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Preliminary
Word in Response to the Crisis at Columbine High School
Let me
join with other clergy across the nation ... and across the
chancel ... in the pain that is shared and the prayers that
are offered for fallen teachers and students, and for shattered
families and friends. Let me also express my gratitude that
here, for our kids, support is being offered by Matt Hook
and our youth counselors ... especially to Amanda Stubbs,
who once lived there, now lives here, and whose best friend
died in that library.
There
will be more to say ... in time ... when (hopefully) we will
be more focused on cure than blame. For now, I have nothing
new to add, save for a trio of "n" words that keep
rolling through my mind.
The first
is "nihilist." The nihilist is one who believes
that nothing matters ... meaning that life is cheap, insignificant
and expendable. To the nihilist, it matters little if you
live or die ... or if anybody lives or dies. All of which
fosters a culture of death, wherein dying moves from being
intriguing to compelling. Fortunately, very few of us are
nihilists.
The second
word is "narcissist." This is one who believes that
I (alone) matter ... my wants, my needs, my desires, that's
what's important. "I can make room for others in my world,
to the degree that they mirror me, support me, or endorse
me." Unfortunately, the world does not lack for narcissists.
The third
word is "neighbor" ... not as in "Hi, neighbor!
How's the weather? What do you say we join forces and paint
the fence?" ... but as in the command to love the neighbor
as the self, and (more to the point) as in Jesus' answer to
the lawyer's question: "Just who is my neighbor?"
To the
nihilist ... no life is sacred.
To the
narcissist ... my life is sacred.
To the
neighbor ... all life is sacred.
The question
... where our kids are concerned: "How do we make neighbors
out of nihilists and narcissists?"
The
Sermon
Last Sunday
morning, along about 7:45, I had Alta Yager and Thelma Wilmouth
check me out in the narthex. I needed to know if I looked
all right ... if my tie matched my suit ... and if all of
my colors were coordinated. I needed an outside opinion, don't
you see, because I didn't have Kris to rely on. She spent
the weekend in Saginaw, leading a retreat for spouses of clergy,
which is why Alta and Thelma were needed to tell me if I passed
muster. I did. But, then, they're incredibly kind.
I always
thought the deployment of color was an art. Now I learn it
is something of a science. Nobody would open a restaurant
without consulting someone schooled in the principles of color.
I am told it has become a very "in" thing to have
one's own color analysis done by an expert. I suspect it is
a service commonly purchased by women. But what do I know?
Maybe I should pay an analyst to settle, once and for all,
the debate as to whether I look better in blue or brown.
Psychologists
have done color analyses for years, claiming that knowledge
of the colors we prefer will give them clues as to the kinds
of people we are. I remember great professional consternation
over a child who brought a daily picture from home to give
to his kindergarten teacher, each picture colored only in
black. The professionals poked around in the child's psyche.
They probed his family history. They paged through recent
life experiences, looking for unresolved encounters with death.
They should have checked his art supplies. They would have
discovered the only crayon he had was black.
I am harder
to define. I like most every color. I do not, however, like
pink. And I am not much on pastels. I dislike colors that
feel a need to sneak up on me. Instead, I would prefer that
my colors march right in and make a statement. For some reason,
I have always liked green. But it has to be a green green
... a man's green ... like "kelly" or "emerald."
None of this mossy or olive stuff. Perhaps I can account for
my preference biographically. For while I didn't go to Michigan
State, I am one-quarter Irish. My paternal grandmother's maiden
name was Kennedy. When we changed the sanctuary carpet, two
churches ago, I persuaded them to do it over in kelly green.
The first Sunday after the new carpet was laid, the choir
walked down the aisle to discover that someone had placed
a putter and several golf balls in the center of the chancel.
There
are, however, more negative associations with the color green
than with other hues on the spectrum. Medically, green is
associated with bile, giving rise to the phrase "bilious
green." Green is the color we turn when we are "off
our feed," "under the weather," "sick
to our stomach," or "too long at sea." Green
is the color of copper when it ages, bananas when they are
hard and cheese that turns bad. And the last time I looked,
green was also the color of pond scum.
In recent
years, green has become synonymous with the word "ordinary."
This has largely resulted from a song associated with Frank
Sinatra (who recorded it) and Kermit T. Frog (who introduced
it.) "Frog" is not only Kermit's last name. It is
also his nature. Kermit is a Muppet ... a Sesame Street regular
... a colleague of Ernie, Burt and the Cookie Monster ...
the alter ego of the late Jim Henson ... and the husband of
Miss Piggy. I am not regularly atuned to Kermit's comings
and goings, but one of the potential benefits of being a grandfather
(when it comes) is that I will have an excuse to watch Kermit
once more.
