|
Whenever
we have a discussion in our house about the realignment of
chores ... especially when that discussion centers around
the enormous number of things that Kris is responsible for,
measured against the minuscule number of things that I am
responsible for ... I find myself making the grand gesture
of offering to do the laundry. Don't ask me why. Maybe it
sounds easier than the rest of the stuff she does. Maybe it's
because I did my own laundry in college. Maybe it's because
the penalty for failure seems lower in the laundry than in
the kitchen. Having heard Julie say (on more than one occasion):
"Oh no, Dad's gonna cook," I can't remember her
ever saying (on any occasion): "Oh no, Dad's gonna wash."
Promises
notwithstanding, however, I still do not do the laundry. At
least not very often. It's not that I can't. It's just that
I don't. But Robert Fulghum does. The laundry, that is. What's
more, he likes it.
It gives
me a sense of accomplishment and time alone in the back
room, which is nice sometimes. I like sorting the clothes
... lights, darks, in-betweens. I like setting the dials
... hot, cold, rinse, time, heat. These are choices I can
understand. I still haven't figured out how to program my
VCR, but washers and dryers I can handle. The bell dings.
I pull out the warm, fluffy clothes, take them to the dining
room table and fold them into neat piles. I especially like
it when there's lots of static electricity and I can hang
the socks all over my body and they stick there. My wife
caught me doing that once and gave me "the look."
I didn't even try explaining.
Besides,
doing the laundry is a religious experience. Water, earth,
fire, polarities of wet and dry, hot and cold, clean and
dirty. The great cycles ... round and round ... beginning
and end ... Alpha and Omega. And then, but for a moment,
life is tidy again.
Robert
Fulghum uses Cheer. He likes the idea of a happy wash. Besides,
Cheer is filled with amazing stuff. Just read the box. Cheer
contains dirt lifting agents (anionic surfactants), water
softening agents (complex sodium phosphates), agents to protect
washer parts (sodium silicates), agents to improve processing
(sodium sulfates), plus small quantities of stuff to reduce
wrinkling, prevent yellowing, enhance whitening and introduce
perfume. But that's not all. Cheer works in cold water, is
completely biodegradable, and costs about a nickel an ounce.
A virtual miracle in a box.
Then Fulghum
becomes downright eloquent, concluding:
Sitting
there watching the laundry go round and round, gives me
cause to think about the round world and human hygiene.
We've made a lot of progress, you know. We used to think
that disease was an act of God. Then we figured out that
it was a product of human ignorance. So we've been cleaning
up our act, literally, ever since. We've been getting the
excrement off our hands, clothes, bodies, food and houses.
If only the experts could come up with some way to get it
out of our minds. All we need is one cup of "fix-it"
that will lift the dirt from our lives ... soften our hardness
... protect our inner parts ... improve our processing ...
reduce our wrinkling ... enhance our natural color ... and
make us sweet and good.
Alas,
for that kind of wash, Cheer won't cut it. Because sin, as
I have told you repeatedly, is incredibly persistent. And
the propensity for evil is as near as the shadow we cast when
we walk. I've talked about that biblically. I've talked about
that psychologically. Now, let me talk about it geographically.
Let me
compare human nature ... my nature ... your nature ... even
the choir's nature ... to the nondescript town of Centralia,
Pennsylvania. Centralia is a mining town. More than 25 years
ago, a fire broke out in the maze of tunnels and shafts which
honeycomb the earth beneath the village. First local officials
and then state and federal mine authorities tried to put the
fire out. And they were largely successful. But not completely
successful. Having done everything they know, the fire still
burns somewhere in those tunnels. Every now and again, a puff
of smoke breaks through the surface, just to let everyone
know the fire is still there.
Sin is
like that. It is not always rampant. It is not always raging.
It is not always out of control. But it is there. Sometimes
it smolders. Sometimes it smokes. Sometimes it singes. If
you don't believe that, just look in the mirror and think
"Centralia, Pennsylvania."
But such
honesty need not lead to despair. The purpose of talking about
sin is not to depress people ... which is why the "happy
talk pulpits" (in Orange County) don't mention it much.
The issue is not depression over our prospects, but recognition
of our natures. For we believe that recognition leads to repentance,
and repentance to regeneration. At least it can. We can get
clean ... or at least a lot cleaner.
