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William
Shakespeare suggested that sermons could be found in stones.
And Annie Dillard once wrote an entire book under the title,
Teaching a Stone to Talk. Both ideas are figures of
speech. Stones do not talk. Neither do they preach. You may
hold opinions to the contrary. But in this season where the
spirit of charity is supposed to overwhelm us, I trust that
you will keep them to yourself.
What Shakespeare
and Dillard are suggesting is that everything has a story.
Even the most inanimate object can speak with the eloquence
of angels, if someone has ears to hear and a mind to understand.
Life is
like that. You go along from day to day ... not noticing very
much ... not seeing or hearing very much ... then all of sudden,
when you least expect it, things you have heard and seen a
hundred times suddenly speak with such power that they force
you to pay attention in an almost holy way.
In a book
of essays by Fred Buechner, there is the description of a
few hours in a single day ... hours in which nothing much
happened ... but in which, as it turned out, everything happened.
Fred Buechner lives and writes in the mountains of Vermont.
But he comes and goes for purposes of fulfilling speaking
engagements, leading writing seminars, and meeting publishers.
Which is how it came to pass that he was returning to Vermont
from the state of New Jersey. The following three remembrances
happened over the course of that day. And, if you indulge
me, I will share them with you now.
The first
thing occurred on the train just outside of Newark. It was
November, a gray and sunless day ... one he describes as being
as bleak as a migraine headache. The train windows were coated
with dust (which may have actually been preferable to looking
at Newark) ... especially that section of endless factories,
black as soot against the sky ... with tall chimneys belching
flame, like a landscape that Dante might have painted, had
he used a brush instead of a pen.
Somewhere
in that twilight zone between being too tired to read but
not tired enough to sleep, Buechner found his eyes drifting
until they came to rest on the only bright thing in the entire
coach ... a large framed photograph above the doorway to the
forward car. It was a cigarette ad which featured a pretty
girl and an equally good-looking guy. They were sitting together
beside something blue ... a stream perhaps ... maybe even
a small lake. There was a blue sky overhead ... lots of green
trees ... a crisp, sunlit scene. Full of beauty ... full of
youth ... full of life ... that's what the picture was full
of. Except for the bottom left-hand corner where one could
read the Surgeon General's warning concerning the fact that
cigarette smoking might very well be hazardous to one's health.
Buechner
reflected on the irony of it all. Drab train ... drab landscape
... drab Newark. Pretty pictures ... fatal message. We see
it thousands of times, yet we miss the irony of it all. I'm
talking about the way the words fit with the picture ... or
don't fit with the picture. There, in the midst of all that
youth and all that beauty one reads: "Buy this. Even
though it could kill you."
Don't
get me wrong. I don't want to focus on cigarette smoking,
cigarette advertising, or even the cigarette industry. It's
the irony I want you to see. What those ads seem to be screaming
(in their own understated way) is that we are our own worst
enemies. It is hard for any sane person to deny. Pretty girl,
good-looking boy ... lakes and streams in their pristine purity
... blue skies and green trees (symbols of all that is fair,
benign and innocent). And tucked down in the corner of the
picture is the grim little warning that we will end up killing
ourselves if we are not lucky. Yet, upon seeing the picture,
nobody stands up and shouts, "This is madness."
Because there is something in us that has grown exceedingly
comfortable with the idea of our own destruction.
After
a while, the train rumbled under the river and through no
woods until it came, not to grandmother's house, but to midtown
Manhattan. To get to Vermont would require a bus. And to get
to the bus would require a cab (or a walk to the Port Authority
bus terminal). Buechner chose the walk, cutting along West
42nd Street. About which he writes:
I haven't
lived an especially sheltered life, as lives go. I have
knocked around like everybody else and have probably seen
my share of life's seedier side. I was born in New York
City and lived there, off and on, for years. I walked along
West 42nd Street plenty of times, seeing what
there is to see ... though I tried not to see it ... yet
wanting to see it at the same time.
Movie
houses ... each one featuring one more X on the marquee
than the next one ... as if to say: "Try us. We will
cater to your lust with a level of grotesqueness and depravity
that you can experience nowhere else." Bookstores.
