Earth Day

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 5, 2015

B Proper 9 BFC 2015
Mark 6:1-13
July 5, 2015

          Several years ago, one of my prized possessions was a car stereo/CD player Tracy had bought me for my birthday.  Oooooh, I had waited for that thing.   And there it was, in my car, pounding a backbeat of the songs I loved, fancy enough that it played my podcasts.  Not only was it stolen once while our car was parked alongside our street, next to our house, but after I replaced the one with the insurance money we used to protect and secure it, the second one was stolen with our car parked in our driveway, right outside our house.  Drat!  I didn’t have to worry about the car once I put the original radio back in it.  My garden variety AM/FM radio was apparently not something that could be easily fenced out in the community.   Grrrrrr. 
          Now one would have thought I had learned, but when that car stereo was stolen a second time, I actually thought about getting a security system for my car.  That’s right.  I would get a car security system for my then 1992 Saturn SL 1 with 250,000 miles.  This prized car--a car I had taken the casing off the steering wheel because the key had gotten stuck in the ignition.  So I would start it every day with a screwdriver.  But it was my stuff, my shiny stuff.  And all I wanted was some nice stuff.  Thoughts about getting a security system to protect my screwdriver-started Saturn revealed a little too much of who I am in the world. 
Court jesters, cartoonists, or comic strip writers have a way of saying things that undercut our culture in a way politicians, writers, or talk show hosts rarely can.  I used to be a big fan of Gary Larson’s comic strip, “The Far Side.”  Larson could bend and twist your mind with the way he presented different animals.  I remember one with the text, “The real reason dinosaurs became extinct.”  And there was a picture of a T-Rex and a Brontosaurus with a cigarette butt hanging from their lips.  You would stop for a moment and think, “Hmmmmmm.”
Comics or satirists are very often people who can say, before anyone else, that the Emperor or the Empire has no clothes.  George Carlin has always been one of those people who cuts through our culture like a hot knife through butter.  Chaplain Mike Spencer, upon Carlin’s death, wrote that George Carlin was Shakespeare’s prototypical fool.  In King Lear, once the king assented to the fool through his laughter, the king could not help but assent to the truth the fool wove into the laughter.  In the end, the king calls upon the fool as the only one who can tell him painful truths.[1] 
In one of his routines, Carlin had me laughing hilariously, nodding my head as the uncomfortable truths became apparent and in a way I doubt anyone else could tell me straight about how caught up I was, bound by my own materialism. Carlin’s routine, “Stuff.”

Actually [a house] is just a place for my stuff, ya know? That's all, a little place for my stuff. That's all I want, that's all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff, ya know? I can see it on your table, everybody's got a little place for their stuff. This is my stuff, that's your stuff, that'll be his stuff over there. That's all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time.

A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you're saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff!

Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore. Did you ever notice when you go to somebody else's house, you never quite feel a hundred percent at home? You know why? No room for your stuff. Somebody else's stuff is all over the darn place! And if you stay overnight, unexpectedly, they give you a little bedroom to sleep in. Bedroom they haven't used in about eleven years. Someone died in it, eleven years ago. And they haven't moved any of his stuff! Right next to the bed there's usually a dresser or a bureau of some kind, and there's NO ROOM for your stuff on it.[2]