So what,
say you. So this, say I. Kermit is green and wishes it were
otherwise. I know the feeling.
It's
not that easy, bein' green
having
to spend each day the color of the leaves,
when
I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow, or gold,
or
something much more colorful like that.
It's
not that easy, bein' green,
it
seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things,
and
people tend to pass you over, 'cause you're not
standing
out like sparkles in the water, or stars in the sky.
But
green's the color of spring,
and
green can be cool and friendly-like.
And
green can be big like an ocean, important like a mountain,
or
tall like a tree.
When
green is all there is to be,
it
could make you wonder why, but why wonder, why wonder?
I
am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful,
and
I think it's what I want to be.
There's
a lot of truth there. I suspect many of us suffer some "greenness"
in our lives. Perhaps it comes as a result of being short
... or shy ... or plain ... or oddly colored ... or feeling
handicapped as a result of where we were born, how we were
born, to whom we were born, or with what we were born. All
of us have known our moments of "blending in with so
many other ordinary things," to the degree that a word
like "average" becomes synonymous with a spiritual
disease ... as in the phrase "hopelessly average."
"And people do tend to pass you by," as Kermit says.
Which may be the unkindest cut of all.
The realization
of our "greenness" begins to hit about early Junior
High, when a girl looks in a mirror and realizes that she's
plain or pimpled ... heavy or skinny ... too short or too
tall ... or that she can never wear her hair in a certain
kind of way and that her figure is eventually going to fall
short of centerfold proportions.
Or perhaps
it is when a boy first realizes that most of the teams have
already been chosen by the captains, and just once he wishes
he could be somebody's first pick instead of being relegated
to that moment when the leftovers are divided and somebody
says: "All right, we'll take the three 11-year-olds and
you can have Ritter and the kid with the broken arm."
While
the realization of "greenness" often begins with
issues of "appearance" for girls and "athletics"
for boys, age broadens the problem as girls discover there
is more to life than the way they look, and boys discover
there is more to life than the games they play. The older
we get, the more we realize how many arenas there are in which
"ordinary" is the best we can hope for...."middle-of-the-pack"
is as far as we are likely to go ... and "outstanding"
is a word more aptly descriptive of what cows do in the field
than what we are likely to do with our lives.
If it
is true that life's most painful metaphysical discovery is
that of our mortality (meaning that some day we will not be),
very close to it is the discovery of our mediocrity (meaning
that some day we will not be everything we hoped.)
I remember
seeing a cartoon depicting a wicked stepmother, posturing
in front of a looking glass and inquiring: "Mirror, mirror,
on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" To which
came back the answer: "Snow White, and don't you forget
it, sweetheart!" Certainly not a kind response. But accurate,
one suspects.
I find
it interesting that the two mass murderers at Columbine High
School started out with a plan to kill male athletes. And
when the newspapers ran pictures of the girls who were murdered,
they were (to a person) quite fair of face. Which may be mere
coincidence. But I doubt it. It wouldn't be the first time
that violence was the by-product of alienation ... and alienation,
the by-product of jealousy.
Some of
you will remember Bob Morley, my guitar-playing colleague
from California. Bob has so many talents in speech and music,
I can't believe he ever spent a "green day" in his
life. But then he wrote a book which included a chapter entitled,
"Blessed Are The Gentle Dweebs, the Late Bloomers and
the Hopelessly Average." Bob is describing himself, don't
you see. Listen:
I was
painfully skinny as a teenager. I looked like a skeleton
with skin. My
figure consisted of one adam's apple and two kneecaps. I
loved basketball but
hated the outfit that revealed my embarrassingly deficient
physique to the cheerleaders.
Not only was I skinny, but I had a dangerously gentle streak
that was
truly out of character in the rugged Kansas farm town where
I lived. My
friends were the kind of guys who went hunting, butchered
hogs, chewed tobacco
and talked rough. They raced stock cars and attended tractor
pulls. I
liked music and art. I tried hunting, but always harbored
a secret hope that the
squirrel would get away.
