Scripture: Matthew 6:19-24
Given on 08/04/2019
I grew up in a period of time a few years before the advent of screens appearing in everyone’s hands, wrists, backpacks, and bedrooms. And I should say, being the broken child of God that I am, I can both lament this fact and live into it at the same time. But as a kid, in a time before Netflix or HBO, in order to see the latest movie, you actually had to get out of your house and drive to the local movie theater where you invariably order crazily expensive popcorn and a soda the size of a jug of milk and sit in a darkened room with 100 other folks and watch a film. And I remember going to see at least most of the biggest movies from the 1980s in one of Lumberton’s two theaters with my parents or my friends. And like I said, being of a certain age, before video game systems and cellphones overtook the lives of our children, these movies would always fuel some amount of imaginative play whether that was Han Solo flying the Millennium Falcon, Superman using his laser eyes and superhuman strength, or my favorite, Indiana Jones using his bullwhip to get out of all kinds of scrapes. As an aside, I grew up with a small creek across the street from my house and a overgrown lot and I can’t tell you the number of times I tried to get a rope to spin around a tree in such a manner that I could actually swing across the 10 feet or so of creek. It still amazes me that we never had any broken bones in our house growing up. And as a child about Jameson’s age, I remember going to the movie theater to see the last of the original series of Indiana Jones movies appropriately titled, The Last Crusade.” In it, Jones played by Harrison Ford and his father, Henry, played by Sean Connery, find themselves working together to find the Holy Grail, the mythological cup that had been used to institute the last supper between Jesus and his disciples. And because of its explicit religious connotation, this was the only movie of the series with explicitly Judeo-Christian symbolism. So it was that in one of the most tense scenes in the movie, Jones, looking out over what appears to be a 1,000 foot fall in between the entrances to two caves must make a leap of faith to get from one side to the other. As Jones steps off, just when you think he is going to fall into oblivion, his foot hits an invisible bridge and Jones quickly crosses to the other side. As I have thoughts about our scripture for the morning over the past week, I have thought about that single step that had to be taken believing that sometime would catch you even when all rational and reasonable expectations are that you will surely fall. It is that kind of faith that Jesus requires of all who would still follow him today.
At this moment, more than anytime in its long story, our own faith tradition has an opportunity to experience a new resurgence, buttressed by the honest quests for meaning by individuals. At this moment, increasingly, folks who have departed the church find themselves on the outside looking in for deeper purpose for their lives, for a more lasting contribution that they might bring to their contribution to the great sands of time. This moment, too, comes at the end of a long stretch of time in which cultures tried to find greater permanence in things outside the walls of the church. For the last four centuries, the Western world has seen the rise to ascendancy of science, economics, and the social contract as each, in their own way, have become the dominant systems of discourse but, it would seem, that time is coming to a close. For while science can offer an almost complete definition of how things happen it cannot offer why it came about. Similarly, economics provides the way in which we interact with one another and the world in the exchange of goods and services. And while economics it cannot, by definition, be concerned with the worth of the individuals participating within them and too often we fall short of any attempt to place the needs or humanity of others ahead of our own. And while our social determines the manner in which we must be in relationship with one another, it does not contain the necessary knowledge to determine why it is that people act in the manner that they do. But, religion can. Religion offers the why in life, the meaning of life, it offers hope in life. Science, economics, and politics, all of these eventually fall away, a casualty of the finitude of all things. Religion touches the infinite from which all matter arose and offers an everlasting hope, an everlasting peace, a way to the abundant life.
Following the fall of humanity from the gaze of God, the story told in Genesis about our first parents, the dread, the fear of uncertainty began to infect the collective psyche of the world. In the shadow of the fall of Adam and Eve, that which had seemed so simple, so complete in the innocence of the Garden now seemed confusing and disconcerting. Our relationships with one another, those that were intended to be cooperative, now seemed that they were wholly subsumed in the competition for resources and attention. Where love was once defined in terms of mutual respect and dignity it now was corrupted by power and lust. Where before our knowledge of the ways of God once seemed second nature, our souls forged in the fires of the laws of love, now it was as if that knowledge had been shattered into a million tiny slivers of truth and each person has grabbed their own minuscule piece and declared it to be the whole. Where nations-states and cultures had the opportunity to elevate one another in advancement and survival with each contributing to the collective good, it seems we have each chosen the path of violence begetting violence over and again for thousands of years until all that was left, too often, is pain and sadness. This reality is evidenced in many of our own relationships today. And we are aware that often our faith in God can feel as if we are peering into the darkness and praying that we will once again see a light. So difficult are these moments that, at times, we back away from that ledge, from the darkness of the unknown and settle for the tangible in this life—the things that we can feel and smell and taste and touch—in order that we might be distracted from the pain, as the world, believes that it is our earthly treasures stored up in increasingly taller storehouses, that will ultimately save us.
The Scripture lesson today from the Gospel comes in the midst of a collection of sayings and teachings from Jesus that have become known as the “Sermon on the Mount.” In this sermon, Jesus tries to lay out the manner in which a new life, a life of abundance is to be lived, the way in which one, in the infinite power of each moment can move beyond the transient, the finite, the constantly eroding nature of the world. A life that gives us something to grasp onto, something to step onto—something that is forever. Jesus teaches how to live into God. In the passage today, he looks particularly at the way in which our clutching to earthly possessions interrupts the movement from ourselves to our God and he suggests that it is foolish to store up earthly treasures in hopes that one will gain some measure of permanence. Jesus goes further to declare that this type of thinking will always lead to consumption by moth and rust. Just think about that image. How many of us, living as we do, in the South can remember Sunday drives out in the country where we would pass farmhouses from another time, from another era that were now shadows of their former selves—wasted away with the passage of time, until all that was left was a rusted tin roof, or the chimney and fireplace from some old antebellum mansion, the rest eaten away by time. A reminder that the wealth of previous generations can never stand up to the inexorable passage of time.