I would continue Carlin’s lampooning to suggest that we buy a house in which we keep our stuff and then, once we get really good stuff, we have to buy security stuff to protect the stuff in the house.   
I hate moving.  I absolutely hate it.  Tracy will tell you that I shouldn’t hate it all that much because she did most of the work when we moved to Billings.  But as I have been reminded by all of you in talking about the various and different stages of your lives or the lives of parents or family members you have to help pack and move, I am reminded that moving cannot only be hard work but an incredibly painful experience.
          “Stuff” can be connected to the historical repository of memories, keepsakes, the values we all share as families.  We sometimes worry that if we do not take it all with us, we will lose a part of ourselves.  And we may be right.  To set down our set of “stuff” may be a declaration for a point of departure, who we will be in the future and what values dictate our action. 
          We start out deciding, based on our values, what accumulated stuff we will purchase, borrow, or keep and too often end up with our accumulated stuff deciding our values for us.  All of us are caught up in it.  Moving, or as George Carlin indicates later in his routine, even going on vacation push us to make decisions about what of our “stuff” we will really need.  “You start to feel ok,” Carlin needles us, “because, after all, you do have some of your stuff with you.”[3]  Our stuff provides the comfort, defines what is home, so that we are oriented in the universe, defended from the chaos that might ensue if we did not have our “stuff.”
          In many ways, choices or values we have about our “stuff” indicate whether we think the universe is friendly or unfriendly.  Very often our accumulation of stuff indicates that our quality of life depends on it, that our children will suffer without it, and that we must defend ourselves from the harsh and wicked world that threatens to rob or violate us.  Or perhaps we need just enough “stuff” not to be thought of us as a hermit, spinster, or wacko.  Though we talk about the dangers of peer pressure for our children, we feel more “civilized” caving into peer pressure as adults.
          For if we saw the universe as friendly, our grip on our “stuff” might not be as tight.  How we value ourselves might not have so much to do with the next needful thing we purchase.  But we are being told over and over again that we are on our own, all alone, needing protection against an ever-increasingly cold and cruel world.  Batten down the hatches, circle the wagons to protect all of our “stuff.”   
          I know I am caught in this narrative, how I am tied up in legitimizing myself, protecting myself, shamed into having just enough “stuff.”  In our culture, what we have normalized has become downright crazy.  Each of us has to have a set of tools, a set of supplies, a lawn mower, a trimmer, a hedger, a broadcaster, a weed whacker, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  And it is a good bet every person on our block thinks they have to have one of those too.  So, of course, if I am going to have all that stuff, spend money on it, even though I know California is going through a terrible drought, and water is becoming a more and more scarce resource, I now have to spend all this time watering my lawn to justify buying my stuff.
          In relating what it means to live life within a Benedictine order, Sister Joan Chittister writes, “It is so easy to make cosmetic changes in the name of religion.  It is so easy to make up rules and keep them so that we can feel good about doing something measurable in the spiritual life.”[4]  But we have to want to grow.  And sometimes that means, in a culture of plenty, disciplining ourselves so that we are free to receive from others and with the “stuff” we do have in right proportion.  “What [Benedict] cared about,” Chittister wrote, is that we control them rather than allowing them to control us.”[5]
          Many of you know that The Jesus Seminar popularized the relationship between Greek theologians and philosophers named Cynics and the influence they must have had on the historical Jesus.  In contrast to how we use the words “cynic” or “cynical”, Cynics needled the Roman Empire by understanding the universe and Father Zeus as friendly and loving.  Beggars, they depended on the giving of others.  Travelers or migrants, they carried little with them.  Some of the more extreme Cynics walked naked or dressed in a barrel through city streets—relying on the providence and goodness of Father Zeus, helping others to see that the Emperor and the Empire wore no clothes.  Jesus grew up and lived in an area that may have been strongly influenced by such Greek Cynics.[6] 
          The Jesus Seminar points to the end of our Scripture verse as evidence of Cynic influence on the historical Jesus.  Jesus sends the twelve apostles out to exorcise the demon of the Roman Empire.  They are not to take anything on the road that might weigh them down:  no bread, no knapsack, no spending money.  Carry only one shirt.  Go out by twos.  Depend on the hospitality of others.  In fact, if people do not grant you hospitality, symbolized primarily by washing your feet as you enter their home, shake the dust that did not get washed off as a witness against their inhospitality.  Pack light.  Have a buddy to protect you from the danger that is out there in the world and to provide accountability and mutuality.  Depend on the hospitality of others.
          Through this mission program Jesus builds God’s Empire.  The apostles tell people to choose another way, they exorcise the Roman Empire, and they tend to the sick.  In so doing, the apostles pack light, maintain the buddy system, and depend on the hospitality of others.  Judgment is passed by shaking the dust off your sandals.
