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It seems
about once a week, someone will say to me: “Who do we call
to schedule an appointment with you?” Like I have people who
do that for me. Which I could, I suppose. But if you want an
appointment with me, you call me. Or you take your chances and
drop in on me. Which carries no assurance. But you never know.
When
I started out in ministry, every minister carried a little
black book. I mean a “really little black book.” Smaller
than a pack of cigarettes, you could put it in your shirt
pocket. Where there would be room for it, of course, given
that preachers weren’t supposed to carry cigarettes. Or
smoke them. Though some did.
My
appointment calendar, by contrast, is huge. It is bound in
leather. It has big pages and lots of lines to fill. I have
used versions of this book for thirty years, having missed all
of the revolutionary improvements since. I slept through the
Franklin Planner stage. I didn’t buy a Palm Pilot. And if it
weren’t for my daughter, I wouldn’t have even heard of
BlackBerries. What are BlackBerries, you ask? They are the
latest computerized wrinkle by which one does messaging and
personal scheduling. You wear them on your hip rather than eat
them on your cereal. Word has it that Lance Armstrong and
Sheryl Crow first flirted with each other via their
BlackBerries. Which, of course, assumes you know who Lance
Armstrong and Sheryl Crow are. Thanks to my daughter, I am
able to keep up.
It
might surprise you to know that I get more invitations to
seminars on organization and time management than to workshops
on spiritual formation and preaching. We clergy are encouraged
to plan our day….our week….our month….even our career.
The problem with career planning when you’re a Methodist
preacher is that when your plan and the bishop’s whim go
head to head, the bishop’s whim is going to win every time.
Don’t
get me wrong. I
like words like “organization” and “planning.” I have
a friend whose personal stationary carries the motto: “If
you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Yet when Rachel Billups
(our recently-departed Duke intern) asked me, “So how do you
deal with all the interruptions in your ministry?”, I told
her that when I looked more closely, I discovered that many of
the interruptions were my ministry.
All
of which calls to mind a line from Margaret Valade’s
favorite theologian, Caroline Myss, who writes: “So you want
to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.” All of which
suggest that both life and God are full of surprises.
Start
with life. I am talking ordinary life….daily life….get up,
go through the routines and go to bed life. You know the life
I mean. I am talking about your life….most days. That is
until life blindsides you.
You take an at-home pregnancy test
and the results either delight or dismay you.
You hear from your friendly federal
government
and it’s either a tax refund or a call-up notice.
You learn that the oncologist has read the
CAT scan of your liver
and it’s either clear or cloudy.
Your kid comes home from a party after
midnight
and either sits on the edge of your bed to talk or
kneels by the edge of the toilet to throw up.
All
of those are big departures from routine that happen
occasionally. But there are also little departures from
routine that happen daily. Ten days ago, my plan was to round
out the afternoon with a pair of calls….one in Pontiac,
followed by one in Birmingham. Both calls, pastoral. The first
in a hospital. The second in a home. “Visit the sick,” the
Bible says. So I try.
Tight
schedule. But right on schedule. Leave patient. Exit Pontiac.
Travel southbound on Wide Track. Suddenly four lanes of
traffic come to a screeching halt. A roadblock before us.
Multiple police cars behind us. Seven officers with guns drawn
race to a car located one ahead of me (and just to the right
of me). They extract the driver physically….bounce him on
the pavement unceremoniously….corral him….cuff him….lead
him away….and on we go. All of which makes me late, throwing
off my day. Only later does it occur to me that if the guy in
the car had possessed a gun….well, you never know. And there
I was, so intent on watching this happen (as if this was NYPD
Blue and I was sitting on my sofa on a Tuesday night),
that it never occurred to me that I should have hit the floor.
Or,
simpler still, consider the lady who gets up in the morning
and says: “Boy, this looks like a nice day.” Then one of
her children tells her that there’s something wrong with the
dog. But before she can pile the dog in the car, another kid
says: “Momma, I have a red throat. My throat is sore.”
“Okay,
I’ll take you and the dog.” She puts the sick child and
the dog in the car, goes first to the doctor, then to the vet.
But at the second stop, her car stalls. Something about the
battery. So she calls home and tells yet another kid that she
is going to be late. Which is when she hears (from the voice
on the other end of the phone): “One of the commodes is
backed up.” Calling a plumber from her cell phone, she
learns that there is no way he can get there today.
“But
I’m all backed up and I have company coming.” To which he
responds: “Lady, you’re not the only one backed up. I am
backed up a week. I can’t get there.”
She
goes home, thinking about how the day started. Such a
beautiful day. What happened? Life happened. If you’re going
to have any joy, any purpose, any peace, you are going to have
to put it together out of fragments, because you are not going
to get 24 smooth hours in a row.
But
the Bible understands that. The Bible was not written by some
relaxed person, all lathered up with sunscreen under an
umbrella, drinking lemonade beside the pool. The Bible was
written by people who had to put life together with short
pieces of string.
