|
Ah, the changing seasons, the
unfolding of each new day, like the seasons of a life. This
week we were up north for Judy’s birthday — the first day of
summer, the longest day of the year — and experienced once
again:
-
The glory and freshness of
dawn, which comes so early right now in the north
country, like the eager excitement of early life — first
child, first grandchild, first steps, new experiences.
The seasons of life.
-
Then
the steady stability of the afternoon of life when much
has been accomplished, our work is well on its way, with
much still to be done. A central season of life.
-
Later the quiet hush of
early evening and the end of the day. Up north on June
21, the hours of sunlight slowly fade into a warm sunset
in the late evening. And even long after the sun has
disappeared, a lingering glow brightens the horizon,
like the sunset years of life, lingering at the end of
life’s day.
-
Finally, the dark of night. Sometimes frightening,
sometimes comforting, always mysterious and wonderful at
the end of a mid-summer day or the end of a life on
earth, with the promise of a new dawn yet to be.
Seasons of
life, like the passing times of a day. Each stage has its
own glory and each has its own challenge.
And
smack dab in the middle…high noon.
It is that time when we should
be at our best, the pinnacle, the highpoint of our activity
and work, the center of our days. Beyond the early eager
mistakes of morning and yet still going strong, able to face
whatever life brings.
Reginald Mallett, British
Methodist preacher and author, says he remembers his first
grade teacher, Miss Boardman, and her “Monday Morning Penny
Psalms.” Each Monday she would write a Psalm on the
blackboard, and the first child who could memorize it would
get a penny. He remembers memorizing this Psalm 91, and he
still remembers the comfort it brought for a small child. He
writes: “Like most children, I was afraid of the dark. Every
creak and groan of our old house brought a host of terrors.
Every shadow seemed sinister, a lair of ghosts and scary
animals.”
So, Mallett says, as a child he
took great comfort in the Psalmist’s promise: “You will not
fear the terror of the night.” And I suppose we don’t have
to go very far to figure out the fear of the “arrows that
fly by day.” Mallett says that even as a child growing up in
England, he had seen enough American Westerns, cowboys and
Indians sagas, to have an image of arrows flying and the
courage to deal with them.
But he says there was one
phrase in this Psalm which was totally lost on him: “The
destruction that wastes at noonday.”
With maturity (says Mallett), I
have come to see that life’s noonday is also a most
dangerous time. By then our major decisions have been made.
It is the point in our journey that we are tempted to sit
back and let down our guard. At night we are vigilant, but
at noonday we relax and say, “You can afford to eat, drink
and be merry.” We take a spiritual and sometimes moral
siesta and we underestimate the destruction that can
waste…at high noon.
(Reginald Mallett, Sermons by the Lake, page 26)
1. HIGH
NOON…IN THE MIDST OF OUR BUSYNESS
At high noon we are, perhaps, at
the height of our success. But if not, it is certainly the
height of our busyness with a deep investment in life, a
multitude of demands and pressures to succeed, high
expectations of our own and high expectations from those
around us. And the temptation is to lose ourselves in our
work —
Now I speak as a
sometimes-recovering workaholic, on and off the wagon time
and again, and I speak as the son of a workaholic. Thinking
about my dad for Father’s Day last week brought back a flood
of memories. I told you he was a World War II vet who came
home ready to make up for lost time. He threw himself into
his business of selling auto parts, eager to succeed, and
like the rest of the Greatest Generation, he did just that.
He built his business, made it run, but at the peak of his
success, at his “high noon” I guess you could say, he was
stricken with cancer which would prematurely end his life at
59—the age I am now.
My dad amazed me one day during
the final year when he quoted a poem he had learned in high
school; probably the only poem he ever memorized and
certainly the only one I had ever heard him quote. It was
Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life:”
Life is real, life is earnest
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art to dust returnest
Was not spoken of the soul.
And that was my dad. Life is
real. Life is earnest. Life is serious business. I sometimes
think we Harnish men are burdened with a congenital
disease…an inherited case of terminal seriousness.
But at high noon, in the
midst of our busyness, there is the danger that in the midst
of our doing, we lose sight of being and miss the fullness
life has to offer.
My friend Greg Jones, Dean of
Duke Divinity School, is a tireless teacher, administrator,
fund-raiser, author, scholar, preacher, parent and spouse.