Whenever
ministers are ordained in the United Methodist tradition,
they are marched up onto the stage as a group. Then, in the
presence of 1,000 Annual Conference delegates, they are asked
a series of questions that have been in force since the days
when John Wesley was commissioning class leaders in Great
Britain. Obviously, some of the questions are a bit archaic.
They are also somewhat humorous. For example, every ordinand
is asked: "Are you in debt so as to embarrass you in
your ministry?" Well, what seminarian isn't? The way
that question is answered says more about the threshold of
one's embarrassment than about the size of one's debt.
But that's
one of the easy questions. Try this one on for size: "Do
you expect to be made perfect in this life?" To which
there can be but one answer: "By the grace of God."
But the related question cannot be easily dodged. "Are
you earnestly striving after it?" Think about that. How
would you answer that? Are you earnestly striving after perfection?
If your answer be "no" or "not really,"
I suppose you are excluded from the collegiality of the ministry.
But if the apostle Paul be believed, a negative answer ought
to indict the entire lot of you, not just the clergy.
"God
has not called us for uncleanness, but for holiness,"
says Paul to the Thessalonians (4:3). And to the Romans, Paul
writes: "I appeal to you, brethren, by the mercies of
God, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and
acceptable to God. Do not be conformed to this world, but
be transformed by the renewal of your minds, that you may
prove what is the will of God ... what is good ... what is
acceptable ... what is perfect." In short, Paul is saying
to us what we are always saying to our kids: "Clean up
your act."
And the
primary purpose in doing so is not to please God or purify
the self. The purpose is to "prove what is good, acceptable
and perfect." And what does the word "prove"
mean? It means to model before the world what a Christ-filled
life might look like, so that its obvious superiority (over
competing alternatives) might be demonstrated.
Earlier
in his letter to the Romans, a group of Jews felt the sting
of Paul's anger for failing to live in such a manner. He writes
to them:
You
who teach others, will you not teach yourselves? While you
preach against stealing, do you steal? While you say that
one must not commit adultery, do you commit it? You who
abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law,
do you dishonor God by breaking the law? Gentiles spit upon
the name of God because of you.
"Clean
up your act," Paul says. Bring your deed into harmony
with your word. That's at the heart of our faith. It's also
at the heart of our denomination. When Methodism was formally
established in America (at the Christmas Conference in Baltimore,
1784), the question was asked: "What can we rightly expect
to be the task of Methodists in America?" To which came
the answer, clear and strong: "To reform the continent
and spread scriptural holiness across the land."
What a
monstrous task. But what does it mean? "Simply put,"
says Maxie Dunnam, "it means that we Christians are called
to be demonstration plots of holiness, set down in a less
than holy world."
I like
that concept. It is not necessarily a preaching function,
although it involves preaching. It is not necessarily a missionary
function, although it involves mission activity. To become
a "demonstration plot of holiness" is a modeling
function, living out Christ's "better way" by doing
it. William Willimon makes the same argument when he says:
"The best way for Christians to criticize the world is
to be the church." We can yell, scream and prophesy till
we're blue in the face. We can point at sin, both public and
private, until our finger falls off. We can preach fire and
brimstone until the world responds with the cruelest cut of
all ... its laughter. Or we can attempt to live (in the church)
as people who have decided to do business a little differently.
And to the degree that we succeed, we may even demonstrate
that "different" is "better."
In recent
years, I have come to see that the well-lived Christian life
has enormous evangelistic power. If you go through life quietly
trying to live as you think God wants you to live, somebody
is eventually going to wonder what your secret is. They will
want to know what you have found that they are missing. Which
may not happen daily. And you may not even know it when it
does. But it happens. Trust me.
In the
days when I served my previous church, Frank Tanana moved
into the neighborhood. In fact, he bought his house from a
pair of my parishioners. And his arrival was big news, given
that Frank was still pitching for the Tigers ... and had (not
that many months earlier) thrown the 1-0 shutout on the last
day of the season that propelled the Tigers into the post-season
play-offs ... their last post-season appearance, I might add.
Before Frank hung-`em-up for good, he won a couple hundred
major league games ... in his earlier years, depending upon
a blazing fast ball ... and, in his later years, depending
on pinpoint control. Frank Tanana won throwing bullets, and
he won throwing marshmallows.
In his
early years, Frank was a rather wild pitcher. He was also,
by his own admission, a rather wild man. He lived in the fast
lane. And what he didn't already know about hard living when
he got to Los Angeles, Bo Belinski (how's that for a name
from the past?) taught him. Frank lived as hard as he threw.
