February 23, 10:30am (Kevin Westling)
Jesus was stunned into silence. The images and emotions of the day were blowing through his brain at a hundred miles an hour. He was so full of excitement he felt as though he would explode. Then, he told us, looking our way for the first time but only out of the corner of his eye, (never turning his face in our direction) that he heard that whisper again – or was it a memory?
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SERMONS @ TRINITY
Jesus in Buffalo
A Lenten Koan
Based upon Luke 4:1-13
Jesus isn’t always the best at talking about himself. I mean, in that respect, he is like a lot of guys. I’m not saying that he is totally stoic because if you catch him in the right mood and you’re the right person, he can be surprisingly intimate. But it is rare and it never ceases to surprise me when it happens.
There was one night though, when he really laid it on us like we had never heard before. Seriously, he just started talking about this one time when he was all alone – sort of staring off into space like the rest of us weren’t really there, or as if it didn’t really matter if we were there or not. It was weird and I think the bunch of us were a little queasy with how personal he was getting.
It was my faux aunt Peg, Orie, Clara, Skip and me. I know, it is hard to image any of them being really quiet and listening for a long period of time, but I am telling you that is what happened.
It was a Friday night at the VFW, you know, Hamlin House on Franklin Street. It was late and maybe some of our company, I won’t mention who, had imbibed more than a medicinal amount of refreshment. It was also one of the uniquely horrible Buffalo days in early April when, having survived the winter, you think that if Spring doesn’t bust out all over you will! In other words, everyone was feeling the Buffalo heebie jeebies, and it showed.
Jesus was leaning on his elbow with his chin in one hand making it hard to understand him through the mumble sometimes, but as he got going we all leaned a little closer around the table. He was talking about this strange and terrible dream he had, one that lingered and even returned now and again. It was the kind of dream that some of us have that haunt our sleep, appearing again and again over time – almost taunting us to try and change the characters or pick a better ending.
In Jesus’ dream a stranger appears. He is a figure like only a dream can produce: completely familiar yet unknown in real life, devilishly handsome and debonair in every detail except the face which is never really clear, and with natural ease able to do things that no one could do in the wakeful world.
Anyway, in Jesus’ dream he appears one day when Jesus is in a bright and joyous mood – when the sun is bursting out in a cloudless blue sky and Jesus is feeling so happy and grateful about his friends and life and the utter abundance that surrounds him even when he doesn’t own all that much stuff. But Monsieur Urbane, a dark figure, appears, and grayness rolls in like fog blanketing the lake in the morning. The Stranger takes Jesus by the hand as if Jesus is a little boy, and as Urbane is a wicked legal guardian.
“Inside Jesus” the man says. “You must watch television.”
Jesus hates television. Whenever he watches too much he looses his sense of abundance and begins to feel as if his world is threatened by scarcity. Whenever he watches too much television he begins to get lethargic and tired, and pretty soon he is attacked by bouts of cynicism and resentment. Jesus hates television.
There are some exceptions of course. He likes CSI Las Vegas and College basketball. But the rest of it? No, no, no. So when The Stranger takes him in and places him in front of the TV, and commands him to watch, Jesus felt condemned to a dank and dark prison.
Jesus moaned in our direction, as if reliving it: “The television sirens chant a litany of gluttony and sing a Gloria of desire.”
Then he went on to tell how the images wormed their way into his head and began to turn a previously happy and satiated man into something much more shriven and hungry. He’s never owned a car but by the end of the day he had digested 1,011 car commercials, each one telling him he can afford one, and now is the time to buy, and how much better he will look driving one. Jesus is slim and trim but after twelve and half hours in front of the television he was convinced that he is fat and needs to lose weight. Soon, he said, and he was filled with dis-ease about almost every part of his body. In eight more hours he finally realized he owned nothing of importance, and could not possibly feel good about himself as he was. He felt utterly powerless.
