September 13, 2009
“Here and There, Now and Then” September 13, 2009
Rosedale United Church
(Psalm 19 , Proverbs 1, Song of Solomon 7) Doug Norris
I want to first of all introduce a couple of notions, a couple of ideas, theories, then tell you a story. Something for the left side of the brain, then something for the right side of the brain.
The first notion is that of Shalom. You likely know this term – it is Hebrew and it generally means peace – and so it is often used as a greeting. As an idea it refers to both peace in the world – a condition where there is no violence and there is a just economy and so it is about bread and houses and it is about human community. It also refers to an inner condition, a balance and a wholeness in our inner life, a peace, not only an absence of distress, but a calm and a capacity to live whole in spite of distress. We all probably know people who live with this kind of balance. I long for it and am often far from it.
In the Christian tradition we borrow the idea of Shalom but we also talk, because it was the language of Jesus, about the ‘Kingdom of God’ – the dream of God for us, in our communities and within our selves. Same deal.
The second idea is from Paul Tillich, one of the foremost theologians and teachers in the last century, who, referring to the Kingdom of God, or Shalom, said that we will only ever find it “here and there, and now and then…” .
So there is a condition, a state of blessing which we assert is always our intent and God’s intent for us – but we will reach it only from time to time – see it in glimpses – here and there and now and then. And it is our hope that the asserting of this dream, and our steady reaching for it, will be our theme for much that we do through this fall season here.
Now for a story. I’ve told you this one before. In fact up here on the Table you may be able to see small butterfly peeking out from the Bible – this is a little Monarch that Fran Deacon gave me some years ago after I first told you this story.
I had gone up north for a day – now it was late in the day, soon time to go home, and I was taking a last paddle on the lake. I was in the middle of the lake, in the canoe, and the light was deep and rich and there was a light breeze and the slap of the water on the hull was like music. I know some of you can picture this. I had gone for a similar paddle early that morning and it was so lovely that I called Heather, who was here in the city and she was just getting herself off to work and the girls out the door and had dealt with the trash and I called her to tell her how lovely it was paddling in the morning mist. And it turns out that was a bad idea… So I don’t do that any more…
Anyhow here it was the afternoon now, and out in the middle of the lake there was a monarch butterfly – bobbing along inches above the water – going about the same speed as me, an almost unbelievably orange creature – floating along, flapping and gliding, To borrow a phrase from the poetry of Wendell Berry – it was beautiful and it made my mind beautiful to see it. and for a few minutes the only thing I had to do was quietly follow a butterfly across a lake.
In fact, I worried about the butterfly. Worried that it had strayed far from the shore and might get tired, dip too low, get snapped by a fish, get blown around by the wind. So I followed right behind, hoping that if it needed a place to land and rest, the front of the canoe was right there. This felt very noble. So on we went.
There was trouble just around the corner – an hour later I would discover some damage on our property – a day later I would learn that a friend back here in the city was very sick - a week later there was a shooting that unsettled the city.
So, an hour and a day and a week before trouble there was this beauty. Later on I put it into my daybook so I could cross it off : 4pm – follow butterfly across lake. Done. Blessing. Here and there, now and then, Shalom.
I found out later that it is migration season, and that monarch was in fact on its way south, and without any help from me will fly 3,000 km south and then come back and it knows the way. Buried somewhere in the mystery and beauty of how butterflies are put together is a knowledge of the way to go, and come back.
Now here is what I am looking for. Here’s what will calm my fears. Here’s why I go to church. Here’s why I decide to be a follower of this Jesus of Nazareth. A knowledge of the way.
An hour from now and a day from now and a week from now there may be trouble, and the deepest of human questions comes up – and it is the only question that lies underneath all of the things we do and say and teach and sing and pray – to find a knowledge of the way.
Toward the Kingdom, to stay sane, to stay sober, to stay alive, toward Buddhahood, to peace, To find a way to navigate a world in which the people we love die too soon and the evil goes on too long and the way does not seem clear. To know the way.
