A few nights ago, I awoke in the midst of a dream. The dream was about, of all things, kitchen renovations. Now, this may be a sign that I’m watching too many episodes of Holmes on Homes, or that it is time to stop putting off that facelift that our kitchen has been calling for, but the dream also contained a message that I think I need to share with you.
I hear from folks who have done extensive home
renovations that tearing out your kitchen is one of the most disruptive things
you can do to your home and your relationships.
Your old kitchen is in shambles, often for weeks and weeks, with shells
of your old cupboards still standing, the skeleton of stripped 2x4s and
hacked-off plumbing connections standing watch over the kitchen that was. Meanwhile, your living room, which isn’t
under repair, has now become the staging zone for the new kitchen cupboards, doors,
countertops, sinks and appliances, disrupting any sense of normalcy on the main
floor of your dwelling. In addition to
the mess, which is extensive, there are the practical questions, like, where do
you prepare the vegetables, where do you cook the meals, how and where do you
clean up afterward?
More often than I care to admit, my life has
felt quite similar to a kitchen in the midst of a massive reno. Chaos and disorderliness are at the forefront,
things that are supposed to function in a certain way just don’t, and the big,
recurring question is, “can’t I just stop this nonsense and put things back the
way they were?” And much like embarking
on home renovations without the skill or knowledge to do so, extra effort does
not, on its own, make things much better.
The more I try to fix things, all at once and all on my own, the more of
a shambles the whole thing becomes.
But elsewhere in the house, all is well. The power is still on, the water is still on,
you can walk from one place to another without dancing around a power tool or
stepping on a nail. When I get away from
the place where I am desperately trying to make things work, everything is
calmer, more organized, under control, because at this moment I am not trying
to control it.
If I close my eyes I see the setting of my
kitchen reno dream: a shadowy, torn-apart kitchen and disrupted living room
that are nothing but mess, while in the distance there is a light glowing,
calling me away from the self-induced chaos to a place where I can enjoy peace
that is not of my making, it just is.
The words of the Serenity Prayer make this plea
to God : “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the
courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Yet
is so easy in our lives to get so trapped in our fears and anxieties that we dwell
on the things we cannot change, like other people’s actions or other people’s
opinions of me. Like an exam-writer who
starts to dwell on the fact that she is running out of time, rather than
bringing her best effort to completing the exam to the best of her ability,
it’s easy for us to be so distracted by the things outside our control that we
become totally paralyzed when it comes to making positive life changes that are
fully within our control. Or to return
to the dream image, it is so easy to be disheartened by the mess that I have
made in the foreground, that I don’t even see the light of Christ that is
always burning in the back room. For no
matter what is happening in the rest of our lives, that Christ-light is always
burning, is always pure, and its glow radiates from a source far beyond
me. At times, I may very well make a
mess of my life, but God always retains the right to shine goodness through me.
Clearly, focusing on the anxieties of this
world while missing the ongoing provision of God is not a new phenomenon. Both the familiar reading from Matthew, and
the much less familiar reading from Joel use examples from nature to address
the fears of their people.
A couple of years prior to the passage from
Joel there had been a major crop failure, in which a plague of locusts infested
the land. Grain, wine and even oil supplies
were depleted to dangerous levels. People were concerned, not only because the
crops had failed, but because the swarms of locusts seemed apocalyptic. They were worried that the end was near. The prophet Joel called people to examine
their lives, as individuals and as a nation, and turn once more toward
God. In the midst of that turning toward
God Joel says these lovely words: “Fear not, O land, be glad and rejoice, for
the Lord has done great things! Fear
not, you beasts of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the
tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield. Be glad, O
children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God, for God has given the early
rain…. “ Even as the people are just finding their feet after being knocked
flat by natural disaster, the prophet points toward God’s activity in nature
and says, “See! All will be well.”
Moving forward to Matthew, I absolutely love
the old King James language of this gospel reading: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they
grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” “Behold the fowls
of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet
your heavenly Father feedeth them.” There is such lyrical perfection to those
words, and they come across as the kind of wisdom one might hear from a
great-grandparent. There’s an aspect of
gentle chiding there, sort of a “come now, child, you didn’t really think that
worrying would make things better, did you?” but it’s delivered in such a kind
and non-confrontational manner, that it shines the very light of Christ into
your heart.