Peep shows. Massage parlors. All with people standing in
the doors trying to coax you through the doors (which doesn't
always take much coaxing). And then there are the not-all-that-pretty
girls and the not-all-that-pretty boys ... many of them
hardly more than children ... trying to sell, beg, borrow
or steal anything that can be sold, begged, borrowed or
stolen ... all the while trying to avoid the 42nd
Street drunks (which are not the comic, amiable, lampshade-on-the-head
kinds of drunks you see on television, but the angry, loudmouth
drunks and the sickly, drooling drunks that you seldom,
if ever, see on television). But the drunks you see on 42nd
Street are what most drunks look like, once they pass the
point of being funny and amiable.
There's
hardly anybody here who doesn't know the 42nd Street
scene ... who hasn't walked the 42nd Street scene
... or at least driven through it in a cautious and wide-eyed
sort of way. And as with the experience of the cigarette ad
on the train, there is a deeper point here ... not to be missed.
The point has nothing to do with whether there should be a
sex industry or a wine industry ... or whether city government
ought to do a better job at policing such industries. Instead,
the point comes in the form of a second irony ... an irony
that says: "Look how drawn we are to the things that
appall us." We hunger after things we openly decry. The
42nd Streets of the world offer us license to be
a little bit sub-human ... not just sexually ... but in any
other way that happens to appeal to us. And if you and I are
tempted to believe there is no part of ourselves that hungers
after such things, we need only remember (as proof to the
contrary) some of the dreams we dream, the secrets we keep,
and the battles with temptation we fight in the darkness.
The unlucky ones are simply those who get caught in the jungle
and never learn how to find their way out.
Sometimes
people who don't know me very well discover that I am a preacher.
Whereupon they put me down (or write me off) by suggesting
that I am privileged to work among the saintly and godly,
while they have to go out there, day after day, and muck it
up in the real world. I always want to tell them that in my
"saintly and godly" version of the real world, I
am no longer surprised at anything. Because I have seen it
all, heard it all and smelled it all. Which is not a reflection
on the churches to which the Bishop keeps sending me, but
a reflection of the fact that even the saints are a little
more "seedy" (or is it "gamy") than even
the Bishop suspects.
A minister
in his mature years (a man of national stature and reputation)
was recently arrested by an undercover police lady posing
as a hooker. Fortunately for him, everything was handled discreetly,
given that discretion is one of the saving graces that money
can sometimes buy. And while his colleagues felt the pain,
they did not feel the surprise. Because they knew that even
saints are sometimes drawn to the things which appall them.
But back
to Buechner. He was no longer walking to the Port Authority
bus terminal. He was on his way home. And home was the source
of the third picture ... the third lesson of the day. It was
late in the evening when he got there. But there was light
on in the house. His wife and daughter had waited supper for
him. There was a fire in the wood stove and a cat beside it
(sleeping on his back with one paw in the air ... which sounds
ridiculous, unless you have ever had a cat).
All
of us have problems at home. But mine were nowhere to be
seen. There was nothing, just then, except stillness, light,
peace, and the love that had sent me to New Jersey two days
previous. Which was the same love that had brought me back
and was waiting for me when I got there. And it may have
been only a couple hundred miles from West 42nd
Street. But in another sense, it may have been light years
away.
But listen
to what he says next:
As I
entered that room with wife and fire and kid and cat (which
was, at that moment, everything that represented warmth
and light and love to me), it seemed to me that wherever
such things are to be found in the world, they should be
treasured, nurtured and sheltered from any darkness that
might threaten them.
I suppose
that that room, at that moment, was not unlike the monasteries
of the Dark Ages where truth, wisdom and charity were kept
alive in the midst of barbarity, corruption and misrule. The
world is not always a pretty place. Sometimes it is a downright
ugly place. And not all of the ugliness is out there. Some
of it is in here. But every once in a while ... more often
for some of us, but at least occasionally for all of us ...
there are places where it happens and people who make it happen.
Make what happen? Things like peace and love and warmth and
light and beauty and goodness. And whenever those things happen,
we should hold onto them for dear life. Because they are dear
life, don't you see. They are the dearest life we know.