Some of you are holding babies and wondering how we will know the way to lead them well into the world. Some of you are looking back over your many many years – maybe holding great grand babies, and looking for a good and gracious way out of the world, because it is close to that time.
And then there are a whole bunch of us who have survived the journey into this world and we hope we are a distance yet from making our way out of this world, but, by God ! Making our way through this world has become, as someone said , a mystery wrapped in a riddle…
Is there a way ? Who can show us the way ?
At our best we hold a map we can believe in – a set of signs and directions that we stake our life on. Work hard. Save. Tell the truth. Be decent neighbours. Don’t hit the other children. Never lick a steak knife. Give to the poor.
We learn the map – very often the map left to us by our parents and their parents who trusted the same set of signs – we learn the map and we step into the valley believing that we will find a way. At our best we find a way and we live and we thrive.
At worst, we see no way.
Many of us will go through most or all of our days and not get to this hard place, even not have to know people who get to this hard place. Where the map has failed, and there are no signs, and we can live in that blind fog for a time, but we can’t live there for long. Without sight, without horizon. The condition we call despair – there is no apparent way available. If we knew a way we would just keep putting one foot in front of another and go on. But no path is in sight. This is despair.
The assertion, the message, the narrative of this community of faith is that there is in fact a way. To those who currently hold a map that works and who have a horizon that is compelling, this assertion is of little interest, at least at this time – but to those who are lost, it is life and saving good news. There is a way.
More than a few times I have found myself in my office or in the hospital or in one of your homes and my only throbbing thought is that I have not got a clue where hope lies. I do not see a way to go, I am desperately hoping you will not ask me for the way, and I won’t blame you for kicking me out of the house. I have no counsel, and any map that might have worked up until now is out the window.
And the only thing that comes to me, at those times, goes something like this : There is a way. I only know this because I have seen, time and time again, among you, that in the face of overwhelming odds, the human heart finds a way, and carries on, and comes to life again. I’ve seen it among you and so I know it to be true.
Here’s how it sounded in the passage from the Hebrew scriptures today : “Wisdom cries out in the street – in the square she raises her voice – at the busiest corner she cries out – I will pour out my thoughts to you.”
I take note of where God, in the person of Wisdom, will appear – on the street, in the square, at the busiest corner. There, I will pour out my thoughts to you…
Where cross the crowded ways of life,
where sound the cries of race and clan,
above the noise of selfish strife
we hear your voice, O son of Man !
Wisdom will come to us at precisely the places where the map is lost, and we turn in ever-weakening circles, and we lose sight of the horizon.
I had a lot of trouble figuring out how this sermon ends. Very clear about a couple of things :
– we long to find a way – a way to live well , a way through ;
– Scripture tells us there is a way, and this Wisdom will give us life.
So I figured that at the end it would be good to list off some of that wisdom – a handout, a take-away. You know the pattern : Seven Habits or Nine Principles or the Top Ten Things….
Must be a list. Then you go home thinking, is that Bible ever full of good advice, and is that preacher ever a clever fellow, and so on…
And when the list failed to materialize, I understood that I had missed the point. Made the classic error of confusing knowledge with wisdom. Knowledge we have lots of, and I love knowledge. So we can teach classes about the 39 clauses of the Westminster Confession and we can lay out the laws of Moses and the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, but these are not Wisdom.
Wisdom is a mystical presence of God – and so cannot be pinned down or listed any more than the wind can be mapped.
So this may be all there is to say :
Go and watch. Because Wisdom is crying out to you, wanting to be found. Especially in the hard places. Here and there and now and then we will locate a peace that will carry us in the valley.
Psalm 19 – go and watch the earth. All the laws of God are revealed in the earth and the heavens. Follow a butterfly across a lake, and wonder what ancient path is stored up deep inside us, to go into and through and out of this world.
Bless Now, O God, The Journey…