But counter to that is the power of God, the strength of the spirit of the Most High to pull us from the endless cycle of life and death, of sin and brokenness, of despair and grant us that peace that we all so desperately want to experience. So it is that each moment is pregnant with love, and hope, and grace and it has occurred an infinite number of times since the beginning of creation and will continue on until the end of the age. So it is that in each moment, we may bring about world peace, and end world hunger, each moment we may create new avenues through which grace may flow, we may offer a handshake where before there was only a clinched fist. In this moment, our possibilities are literally limitless. Unfortunately, our better angels and demons are battling for supremacy. And yet, grace abounds because in this moment, this one moment, we get to decide not only what is important, but what is ultimate. We can decide who is important and who is ultimate, in this one singular moment we can base the whole of our existence on one thing.
And it is possible that Jesus’ words grate at our modern ears and souls. Because the warning to his followers could not be put in starker terms. There are two ways in which you can enter each moment and they cannot be done at the same time. He tells those who will listen, that we cannot serve two masters, because the one who seeks to do that, will either love the one and hate the other or despise the former and love the latter. There are no two ways about it. You cannot serve God and the world. You cannot place your trust in God and the world. In that sense, all of life becomes a struggle to rid ourselves off all temptation to place anything in the throne of Jesus but Jesus. There are any number of things that can fall in this ordering and but there is only one holy, one good, one God and our lives will always be laborious if God does not sit on the top of all the other stuff of life. Our relationship to God must always be our ultimate concern, our singular priority, our deepest devotion. We know that all the things of life wrestle for the place of ultimate, but in the end, we know that we return to God.
But how do we know when we have ordered our lives properly, how do we know when we have found our ultimate concern? Jesus gathered his followers and told them, “The eye is the lamp of the body, so if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” Jesus understood the need to look on all of creation with compassion, the need to see that each person was and is a beloved child of God. In each moment, we encounter people, both those in front of us and those throughout the world and we see their plights and we know their wounds. We read their stories and we know of their pain. And if upon hearing their stories, if upon knowing their pain, we turn a blind eye, then we are full of darkness, and how great is that darkness. Then we have covered others with that darkness, and how great is that darkness. Then we have said to them, “We don’t care,” and then they are immersed in the darkness and how great is that darkness. And so we enter this moment.
And as we enter this moment, we must be aware of the pain of the world that is constantly crying out for relief because their pain is also our pain. The English poet and pastor John Donne once wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” That is to say that we are all connected, all united in a single thread of humanity, in which we must care, we must love, we must take care of one another. We must reach out beyond ourselves, break down the barriers of our own little worlds and see the plight of the whole of the world, approach each one we meet with kindness and not callousness. We must know of the things that are going on within the greater world, really see them and then we must seek to do something about them. In the midst of violence which unfolds around the world we are called to be peacemakers, because no person is an island, and the bell tolls for thee. In the midst of hunger here and around the world we must have eyes to see, ears to hear, and we must work for change, because no person is an island, and the bell tolls for thee. And we must see the barriers of separation that we erect around ourselves and tear them down, because no person is an island and the bell tolls for thee. And we don’t have to go searching out areas of the world that are in need of people who care, people who want to make this moment better than the last. No matter where you are, a struggle is always nearby and we are all called to join in the struggle because no person is an island and the bell tolls for thee. The call of Jesus is always the call to make this moment better than the last, it is always a call to live into the hope and the newness of this moment—always believing that creation can better embody God’s will for all persons.
In the past 24 hours, we have heard of two more mass shootings in this country in which another 30 of our brothers and sisters have sacrificed their lives to senseless and ceaseless violence meted out of unsuspecting patrons of restaurants and shopping centers. That’s 30 people who won’t be at the dinner table tonight, or the breakfast table in the morning. 30 people who will never again see the beauty of the autumnal sunrise or feel the power found in the crashing waves of a tide coming back in. 30 people who won’t smell the scents of Sunday dinner filling the house or hear children playing on a playground or any of the things that make life come alive. And I don’t pretend to have all the answers to an incredibly complex problem that has stymied an entire generation of leaders but I reject the notion that the church has nothing to add to the conversation. As followers of the risen savior we are called to go out on the highways and byways of the country, finding the lost and giving them a place to be found. We are called to love all the more powerfully in the face of powerful hatred. We are called to actively work for peace both in our hearts, in our souls, but also as a cessation of violence in a world that is far too violent to raise our children. We are called not to ignore the brokenness of the world but to work for the redemption of the world, the reconciliation back to God, co-creators of a future with God. Because no man is an island and the bell tolls for thee.
We dwell in a single moment in time, the past is forever vanished, the future yet to be written and we have a choice. Jesus called his followers together and said you can seek God or you can seek the stuff of the world, but you can’t do both. You can serve a love that can spread throughout the whole world making everything beautiful and whole and new, or you can serve yourself, but you can’t do both. We in this place and in this time, in this church and in this community have an incredible opportunity to make change within this world, to take the resources we have, the treasures with which we have been blessed and begin to make the world a better place, one moment at a time. To find the things that move us to action, the things that reach across the boundaries that separate us and find our common humanity, the things that have been covered in darkness and invite us and our eyes to cover the world in light. May God lead us to the light that is within us and all creation. Glory be to God in the highest and on earth peace amongst all God’s peoples. Alleluia, Amen.
Image taken from: https://suwalls.com/beaches/lone-island-under-starry-night-21962/