          Rarely do we hear the Christian mission related with such interdependence, such mutuality, such humility.  The universe and God in that universe are friendly and loving.  Yes, you can find people and places that are inhospitable, cold and cruel, but the expectation is that as you are sent out you will find good, kind, and hospitable people.  Even if you find people who oppose you, you are not to move against them but only to recognize their inhospitality.  If Jesus had sent them out burdened down with all kinds of stuff, imagine all the histrionics the apostles would go through to protect their possessions, to remain self-sufficient.  Instead, the apostles are sent out not with an extra days’ supply of bread but with no bread at all. 
          Many a devotional book will relate that if our hands are full, spiritually, we will not be able to receive the gifts God has intended for us.  Jesus sends the apostles out empty handed, materially, so that they may be free to receive the gifts, the goodness, the kindness, the hospitality God intends to give them through other people.  In renouncing their material possessions, they are free to receive from the hands of others.
          Now these instructions, this plan for the Empire of God, was intended for poor and dispossessed Jews in first century Rome.  In the cold and cruel world of the Roman Empire, Jesus tells his apostles that goodness and community and hospitality are out there.  I believe intentional Christian communities who have learned from the poor and taken Jesus at his word have experienced the goodness and hospitality that are out there waiting for us.  Too often, however, in an effort to guard and hoard our stuff against a cold and cruel world we have made the world even more cold and cruel. 
As progressives, we may ridicule government and business leaders with the patriotic histrionics (called the American way of life) we will put on display to protect our stuff.  We may even recognize that as we try to go it alone as a nation in the cold and cruel world we very often make it a more cold and cruel world.  But even in our own communities, rather than living as an interdependent people, we find ourselves trying to get everything we can think of, all of our stuff, under one roof.   
The good news is, if we can imagine it, if we can walk out into the world with a good buddy system, pack lightly, and depend on the hospitality of others we would find the universe as a much more friendly place and God’s goodness waiting to find us.  It is the logic of the gospel--that Christians striving to be faithful are very often trying to find ways to be downwardly mobile.  As that happens, the goodness of life begins to flow toward us. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes. It is the most enduring quality, and the most ascending quality.”[7]  True beauty is found in simplicity of form and function.  It is a recognition that a discipline of simplicity, a lack of baubles and trinkets to distract us, allows us to see the beauty in the world that God intends for us.  Emerson wrote that once a person sees beauty, they begin to recognize the value in life.  “The question of Beauty takes us out of surfaces, to thinking of the foundations of things.”[8]  And moving to the foundation of things should be what we aspire to as people of faith.
Beyond even people of faith, what we are finding is, that even as the world gets scarier, a community movement is breaking out all over the world.  And many of you are a part of it.  I am amazed by the individual courage some of you offer through the hospitality you give to guests who come to worship or dine with us who clearly have a pretty tough life.  Some of you are involved with community gardens or sharing your gardens.  Other people across the world are developing seed or tool libraries at their local public library.  There are other people creating alternative economies, VISTA volunteers, filled with young people who seek to connect faith leaders with social service agencies so that needs might be filled, and people even developing composting cooperatives.[9]  If crap is all you got, you should share it!  Many of us are learning that God created the pillars of the universe in such a way that sharing and hospitality help to build the foundation of the house we live in so that our neighborhoods, communities, and schools might thrive. 
The Empire of God is built by the buddy system, packing light, and depending on the hospitality of others.  For Jesus and the community around him, that was not some naïve religious notion . . . that was about survival.  In a world that depends on knowing ourselves as interdependent to survive, we must continue to see the pillars God has given us, the frame people around us are building, and put in the necessary community spaces that will allow us to receive the goodness and hospitality of God found not only in ourselves but in the hearts of neighbors who may not even look like us. 
Tomorrow I begin vacation and with that vacation we are trying to determine, as George Carlin would put it, the smaller version of our stuff we will take with us.  As someone who is just begin to learning the beauty of Montana, it would be a crime for us all to be focused on what stuff we need and not receive the gifts of beauty and grace God intends for us, so that, once again, I might become a person of faith who learns about the foundation of things.   Amen.




[3] George Carlin
[4] Joan Chittister, The Rule of Benedict:  Insights for the Ages  (New York:  Crossroad, 1997), p. 120.
[5] Ibid, p. 121.
[6] See F. Gerald Downing, Jesus and the Threat of Freedom (London:  SCM Press, 1987).

[7] Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson: Essays and Lectures: Nature: Addresses and Lectures / Essays: First and Second Series / Representative Men / English Traits / The Conduct of Life (Library of America)  (New York:  Literary Classics of the United States, Inc.), November 15, 1983.

[8] Ibid.
[9] No, really!  Yes! magazine does such a great job of sharing these cooperative and collaborative opportunities.  You can find the composting cooperative here:  http://www.yesmagazine.org/commonomics/forget-venture-capitalists-this-scrappy-composting-co-op-found-startup-money-cero

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