Life
is unpredictable. Full of surprises. Often enjoyable. Usually
endurable. Most all of them accidental. But here and there,
providential. That’s because God, too, is full of surprises.
Ellsworth Kalas (one of the geniuses behind the Disciple Bible
Study movement), writes: “I have lived in the world of
religion since before I was born, and in this long period of
observation (seventy years and counting), I have learned two
things for sure. First, you can’t box God in. And second, we
are always trying to do so.”
My
father….who wasn’t majorly religious, or even minorly
religious, for that matter…. occasionally used to say:
“God’s ways are not our ways.” All he really meant by
that was that there is always going to be a certain
unpredictability to life, and whenever we get too settled in
our ways (thinking we have life pretty well figured out), it
is very much in the nature of God to say: “Refigure.”
When
Abraham said, “You know, Sarah and I are well into our
retirement and have gotten pretty comfortable here in Ur,”
God said: “Refigure.”
When
Moses said, “This job I’ve got in Midian, working for my
father-in-law, is one cushy deal,” God said: “Refigure.”
When
Jonah told the lady at the AAA office, “The last place in
the world I’d ever want to go is Nineveh,” God said:
“Refigure.”
Enter
Nicodemus. I’ve always had a warm spot in my heart for
Nicodemus, given that I picture him as a man who is getting
looser, not harder, as he gets older….even as I picture
myself getting looser rather than harder as I get older. We
see him coming to Jesus, privately, for a little nocturnal
session of “Question and Answer.” Much has been made of
the fact that Nicodemus approaches Jesus by night, as if to
suggest that Nicodemus would rather not be seen in the company
of Jesus. Perhaps he viewed such an encounter as potentially
harmful to his reputation, like a preacher’s sneaking into a
strip show. It is hard for us to remember that there were once
circles in which Jesus was not exactly respectable. So maybe
Nick did go nocturnally, the better to go anonymously. But the
text doesn’t say that. So for all we know, this little
episode of “Nick at Nite” could have taken place after
dark because that’s when Nick got off work…..or when Jesus
did.
We know a
little about Nicodemus. He’s a Jew….a well-along-in-years
Jew….a well-born and moderately-wealthy Jew. He is also a
Pharisaic Jew, one of a number which most likely never
exceeded six thousand. These were always men….always
devout….and always good (if you define “good” as living
as close as humanly possible to God’s law). What’s more,
he is a ruler of the Pharisees (of which there were never more
than seventy). Color him the “goodest of the good.”
Anyway,
Nicodemus comes to Jesus after dark and launches a
conversation about “signs and wonders.” In short, Nick has
seen what Jesus has done to the point of being impressed. “I
am impressed,” he says. “And I don’t impress easily.”
Following which he adds: “Which is why I am willing to
consider the preposterous claim that you (Jesus) might have
more than a passing relationship with God. Because I can’t
imagine anybody doing what you have done, unless God be in
you.”
To which
Jesus says (loose translation): “I am glad you’re
impressed. But anybody can be impressed. What’s more, you
didn’t come here tonight to tell me how impressed you were.
You came looking for something else. Something more. So here
is my word to you. You need to be born from above.” If you
want to translate this as “you need to be born again,” be
my guest. But “born from above” is closer and better. To
which Nick says: “You want I should crawl back into the
belly of my mommy?” And Jesus says: “Don’t be stupid.
Instead, listen to the wind (which blows where it wants
to…..when it wants to….to the degree that it wants
to….for as long as it wants to). You don’t control it. You
just receive it. You move with it. You go with it.”
I have been
in a hurricane (South Carolina) where you could actually see
the wind whipping lawn chairs out to sea, with a sheriff
driving up and down the road shouting (through a bullhorn
attached to his car): “If you choose not to evacuate this
island immediately, we can no longer guarantee your safety.”
That’s one kind of wind.
But I have
also been on the golf course when a golfer, far better than me
(sufficiently “better” so as to worry about conditions),
bent over….picked a few blades of grass….threw them up
into the air….and discerned by their movement that there was
a breeze blowing ever so softly from east to west, meaning
that (if he went with it and adjusted to it) it would carry
his wedge to the green within six feet four inches of the pin.
That’s another kind of wind.
My friends,
don’t make this harder than it needs to be. If rebirth is
really from above (and if it really is like the wind), there
is not one way that it happens….nor is there one day that it
happens. It can happen to anybody, any way, at any time.
For some
ridiculous reason, I once read a 350-page biography of
televangelist Jimmy Swaggert. And he lamented that in the
family in which he was raised (which included both Mickey
Gilley and Jerry Lee Lewis…..“There’s a whole lot of
shaking going on”), and in the church where he was raised
(Pentecostal), and in the part of the South where he was
raised (Faraday, Louisiana), the only way anybody accepted
that you had received the Spirit (or were born of the Spirit)
was if you were slain in the Spirit, preferable while speaking
in tongues. And Jimmy hadn’t been. Yet he wanted to be.