By the time The Stranger returned, at the very lowest moment in the middle of the night when Jesus’ whole world had been cast in the megapixels of the television, Jesus was miserable. The Stranger asked Jesus what he wanted to eat now that he had been starved in front of the television, and rained upon with images of deliciousness. Jesus’ first impulse, he told us, was a Big Mac or one of the really tall fat ice cream drinks he’d seen in the commercials for Sonic. But he stopped himself.
A memory stirred from somewhere deep inside Jesus’ beleaguered brain, or was it a whisper.
“Feed the hunger and you will starve the soul. Feed the soul and you will starve the hunger.”
He was very hungry and thirsty but he also knew that if he re-framed what was happening to him by considering it a “fast,” then he could take back control from the stranger.
“Nothing for me, thanks” Jesus told his captor.
“Aren’t you feeling a bit famished by now?” the stranger inquired.
“Sure, but we cannot live on junk alone. I will just consider this a time of fasting and find the strength and goodness in knowing that my life is more than the desires of my body.”
For a moment, a mere nanosecond really, a thin crack appeared on Urbane’s otherwise smirky face.
“Let us move on then,” he sneered at Jesus.
Suddenly, in the way that can only happen in a dream, the stranger pulled Jesus by the hand and immediately they landed on a balcony above the New York Stock Exchange. Jesus gets to ring the opening bell!
What fun to ring the bell on the opening of the stock market. Standing up there and looking down upon the chaos of money being made, changing hands, creating fortunes and diminishing others, a feeling of power surges through that bell and the one who rings it. It gave Jesus a thrill.
They had an extraordinary day, Jesus and Mr. Urbane. They traveled by limo all around Wall Street and parts of Manhattan Jesus had only heard about. He got to meet the CEO’s of GE, Standard Oil, Goldman Sachs, Eli Lily and Microsoft. He sat in the elegant mahogany and glass boardrooms of the biggest, fattest corporations in New York City. He personally met with world-class tycoons and every one of them were solicitous of Jesus, asking how they could get him on board with their team.
At night they made the rounds of fabulous penthouses. High tea overlooking Central Park; cocktails and hor’dourves on Park Avenue; an intimate dinner that was to die for near Gramacey Park; and to cap it all off, the stranger took him up to Rupert Murdoch’s corporate office. From there he had a three-hundred and sixty degree view of the center of Wealth-on-Earth.
“What do you think, my boy?” Mr. Urbane asked him, smiling through his thin, stiff lips.
“Incredible.” Jesus gushed.
“The world looks so small from up here,” Jesus added, “and you realize how much more money and influence these people have than you ever imagined in your wildest dreams. They must have started the myth that money can’t buy happiness just to keep the competition at bay.”
“Yes, my boy, few people know just how rarified this world is up here. Very few people, who do not live this life, get the view you just received. How do you like it.”
“It’s awesome. Amazing. Mind-boggling.” Jesus stuttered.
“Yes it is,” assured The Stranger. “Would you like to be the king of the hill up here? I can give you any or all of this if you want.”
Jesus was stunned into silence.
The images and emotions of the day were blowing through his brain at a hundred miles an hour. He was so full of excitement he felt as though he would explode. Then, he told us, looking our way for the first time but only out of the corner of his eye, (never turning his face in our direction) that he heard that whisper again – or was it a memory?
“Those who own the world end up being owned by the world,” came the wisdom from deep within him.
Jesus let out a big sigh and then finished with, as if confirming it out loud to himself, “Right.”
At that moment Clara piped up, “For that I could be owned!”
We all laughed but Jesus, never moving from the perch of his chin in his hand, went on with the dream. He told us that he didn’t even look at The Stranger. He just sat there in that supremely comfortable leather chair, starring out the floor to ceiling windows revealing the sparkle of golden lights outside. When he finally answered he felt the breath on the back of his neck.
“It would be nice,” Jesus said, still looking out the window with the stranger behind him, “but I’ll pass.”
“But this opportunity will never come your way again” the stranger said urgently, “you should be very careful with your decision.”
“I’m good.” Jesus said matter-of-factly.