But some
of you are going to hear this and run with it the wrong way.
You are going to take the words "hold on to dear life,"
and use them as license to become clutchingly possessive ...
restraining and imprisoning "dear life" until you
have squeezed all the "life" out of "dear life,"
which is not what I am suggesting at all.
I am suggesting
that by holding on to dear life, that we hold up dear life
... as in the sense of elevating and honoring dear life (even
as we recognize the importance of dear life). I am suggesting
that we begin to think like the general manager of a baseball
team who announces his willingness to trade every player but
one ... the one he holds on to, the better to build a franchise
around. If that be true, don't you suppose there are some
things so precious that we ought to build our lives around
them, instead of taking them for granted while we build our
lives around other things instead?
This is
the season of Thanksgiving, is it not? And, if I have figured
it out correctly, the essence of gratitude consists in the
fact that there are precious things in our lives ... even
priceless things in our lives ... which we did not so much
earn as receive. Meaning that we ought to stop and calculate
their worth in measurements other than dollars. Which is what
"counting your blessings" is all about ... not in
the sense of adding them up, but in the sense of holding them
up.
It may
surprise you to know that Paul didn't love all of his churches
equally. Which is one of the things that humanizes Paul. But
if he loved one of them more than any other, it was the little
church at Philippi. His letter to the Philippians is a short
one ... short on verses ... short on chapters ... short on
admonitions and warnings ... short on complaints to air or
disputes to settle. The church at Philippi has no dirty laundry
that Paul feels a need to wash, clean and fold. Which is why
his letter to the Philippians sounds like a conversation among
friends. Which leads to this gentle urging at letter's end:
Finally
my brethren, whatever is true ... whatever is honorable
... whatever is just ... whatever is pure ... whatever is
lovely ... whatever is gracious ... if there is anything
excellent or worthy of praise ... think on these things.
Which,
as a text, is well known to you. But the Greek verb for "think"
is a strange one. Actually, the word "think" is
a poor translation. For it does not mean "consider"
or "contemplate." Neither does it mean "philosophize"
or "fantasize." It does not even mean "respect."
It means to think about things in a more active sense, as
if one were considering the cost of committing one's life
to them ... as one might do if one were "holding"
them, don't you see.
I don't
know what that may mean to you. But I know what it means to
me. It means I need to keep discovering how to "hold"
on to dear life ... not in the sense of clutching it, but
in the sense of cherishing it ... especially when the word
"cherish" is not a word that flows freely from me,
or an act that comes naturally to me.
Several
years ago, a seminary invited Fred Buechner to teach a master's
class on preaching. Which gave him great uncertainty, given
that he was not necessarily called to preach nor has he done
it with weekly regularity. But he was talked into accepting,
whereupon he drafted several lectures on the art of sermon
construction ... teaching his students how to write introductions,
formulate conclusions, develop arguments and insert illustrations.
But halfway through the semester he came to the conclusion
that his students were not becoming better preachers. Their
sermons were more technically proficient. But they weren't
"coming across." So figuring he had but a few weeks
left, he devoted the remainder of the sessions to teaching
preachers rather than teaching preaching ... inviting them
to look at who they were (and what they were about), in the
process of doing whatever it was they felt called to do.
One day
he said: "It will help your preaching immeasurably if
you pay special attention to those times you find tears in
your eyes." Which only echoed Robert Frost when he wrote:
"Every good poem begins with a lump in the throat."
Both are
right, of course. So if you want to write a poem, preach a
sermon or express your gratitude around the Thanksgiving table
... I mean, if you really want to do that ... then pay special
attention to those moments when you have ...
Tears
in your eyes
Laughter
in your soul
A
lump in your throat
Courage
in your spine
Adrenaline
in your veins
A
snap in your fingers
A
lilt in your step
Music
in your ears
A
smile on your lips
Peace
in your heart
Or
someone special in your arms.
For those
may be the first symptoms that you have stumbled upon "dear
life." Then think on those things. Hold them up. Cherish
them. They are the stuff of which blessings are made. So name
them. Out loud. Then count them. One ... by one ... by one
... by one.
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