Then one day his arm went ... and his life wasn't far behind.
Some of
you know that Frank Tanana is a Christian. But you may not
know what got him started. When Frank's life was going as
fast in reverse as it had been going forward, Frank began
to notice a couple of teammates who, in his own words, "just
seemed to have something I didn't." They knew who they
were. They knew where they were going. They had a purpose
beyond the moment. They had a reason to get up in the morning.
And they had a center that wasn't fixed on themselves. Which
led Frank to conclude that he wanted what they had. Like I
was saying, there is enormous evangelistic power in the well-lived
life.
Which
would be contagious, were more of us living one. But we're
not. So, given the penitential nature of the Lenten experience
... even if we are not among those Christians who voluntarily
smudge our foreheads on Ash Wednesday ... this might be as
good a Sunday as any to "fess up" (as my old Boy
Scout leader used to say).
For let's
face it. Some of us live sloppy lives and have settled quite
nicely into them. We don't take care of our bodies. We have
given up any attempt to become the master of our habits. We
talk about "my only vice" as if it were proof that
we are normal ... .or, worse yet, as a badge of pride. We
are intemperate in speech, circulate sick humor, relish and
repeat gossip, participate in put-downs and tell lies whenever
it is self-serving to do so (after coating them with a thin
veneer of respectability by calling them "white").
We steal
a little here, fudge a little there, criticize more than we
praise and gamble more than anybody imagines. We flirt to
the edges of danger, wink at recreational sex and color outside
the lines of chastity and fidelity, all the while pleading
that ours is the exceptional case.
While
we probably haven't shot, lynched, raped, slugged or dragged
anybody behind a truck in the last few months, we are closet
voyeurs of violence ... which shows up, not all that innocently,
in the way we talk and drive. We admit to more prejudice than
we have worked to curb. We make little effort to understand
the victims we help, and would prefer that our helping be
done at safe and respectable distances. Most of us can name
at least three people we are currently not speaking to. And
concerning reconciliation ... which ought to be the first
item on any Christian's agenda. ... many of us are led to
say: "I'll consider it, but I won't make the first move."
We go half a mile, not two. We send a check rather than turning
a cheek. And while most of us are ready to give the shirt
off our back, it is probably last year's shirt ... and out
of style.
Now I
know not all of this fits. But some of it fits. So the question
is not: "Do you expect to be made perfect in this life?"
That's God's call. Rather, the question is: "Are you
earnestly striving after it?" If not, clean up your act.
The fortunate
thing is that you are not without help. On one of those children's
shows, the TV announcer asked a young lad what he wanted to
do when he grew up. "I want to be an animal trainer,"
the kid said. "I'll have lots of lions, leopards and
wild tigers. I'll walk right into their cage." Then,
after a slight moment of hesitation, he added: "And,
of course, I'll have my grandpa with me." And while a
part of me rejects the oversimplified depiction of God as
grandfather, I understand the comfort that brings.
A better
image comes out of my homily two weeks ago Tuesday (at the
6:15 Service of Healing and Holy Communion). On that occasion,
I told the story wrong. Which drove me into the bowels of
my library to get it right this morning. It comes courtesy
of Leonard Sweet. Leonard tells of a mother who decided to
encourage her son's piano progress by taking him to a concert
by Paderewski. After mother and son were seated, she spotted
a friend in the audience and walked over to greet her. Seizing
the opportunity to explore the wonders of a great concert
hall, the boy rose and eventually explored his way through
a door marked "No Admittance." Suddenly the house
lights dimmed, the curtains parted and, in horror, the mother
saw her little boy at the keyboard of the Steinway plinking
out "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."
At that
moment, the grand master made his entrance, quickly moved
to the piano, and whispered in the boy's ear: "Don't
quit, keep playing." Then, leaning over the boy, Paderewski
reached down with his left hand and began filling in the bass
part. Then he reached his right arm around the other side
of the child, adding a running obbligato (complete with grace
notes). Together, the old master and the young novice transformed
an embarrassing situation into a creative experience. And
the audience was mesmerized.
My friends,
to you who are struggling to tame, train, clean and purify
the self ... no matter how embarrassingly far from perfection
you may have fallen ... God is whispering: "Don't quit.
Keep playing. You are not alone. Together, we can mesmerize
the world."
|
