trust our shepherds – it was that or fear.
When I surrendered to that fact,
and fell into the arms of that moment,
I felt myself straighten up
from the crouch I had not known I was in.
I wonder about this…
I wonder about how to make connections –
deep,
powerful,
visceral connections
between our strange old stories
of long ago people in distant places,
with our immediate moment.
I wonder about this…
I wonder about what will happen
if we continue to fail to make those connections?
And yet it is such
a strained and distant relationship we have with those old stories and those ancient people.
I wonder about this…
I wonder about the author of
the Gospel according to John.
I wonder about John because he did not know Jesus,
and he lived far away,
very far away,
by time and place,
from where Jesus lived.
At best,
John wrote sixty years
and three-hundred miles away
from anything to do with
the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth.
Yet, he makes speeches for Jesus.
He places on the lips of Jesus,
long, involved and often complex
prayers, sermons and theological images.
Where did he come up with these things?
I wonder about this…
I do not raise this question
in a hostile, suspicious way –
although that is how I used to feel
about the Gospel of John.
Now I just wonder about him…
about his imagination or dreams or whatever the muse that delivered fully cooked speeches
for the tender, young Messiah-movement
not yet old enough to be called “Christianity.”
So here is the skinny on John
so that you can wonder along with me –
here’s what we know about him:
nothing.
In fact, John was probably not John
but several Johns.
Those who study such things for a living,
think that the Gospel of John was written and edited
by several people over time,
and that what we read today
has been sculpted by many hands.
But they started from somewhere,
and the scholars who work on this Gospel
believe that the corpus – of original body of it –
had a basic coherence to which much was added.
John’s Gospel, they propose,
had two major purposes
when it was first written.
The first was to stand in opposition
to the synagogue –
or the Jewish followers of Jesus.
In other words,
John was originally written as an argument
against staying a reform movement of Judaism
and in favor of the idea of a church.
Church, not synagogue
could be John’s campaign theme
and a major plank in his theological platform.
The second purpose to John’s Gospel
is as an argument against
the John the Baptist movement.
You see, John the Baptist was far more well-known
and popular in his day than Jesus was,
at least that is what we think.
Both men were executed by civil authority
as treasonous revolutionaries
so presumably they both had popular followings.
But in the several decades following their deaths,
John the Baptist had the edge
in carrying the popular imagination.
So John’s Gospel makes considerable effort,
as do the other Gospels,
to subordinate The Baptist to Jesus.
So you might say
that the Gospel of John was a propaganda tract
that promoted Church-over-synagogue
and Jesus-over-John-the-Baptist.
So now that we know,
we don’t have to just wonder
about the Good Shepherd image.
Who is the Good shepherd?
Oh, it is Jesus not John the Baptist.
Jesus is the “good” one.
Then John has Jesus say:
“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.
I must bring them also.”
Who are those other sheep?
Followers of the Baptist.
Members of the synagogues.
“So there will be one flock”
John has Jesus say, “one shepherd.”
I wonder about this…
I wonder about John’s world
in relationship to our world.
You see, according to John,
those other guys have to be put out of business
and brought into the fold –
a basic business consolidation strategy
of beating the competition
and taking them over.
I don’t fault John for seeing the world
and religion as a dog-eat-dog enterprise
because that has been a basic human flaw
for as far back as we can see.
But it really sticks out like a soar thumb today, doesn’t it?
With the lunacy of
Northern Ireland,
Israel and Palestine,
India and Pakistan,
Al Qaeda and The United States,
Sri Lanka and Tamil,
such sectarianism just seems
stupid,
and ignorant
and utterly antithetical to the core of any religion.
So, while Baptism and the community of Baptism
is our theme for this season of Easter,
I want to raise up that tension
that is always present
at the very moment we say,
“this is who we are.”
How do we claim identity,
and participation in community,
without also drawing too hard a boundary
between “us and them?”
How do we make being a Christian meaningful
when the original arguments that constituted
Christianity are no longer meaningful?
How do we allow our identity as Christians
to feel good
when it also creates an association
with people who use that same identity
to behave in ways we reject?
How do we form a Christian identity
that is meaningful and positive
when we are pluralistic
and embrace the value of other religions
at the same time we uphold our own?
How do we trust the shepherd
when we are totally in the dark
and we don’t get to see the way ahead?
You see,
I suspect that behind our resistance
to being Christian,
and linking up our identity with any religion
or group of people beyond our control,
even though all those concerns and issues
are truly legitimately problematic;
I still suspect
that behind our resistance
is the unwillingness to trust.
So here is what I am going to tell you
that you are not going to like.
The practice of spirituality begins with surrender.
It starts with surrender,
and it continues with surrender
and it never leaves the path
of a deeply personal surrender.
And you know what else –
if you don’t like that idea
don’t go looking for another religion
because every one of them,
that I know anything about anyway,
all begin with surrender.
There is no alternative
to an encounter with our powerlessness.
There is no alternative
to an act of trust in God –
or whatever shepherd to which we want to ascribe
godly characteristics.
There is no alternative
to surrendering our big fat desire
to control and be in charge of our own life,
and to control all the shepherds we meet
while we’re at it.
We do not have to get into the practice of surrender,
without a doubt we can lead a fine life without it.
But if we want to have a spiritual life,
if we want to get deeper, it’s all about surrender.
I wonder about this…
I wonder about the fact
that even though I know that surrender
is an abiding truth,
why I still resist it so dog-gone much.
I wonder about an alternative,
even now, I still wonder
if there is an alternative to surrender.
I know there isn’t,
but I still wonder about it.
It’s like that joke with the punch line:
“Is there anybody else up there?”
I wonder about this…surrender.