Douglas Hare, writing nearly 20 years ago in
his commentary on Matthew, engages this passage in a manner that speaks
directly to us today (p.75): “an ecological reading allows the symbols to
direct our gaze at the marvelous interdependence of the myriad life forms on
Planet earth, and invites us to reconsider the relationship that links human
beings to other living things. In our
frenzy to provide ourselves with so much in excess of basic needs, we have
allowed our economics and technology to get out of touch with the needs of the
environment. God’s care for birds and
lilies is interfered with by our pesticides and acid rain. A proper appreciation of divine providence as
reflected in the balance of nature can assist us to amend our ways.” Indeed, not only do the images of the birds
and the flowers point us toward an understanding of God’s provision for our
needs; it warns us that the more we intervene in order to take more than our
share of the world’s resources, the more we will separate ourselves from God,
from our neighbours, from creation. And
once more, we’re standing in that torn-apart kitchen: we see the Christ light
shining in the background, even when the foreground is littered by our pursuit
of the new and the improved.
In a way, these readings from Joel and Matthew
may seem a bit odd for Thanksgiving. I,
for one, am much more accustomed to readings that hearken back to the old
Hebrew Harvest Festivals, and celebrate the God whose bounteous harvest rewards
our efforts of planting seeds and tending growth. Yet the readings from Joel and Matthew put
us right in the middle of that process, and say, “in the end, what we give
thanks for is not merely the glorious harvest; what we give thanks for, is
that all of it is in God’s hands.
Our planting and our tending amount to nothing, if not for the fact that
we can trust God to bring growth, and beauty, and sustenance into our
world.” Our thanksgiving is not so much
for the crop, as it is for the one to whom we entrust all the steps and stages
and processes of our lives.
One of the most important theological changes I
have made over the past decade, is a major move in my understanding of
Faith. For decades, I connected the
concept of Faith to the rational side of me:
to have faith was to believe certain theological ideas or doctrines
about God and Jesus, and the purpose and destiny of life. In order to be a person of Faith, I thought,
was to be a person of systematic and reasonable beliefs.
But the word we translate as faith or belief – the
Greek word pistis – more often should be translated trust.
So, rather than connecting the concept of faith to the rational process
of holding beliefs, I now see faith as the emotional reliance I have on God. It’s not so much, “what do I believe” as it
is, “whom do I trust?” To say that I have
Faith in Jesus Christ, then, means that I trust that his goodness is able to
shine through my life in spite of my flaws.
It means that I trust that his light is still burning even when all I
see is chaos or pain or loss. In means
that in the end, I trust that those whom I have loved and have left this world
are still being held in the warm glow of that light. When I trust God, I hear the words that Joel
and Matthew were saying in their day, and accept that each day will be filled
with opportunities to see God’s glory and God’s faithfulness, if only I can get
myself out of the way.
This morning, we have the ability to practice our
trust in God, in the sacrament of Communion.
One of the beautiful things about the sacrament is that we believe that
something beautiful and mysterious and “of God” happens when we re-enact that
last meal of Jesus and his closest friends.
We do the simple things: we
say the words, we pour the grape juice, we break the bread, but the action of
restoring and refreshing our souls is entirely
done by God. In receiving these
gifts, we loosen our grip for a moment and become as trusting as the birds of
the air, as reliant as the flowers of the field, and as thankful as the
children of Zion recovering from famine.
Our chaos falls aside, and the light of Christ shines.
Friends in Christ, our trust is in God, our
life is in God, our light is from God.
Rejoice, and be glad!
Work
cited
Hare, Douglas A. R. Matthew.
(Interpretation Commentary) Louisville, KY: John Knox, 1993. Pp. 73-76
See also
Craigie, Peter C. Twelve Prophets: volume 1. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984. Pp. 85-119.
And for a very nice explanation of
Faith/pistis, see http://www.truthortradition.com/modules.php?file=article&name=News&sid=692
© 2012 Rev Greg Wooley, Ralph Connor Memorial United
Church, Canmore AB.
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