In the time it takes to sneeze they were suddenly transported to the Lincoln Monument in Washington, D.C. Jesus had always loved that place, he whispered to us. He said there was no place in the world more imbued with the range of human emotion than the Lincoln Memorial at night. It was sacred, he said, the same way certain other set-aside places are sacred.
The stranger walked slowly around the massive figure of Lincoln, reading aloud in a poetic cadence the memorable speeches of Abraham Lincoln: “Four score and seven years ago…” Jesus stood there looking up at that wise, knowing, frozen-in-sadness face.
All night long they went from place to place in Washington: The Jefferson Memorial, The Wall, Foggy Bottom and the State Department, the Capital Rotunda and office of the Speaker, the Washington Monument, the Pentagon, the CIA, the Senate Office Building, NRA and AARP headquarters, all the places of power and influence and history. They walked the Smithsonian and Air & Space museums, strolling through American history and the impact of every president and leader of The United States of America. They talked in detail about the strengths and weaknesses of each one, and of the opportunities lost as well as the successes achieved. They went to the Library of Congress and stood over The Constitution and marveled at the mysterious wisdom that came from so modest a group of ordinary people, and shook their heads at the painfully tragic flaws in those same people.
It was quite a visit, Jesus smiled, sifting through his memory as he spoke. There was never a time he was more connected to the exquisite beauty of human potential than along that walk through American history. Then, as the sun came up on Washington that morning, the clouds painted pink and orange above the Potomac, Jesus and the Stranger watched it all from within the Oval Office.
The White House was as quiet as the Night Before Christmas and it seemed as if no one else was anywhere within shouting distance, even though Jesus knew the Secret Service and Presidential Staff were within a mere whisper.
“You could do an awful lot of good here” the stranger assured Jesus, putting his hand upon Jesus’ shoulder in a my-boy kind of motion.
“You could end so much suffering for so many people. You could redistribute wealth and bring fairness back. You would have the power to make the world the way God wanted it to be when human beings were first created. It is within your power, Jesus, just say the word.”
“And what would that word be?” Jesus asked knowingly.
Merely an oath of office; all you would have to say, once I got you elected of course, is: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
“That’s it? You could get me elected President of the United States and the only thing I would have to do in the process is take that oath?” Jesus asked, sounding deeply skeptical.
“Of course I could elect you. It’s a done deal as soon as I say the word,” the stranger said with mild irritation that his guarantee would be questioned.
Jesus took his time to think about it. There he was in the Oval Office, looking out the window onto the back lawn and the sun rising so militantly over the deep green of the grass and still splashing across the dawn sky. He did not hear a whisper. No small memory floated up from within him. He was alone with just the silence.
Then Jesus said, with calm assurance in his voice, “A wise man once said, ‘Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God that which belongs to God.’ I do not wish to become Caesar.”
With that the stranger disappeared just as suddenly as he had appeared. Jesus woke up, still hovering in that groggy in-between place where, for a moment, you don’t know if the dream was real or awaking up is real.
Finally Jesus moved his chin off his hand, sat up straight, finished his beer and gave a soft little burp. “Well,” he said, “that was the dream.”
Everyone was quiet for a moment until Aunt Peg spoke.
“Well da, da, dearie,” she said with the kind of stammer that gives you a second to think what to say, “do you have a counselor?”
Jesus looked around for a moment to see who might be able to hear him. Then drawing us in with a hand motion that says, come close, I have something private to say, we all leaned our heads toward him.
“I went to this Chinese guy that Orie recommended, but after only one appointment he said there was nothing he could do for me.”
Skip put his hand on Jesus’ shoulder and with a warm and sympathetic look in his eyes, he ventured, “Have you talked to Cam? He doesn’t charge for counseling, you know.”
“Humph” Jesus grimaced as he stood up and pulled a wrinkled wad of bills from his jeans, slamming it down for his portion of the meal. Looking directly at Skip he grunted, “What? You think I’m nuts?”
And with that, he walked out.
