Lent 5B
In the name of God: whom we seek, see, and struggle to
find. Amen.
My least favorite day of the year is the annual return to
Daylight Savings Time, when we lose an entire hour of our lives in the middle
of the night, as if we might not miss it there.
Well, I can assure you, even without having studied its origins, this
annual social ritual was not invented by Christian clergy. If it was, we wouldn’t have put it on
Saturday night.
Like a lot of us, it takes me longer than it should to
recover each year. And, as much as I
leave here exhausted each Sunday – I try to leave it all on the field – last
Sunday was harder than most. When
Michael and I went home, he went straight to work in some other part of the
house – I admit, I don’t really know what he was doing – and I went straight to
the couch to build a nest of pillows and to lie down! I looked for something on TV that I could
watch, but not mind having fallen asleep in the middle of it. Somewhere in the midst of the on-demand
offerings, I found Tarzan – the animated, Disney version. It seemed like the perfect solution: it was
entertaining enough for when I was awake, but light and familiar enough for me
not to feel like I’d missed something important if I fell asleep.
Little did I know that that silly little cartoon would stick
with me, all week.
There was a scene shortly after Jane first arrived on the
island. She’d met Tarzan for the first
time and was enthusiastically sharing the tale of all that she’d seen with her
father and the man who accompanied them as a kind of security escort – how
she’d met a man who behaved more like a gorilla than a man; how he’d been
raised by gorillas and didn’t even know how to speak to her. Her father and the other man clearly didn’t
believe her. Though the movie was
released before the term “mansplaining” came into popular use, they were
clearly “mansplaining” her experience to her.
She didn’t see what she said she saw.
Her imagination had run wild.
They couldn’t hear her experience, because they were too blinded by
their own.
But their blindness didn’t stop there. As she was trying to convince them, Tarzan
came in, hanging down from a vine behind them.
Even when they thought they heard something, he was too wily, and could
slip back up into the trees before they could catch him.
Tarzan certainly had at his advantage, his incredible
skill. With his upbringing, he could
move through the jungle – through the trees and the vines – in ways they
couldn’t imagine. But that was also what he had on his side – that they
simply couldn’t imagine it. They were so
used to seeing the world through the lenses of their expectations and
presuppositions, that they couldn’t imagine this new thing. Even when it was presented directly to them.
I thought of that this week, because the stories we hear of
Jesus are all about broadening our expectations and abilities.
“A voice came from heaven...” we’re told. It said, “I have glorified my name, and I
will glorify it again.” “The crowd
standing there said that it was thunder.”
Others said it was an angel. The
voice of God came in the presence of these people who so desperately wanted to
know God, but they couldn’t hear it.
They were so used to hearing and seeing the things of the world, that
they couldn’t hear and see what was right in front of them. They were blinded by their expectations.
How many times do we fall into that same trap? How many times do we fall into the habits of
our days – the same steps we take, over and over, and become blinded to the
world right around us? How many times do
we fail to see the glory of God, right here in our midst? In the person next to us, who is aching in
lonliness… In our brothers and sisters
in Christ who are struggling and reaching out to this community for
support… In the people we pass blindly
each day, out in the world, not recognizing that they are beloved children of
God, with gifts, and skills, and desires, and dreams… and elements of the
divine that we can hardly even imagine…
I know I’m guilty of it.
I fall into my routines, and run late for meetings, and just want to get
through the line in the grocery store, and can’t wait to get home and take off
my shoes, and see my family, and all the rest.
We all do it. I’m no better.
But Christ is calling us to see the world differently – to
come out of our expectations and to see the glory of God that is all around us,
and even all within us.
There’s a line, earlier in the Gospel, that’s always made me
a little uncomfortable. It says, “Those
who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will
keep it for eternal life.” Well, I don’t
hate my life, but I do hate that line.
It seems like the antithesis of what I know to be true about God. I can’t imagine that God is calling us to
hate life.
But this week I began to hear it in a new way. What if, instead of being punished for loving
life and rewarded for hating life, what if we heard it like this: those of us
who focus only on this life, find that it comes up short – that it isn’t quite
enough. But those of us who focus
instead on the promises of God, find that there’s so much more in store – that
joy keeps spilling over beyond what we could have imagined before.
In other words – rip off the blinders. See something more. Because God has more in store for us and for
all the world than we typically allow ourselves to see.
I know I’ve only been here a few weeks, and I’m already
repeating myself, but the Easter message that is coming is that the
life-giving, creative nature of God can’t be contained. It’s about to just bust out – even from the
tomb.
But if we’re not careful, we could just miss it. Not because God wasn’t strong enough to show
us, but because we were too distracted to see it.
The glory of God is already here, and it will be shown to us
again. And again. And again, and again, until we finally see it
and recognize it. Open yourself to the
glory of God, because it has been opened for you. The seed has been planted. Now we’re called to find its fruit. Amen.
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