Because he wanted it to happen to him like it had happened to
everybody else, so they wouldn’t look at him like an
outsider.
Here,
nobody has ever been “slain in the Spirit.” Occasionally a
groomsman or bridesmaid will faint in the middle of the
ceremony. Given that I have great peripheral vision, I usually
see them go before they hit the ground. Sometimes I even catch
them. But were it Sunday morning and someone were to be slain
in the Spirit (falling over backwards to be caught by a deacon
or a nurse-in-waiting), they would look like the outsider.
Because that never happens here. So does that mean this is not
a Spirit-filled church? I once got a letter from someone who
was leaving our church, explaining that they had found a
Spirit-filled church. I appreciated the letter. I mean, I was
glad to know why she left. People don’t always tell me. But
as to this not being a Spirit-filled church, don’t sell me
that crap.
Experiencing
the Spirit can be so very different for so very many. I want
you to understand that because there are all kinds of people
out there who will swear on a stack of Bibles that what I just
said isn’t true. They will swear that the rebirth experience
is always the same experience…. describable in the same
words….and felt in the same way. And maybe the night you
were “reborn” was pretty much like those people
described….something you experienced with a rush and
answered with a “Yes.” Maybe it truly was a night that you
can date with precision….a night so dramatic in the claim it
made upon your life (and so dramatic in the about-face you
made in response to its claim on your life) that, to this day,
you can still feel the residual twinges of spiritual whiplash.
But for
others of you, there was no one night….no dramatic
moment….no dateable encounter…. and no spiritual rush.
Instead, it was like a gentle leading over a long journey,
marked by a “pull” here, a “push” there, or perhaps a
simmering, smoldering warming, largely unrecognized at the
time, but which (over time) pushed you in a direction you
never planned to go, or led you to do something with your life
that you never (in a million years) thought you’d do.
Or consider
it another way. When, pray tell, did you first know you were
in love? Or when did you first become aware that someone loved
you? The answers will be as diverse as the people in this
room. Some of you will know exactly when it happened….where
it happened….what you were wearing….where you were
standing….what he said….what she said….how each of you
looked…how both of you felt….what music was playing….and
how the weather was. Ah, yes….you remember it well. You are
part of the Maurice Chevalier/Enzio Pinza school of “Love by
Thunderbolt.” Some enchanted evening…..across a crowded
room….seeing a stranger…. hearing violins in the
woodwork….flying to his side/her side….as if by
electromagnetism. Ecstasy! Rapture! Good for you. That’s
nice. Not for a moment would I diminish the power of your
memories.
But others
of you can’t pinpoint it at all. You don’t know when it
happened…..where it happened….how it happened….why it
happened….didn’t plan for it to happen….fought tooth and
nail against it happening….because it was the wrong
time….wrong place….maybe even the wrong face. I suppose we
could term this the Rex Harrison/Henry Higgins school of
“Love by Delightful Accident.” How did they put it? “I
was serenely independent and content before we met. Surely I
could always be that way again and yet….I’ve grown
accustomed to your face.”
But however
it was that you fell in love….whether you discovered it, or
it discovered you….whether you ran toward it, or away from
it….sooner or later you had to respond to it. Sooner or
later you had to say: “Yes, I’m open to this….to
what’s happening to me….to what’s stirring in me….to
what’s simmering and smoldering in me. I see my life being
changed. And although it turns my knees to jelly one minute
and scares me half-to-death the next, I am ready for it.
I’ll go with it. And I will try to trust what comes as a
result of it.”
*
* * * *
Oh, and one
more thing that is common to both falling in love and feeling
the Spirit. It has to do with temperature. Whenever you fall
in love or feel the Spirit,
it
warms the soul,
it takes the chill off the universe,
it fires the faint of heart.
Now you can
go ahead and tell me (at the door) that I am full of hot air.
To which I will say: “Precisely.”
Note: I am
indebted to Ellsworth Kalas for his treatment of this same
text in a book called New Testament Parables from the
Backside. I am also indebted to Fred Craddock for his
story of the woman whose day unravels (especially Fred’s
wonderful line about the Bible not being written by some
relaxed person, all lathered up with sunscreen under an
umbrella by the pool drinking lemonade.) Fred is right. The
Bible was written by people “who had to put life together
with short pieces of string.”
As concerns
the three paragraphs about falling in love, I lifted them from
a sermon I previously preached in September of 1994. While
plagiarism is always sinful, I suppose it becomes less so when
you are ripping off your own material.
It is
perhaps important to note that both the title and text for
this morning’s sermon were connected to First Church’s
Choir Camp theme, “Catch the Wind.” The morning included a
number of musical presentations tied to the issue of wind in
general and this text in particular.
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