July 02, 10:30am (Kevin Westling)
Before we get to that place we are desperately rowing, rowing, rowing away from God in the midst of a frightening storm. But the storm, it turns out, is not all around us but utterly within us. Yes, there are dangers. Yes, we may be tossed by a rough sea. Yes, the conditions around us may be threatening. But the storm is within, and when we face the storms that around us with a calm within us, we discover even the humor of our situation.
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Sermons @ Trinity
June 21, 2009
“Sidle up”
The Rev. R. Cameron Miller
Good morning.
Well if you have ever played poker,
then you know,
if you’re holding a Royal Flush
your going to bet the pot –
or at least as much as you think you can get away with without chasing away
the chumps sitting around the table.
The odds of winning a hand of poker
against a Royal Flush are so great
it’s likely the one holding four aces is God,
or if human,
by an act of God.
I love that image from Anne Sexton’s poem –
it also echoes Job and Mark.
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”
It is as if to say,
“I don’t care how much you know,
or think you know.
You might have 99 pieces of the puzzle
but you don’t have the perspective you need
in order to understand the why’s and wherefore’s
or the fullness of meaning.”
I won’t go into the Book of Job
to explain why that is not a surly or nasty retort from God –
Job is so short and worth the read
I would rather you read for yourself.
But where Anne Sexton and God
have a good laugh over God’s five aces,
the Book of Job engenders a much wider range of emotions –
anger, resentment, trust, fear, hope…
Then there is the odd little story from Mark.
I think the most noteworthy part –
other than Jesus calming a storm of course –
is that he is asleep on a cushion.
A Cushion!
The boys are rowing, rowing, rowing
against the wind
and Jesus is cozy and napping on a cushion.
I find that odd,
and as someone pointed out while we were discussing it in El Salvador on Friday night,
Mark is conspicuous among the Gospel writers for having a minimum of detail.
So clearly Mark wants us to know
that Jesus was nestled upon his cushion
like my mangy old hound dog, Angie,
is collapsed on her pillow for most of the day.
I think that what Mark wants us to see
is the distance between Jesus and his students.
There they were, visibly,
all of a kind –1st century peas in a pod –
but one of them was as different
as five aces from a royal flush.
He relaxed in the midst of disaster.
You see, we know how to relax on vacation
or at the symphony or on a picnic,
but very few of us would know how to relax
in the midst of danger, even disaster.
The more routine responses are fear, heroism, anxiety, even hysteria.
So you see,
the connection between these readings
is in the alternative response
to the inevitable pains of the human condition.
Laughter…
in the moment our pretense is cracked
and we realize God holds all the cards
and the cards we hold are worth…doo doo.
Laughter…
in the moment that victory is snatched out of the jaws of certainty like water escaping our fingers.
Laughter…
in the moment of a surprise reminder
that we are not in control,
and that even with our vast arsenal of information and technology, science and historical perspective,
all it is a nearly invisible little contact lens
when seen within the mind of God.
George Harrison of Beatle fame,
spent years learning to relax and pray
even in the midst of anxiety and fear.
He did so because he believed,
as did his guru,
that if we can pray or meditate
at the very moment of death,
it will contribute to some greater aspect
of the next life.
I have to admit
I do not remember or even care about
all the details of Harrison’s theology,
but what I remember is that he taught himself well.
Long before he actually died of cancer,
he was attacked in his home one night
and was stabbed, several times I believe,
and rather than fight back he did what he had taught himself to do:
relax and meditate.
He believed he was about to die
and although he did not,
he discovered that he had changed himself
from the inside out,
and was able to surrender at the very nexus between life and death.
Now that may seem a bizarre example to many of us
who are much more rooted in the materialism of our culture,
and much less interested in the transcendent practices of Eastern religions,
but it gets to where I want to go this morning.
The experience of loss and defeat
are fairly routine in our lives,
and the question is,
how do we incorporate them?
More often than not,
without a decision and intention to do otherwise,
we remain only reactive to our losses.