It amazes me what he is able to accomplish. In one of his
recent books, Greg quotes from James Gleick’s Recovering
the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time:
Busy people may think that what
we need is a few more open boxes on the pages of our date
books, but in fact, that would only provide a flat,
short-lived remedy because those boxes would soon fill up
like the others. What we really need is time of a different
quality; Sabbath time in the midst of our busyness.
Greg concludes:
As I have lived through these
past two months, I have realized that I am not disturbed by
the busyness. I enjoy being busy. But I am disturbed by the
frantic pace that lacks the quality of time that renews,
refreshes and redeems.
(L. Gregory Jones, Everyday
Matters, page 112)
At high noon, in the midst of
our busyness, the antidote to the destruction of noonday is
to find Sabbath time:
It’s a good message for summer,
a call to seek times of Sabbath and renewal in the midst of
our busy lives, even at high noon.
2. And
high noon is the time in the midst of our spiritual journey.
Long after the excitement of
first conversion, long after the glow of the new birth, long
after those emotionally powerful teenage calls for faith and
the first burst of Christ’s light in our lives, we find
ourselves at noonday in our spiritual journey.
And
in our spiritual life, perhaps noonday is the most dangerous
time of all.
Reg Mallett tells the story of a
little girl who, over breakfast, was having a deep
theological discussion with her older and much wiser
10-year-old brother about the presence of God in the world.
He said God was everywhere. She was puzzled. She asked:
“Does that mean God is in this
town?”
“Yes.”
“Does that mean God is in this
house?”
“Yes.”
“Does that mean God is in this
room?”
“Yes.”
“Does that mean God is at this
table?”
Again, the answer was “Yes.”
Then she picked up the little
egg cup used for holding a boiled egg (remember, Reg is
British) and she said, “Does that mean God is in this egg
cup?” “Yes, I guess He is.” Immediately, Katie clasped her
hand over the top of the egg cup and cried out, “There! Now
I’ve got Him!” (Reginald Mallett, Sermons by the
Lake, page 30)
In the early dawn of our
Christian walk, we live in childlike wonder in the newness
of life in Christ, open to God’s leading, marveling at the
immensity of God. But as the day wears on, we come to think
we have God all figured out, all cut and dried, all saucered
and bowled. Safe and secure with our hand on the egg cup, we
become convinced we have a God we can handle, and our faith
becomes stale and cold, stiff and unchanging, dull and
staid.
It
is, in fact, the destruction that can waste our spiritual
life at the noonday.
If you drive down to Adrian on
M-52, you will pass a barn on the west side of the road
which is painted with a large sign: “Jesus Is Lord Over
Lenawee County.” I never know quite what to make of that.
Either it is quite a bold assertion to make or else you have
to ask if that isn’t an awfully tiny territory for the Lord
of the Universe.
At noontime, it is easy to think
we have the boundaries in place, that we know just where
Jesus sits and what his territory looks like. We can shrivel
and we lose sight of the vastness, the grandness, the
incredible immenseness of God, and we die in the noonday
heat with our petty notions of God’s boundaries in our
lives.
O God, at high noon, don’t let
me settle for a narrow faith and a stifled spirit. Keep me
growing and alive, ready to discover new insights, new
visions, new breadth and height and depth to your love.
The
Psalmist knew:
But perhaps the most insidious
of all is the destruction that wastes at noonday. In the
midst of our busyness, to lose our sense of balance and the
need for Sabbath; in the midst of our spiritual journey, to
lose sight of the greatness of God. So the Psalmist
promises…
Those who live in the shelter of
the Most High,
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,
will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,
my God in whom I trust.”
For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
and from the deadly pestilence.
You will not fear the terror of the night,
nor the arrows that fly by day,
nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.
Lord, help us to find Sabbath,
sacred space in the midst of our busyness. Keep us growing
and stretching, to stay alive on the journey; to avoid the
destruction which can waste our souls at high noon.
Notes:
Rev. Reginald Mallett is a
British Methodist pastor and a frequent preacher at Lake
Junaluska, the United Methodist Center in North Carolina.
Sermons By The Lake is a volume of sermons preached at
Lake Junaluska. Dr. L. Gregory Jones’ book, Everyday
Matters, is a set of essays originally written for the
Christian Century magazine. Both books are available
through the virtual bookstore on our website,
www.fumcbirmingham.org.
|