That brought
back memories. I was neither thin nor gentle. But I was profoundly
unconfident and rather cherubically youthful of face. Since
I looked young, I never saw myself as a leader or a lover
(albeit secretly longing to be both.) In my early years I
was never elected to anything. Neither was I the kind of guy
girls passed notes about or sat by the phone waiting for the
calls I never made. I used to say it was a good thing I met
Kris when I was 23 and she was 17. Had we both been 17, she
would have never given a second glance to a guy like me. A
few years ago, I stopped saying that. I realized it sounded
like a put-down of my wife. For the truth of the matter is
that, when I was 17, she might very well have looked at a
guy like me. But I wouldn't have been able to bring myself
to approach a girl like her.
It's not
that easy being green. So what do you do, once you discover
you are? Well, there are a lot of approaches that won't work
... a lot of attitudes that won't help ... a lot of avenues
that won't get you anywhere. You can slip into self pity ...
"poor me." You can consume yourself with envy ...
"lucky you." Ironically, envy is often called "the
green disease." You can curse God, your parents or fate.
You can shout or pout. There are any number of things that
come quite naturally. But none of them will work. For it is
still your greenness that must be worked out in fear and trembling.
Just as no one can come along and tell you "don't sweat
mortality ... you're not really going to die," neither
can anyone come along and tell you "don't sweat mediocrity
... you're going to dazzle the world in everything you do."
Because you are going to die. And you are not going to dazzle
the world.
But there
are avenues that will get us somewhere. They begin, not with
what we see when we look at ourselves, but with what God sees
when He looks at us. For we need to remember that God not
only loves dweebs, late bloomers and the hopelessly average,
but also employs and empowers them. Consider the disciples.
I wouldn't have picked them to launch anything. Few of them
were well-traveled, well-connected or well-heeled. The fact
that they were free to follow Jesus on a moment's notice has
often been evidenced as a sign of great devotion and loyalty.
But it probably meant they were so unimportant in the scheme
of whatever it was they were doing, that they had precious
few loose ends to tie up. Had Jesus submitted their resumes
to a Management Consultant firm, the entire lot of them would
have been found lacking in education, background, demonstrated
capability, or prior experience with the team concept.
Yet Jesus
found ways to maximize the performance of the whole, marrying
the strength of one to the weakness of another. He used their
failures as occasions for training. He encouraged them at
the points they were most indecisive. He convinced them they
could get positive results. And he told them, in ways they
could swallow, that they would eventually do greater things
in their mediocrity than he had done in his divinity.
That's
how God works with people ... not at the level of skill, but
at the level of willingness. The issue (for God) is not with
what we bring to the party. The issue is with our willingness
to accept the invitation. I once heard Peter Gomes, Dean of
the Chapel at Harvard, tell about visits to the campus made
by Mother Teresa and Desmond Tutu in the same semester. He
said that there were striking similarities between the two
of them. Then he added: "They were both noticeably average
and genuinely surprised that God had chosen to use them."
Second,
it is only when we stop looking for strengths we don't possess,
that we will begin to value the ones we do. After all (says
Kermit): "Green is the color of spring. Green can be
cool and friendly-like. And green can be big like oceans ...
important like mountains ... tall like trees. If, on one hand,
the church tells us it is vitally important to confess our
shortcomings, it is (on the other hand) equally important
that the church help us identify our strengths. I once heard
an angry parishioner snarl at his pastor (while shaking hands
at the door) : "Some Sunday, just for a change, could
you give us a word or two on what ... if anything ... we're
doing right." Ouch.
Perhaps
you have noticed that I seldom ask you to do a job without
first sharing my belief in your capacity to do it ... and
then telling you the strengths I saw that led me to ask you
in the first place.
Finally,
not only does God employ the average and help them to own
their strengths, He promises some amazing victories when his
resources are hitched to theirs. The ringing conviction of
Holy Scripture, from Moses to Paul, is that impossible things
have happened because improbable and incapable people did
not realize they were impossible. Which explains why Paul
could get away with preaching all that "more than conquerors"
stuff to a little band of Christians in the shadow of Imperial
Rome, without being laughed out of town.
Let's
lock this up and put it to bed with a football story. The
year was 1969. The event was the Super Bowl. The teams were
the New York Jets and the Baltimore Colts. It was a mismatch
on paper. The Colts of Johnny Unitas represented the venerable
National Football League. The Jets of Joe Willie Namath represented
the fledgling American Football League. Talk about David going
up against Goliath.
John Dockery,
a nondescript defensive back on that 1969 Jets team, described
what happened during that game in Miami. Said John: "There
was a moment, late in the third quarter, when I looked up
at the scoreboard and it flashed through my mind like a bolt
of lightning, we could actually win this thing. My God, we
could really win this thing. "
Funny
thing about that Super Bowl. If memory serves me correctly,
the Jets wore green.
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