The blindness we suffer
when it comes to many of the things
we most want to know about life and God
and even ourselves,
is ever-present and the question is:
how do we incorporate our ignorance
and the impenetrable mystery
into our every day, ordinary lives?
For example,
defeat often triggers anger and resentment
toward those who vanquish us in one way or another –
deep down we keep score.
Or it can also flood us with resignation –
what’s the use, we might ask ourselves?
Any loss, from a trivial game of cards
to the most significant loss there is for us,
loss of life,
will initially impale us upon a spike of grief.
What happens next
becomes the critical question for us.
Now please do not hear more than I am saying.
Our kneejerk reactions to things,
that first blush or burst of emotion
in response to an external stimulus,
is likely not something we will ever be able to change.
We are hardwired with the fight or flight response –
it keeps us alive in more ways than one.
But what happens in the next moment,
after that first response?
In that very next moment,
when we are crestfallen at our defeat
when holding even a royal flush,
do we explode with laughter
that God has all the cards?
Are we moved to a deep gut-busting roar
at the humor of it all?
Or…do we descend into anger
at the unfairness of it all?
Do we start mining our resentments
and get a real nice bitterness going?
That is the choice that is ours,
not the first reaction but what we do next.
When slapped in the face
by life’s roaring unfairness
and random theft of those things we cherish,
are we moved toward surrender
and perhaps even awe at our smallness
in the presence of God’s vastness?
Or do we sink into a bitter cynicism that cripples us?
I am not talking about denial
or a kind of Pollyanna way of wishful thinking,
rather, it is the ability to sidle up to our smallness before the immensity of God…
and enjoy it;
be moved by it;
even tickled deeply by it.
There is nothing pretty or romantic about death.
I have had the privilege of sitting vigil with many families, including my own,
as someone lies dying.
In fact,
if you asked me what the best part of my work is
I would tell you that standing on the holy ground of dying is right up there at the top.
And I will tell you that there is such a thing
as a good dying process.
It is the one in which the person who is dying,
and, those attending that death,
are able to take a step beyond the initial responses of fear, anxiety, anger and pain,
and move into that realm of
sidling up to our smallness before God
and experiencing the comfort of it…
the joy of it…
even the humor of it.
But before we get to that place
we are thrashing in our desire for control –
a desire and effort we recognize is absurd
but only if we can get a little separation
by standing outside ourselves for a moment
and looking in.
Before we get to that place
it is less a rowing toward the island that is God
and more of a thrashing in the water
like a drowning person grasps at the surface
but to no avail.
Before we get to that place
we are desperately rowing, rowing, rowing
away from God in the midst of a frightening storm.
But the storm, it turns out,
is not all around us
but utterly within us.
Yes, there are dangers.
Yes, we may be tossed by a rough sea.
Yes, the conditions around us may be threatening.
But the storm is within,
and when we face the storms that around us
with a calm within us,
we discover even the humor of our situation.
Now for the bad news:
I don’t know a simple trick for learning
to sidle up to our smallness before God,
the way a cat softly rubs its fur against you
on its way to curling up on your lap.
I don’t believe there are any easy tricks in life,
at least not about the important things.
So obviously I don’t believe in
“How To” sermons either.
It took George Harrison years of preparation
and like anything important in the human condition,
we do not get anywhere in our spiritual development without practice…a spiritual practice.
But I can make a suggestion about where to start,
or even where to go to next
regardless of where we are in the process.
When you catch yourself feeling angry, resentful or anxious…stop.
Just take a moment to stop.
It is likely
that old primal fight or flight alarm was triggered
and by the time we have the presence of mind to recognize our emotions,
we have already decided and acted appropriately.
So we are in the aftermath,
in the emotional afterglow so to speak.
Now, take the next step.
Whatever the loss,
whatever the limit faced,
whatever the control threatened,
just stop and give voice to God…
“Where were you
when I laid the foundations of the earth?”
If we do that often enough,
I can almost guarantee,
the humor of the situation will make itself known,
as will the comfort of sidling up to our smallness in the presence of God.
Amen.
