Sermon 090419

Sermon 4/19/09
John 20:19-31
Psalm 133

EXPECTATION
by Peter Meckel
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

A sentence that is the source of as much trouble and hostility as any in the bible. The literalists and the fundamentalists quote it to show support for unquestioning faith; the aetheists and "realists" quote it to point to the mindless wanderings of Christians; and the rest of us continue to look for an understanding of the wisdom, if there is any, in this fascinating story. Let’s talk about it. First, a definition of some terms provided us by the fabulous Ambrose Bierce, an American writer who lived at the turn of the last century...and spent a bit of time here, by the way.

FAITH: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

CHRISTIAN: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.

LOGIC: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basis of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and minor premise and a conclusion, thus:
Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds; therefore –
CONCLUSION: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.
And finally,

REALISM: The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring worm. Adrienne and I are going to the lake next week. Cotton Lake - way up in Northern Minnesota where likely the snow will still linger in the low spots of the farmers’ fields and the ice, which only weeks ago covered the lake completely will still be evident in the shaded bay sections. Our family cabin, a glorified shack, actually, will be there I already know because our eldest daughter and her husband, in a totally misplaced sense of filial duty, were there a few weeks ago to open up for their aging parents. While Tina and Jeff were settling in, the final blizzard of the winter covered the lake ice with several inches of snow. To the squealing delight of our six year old granddaughter, Freya, they were able to strap their large dogs into harnesses and pull a sled out across the frozen lake.

It may seem surprising to you that I feel it necessary to affirm the fact that the cabin is still standing, but after its some 85 years of tenuous survival in the extremes of Minnesota weather…in Minnesota all weather is extreme…60 below zero, 99 degrees with humidity of 98%, blizzards, floods, tornados, heat waves…and always the centerpiece of social interaction…”Pretty hot weather we’re havin’”…”You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet, wait’ll tomorrow”…or on the radio…” Tornado warnings have been issued in our northwestern counties for this afternoon but outside the station windows, the skies are still blue…Guess its just one of those nobody knows situations.”

So each year I half expect to see the cabin, if there’s anything left of it at all, in a rubble heap at the edge of the lake…never happens. Each year when we brush the dust off the door and step inside, it seems that we were there only the day before. The floor is slightly canted to the left as you enter…but its been that was as long as anyone can remember and it doesn’t seem to portend any particular problems because, as far as I can tell, the walls are not connected to the floor anyway and everything appears to rest directly on the earth...a delight, I'm sure, to the local termites. The floors are covered by a utilitarian but relatively new and attractive carpet that mother put in a few years back…”Just because we’re located in the wilderness doesn’t mean we have to live like savages.”

When I see the carpet and think of Mom, my eyes will automatically survey the tops of the tables in the cabin, the bookshelves, the cupboard tops, etc.. to see if Tina remembered what Mom always said…”Housekeeping is basically about keeping the horizontal surfaces clean. When they’re wheeling my casket down the aisle and you see the nice clean, clear top, you’ll remember what I said and it’ll make you smile.” Well, she didn’t have a casket but I did remember and I did smile.

Mom loved the lake and her belief in it as a place of healing and renewal and her expectations of it each time she visited were almost mystical. She once wrote, as she was planning a large family reunion at the lake…

How do grandmothers see reunions? First of all, they see them logistically – towels and places for cups for toothbrushes, a pillow a head, privacy, privies, beds, cribs, rugs on hot docks, inflating water toys, backgammon on the shelf, old photos, 20 rolls of T.P., medicine cabinets stocked for snake bites to surgery, and food-food-food from Pritikin to Enfamil! Grandmothers see reunions logistically for a long, long time.

Grandmothers also see reunions very “professionally” – as a sociological tightrope. Infants and teenagers, cops, administrators, musicians, educators, technicians, writers, talkers, thinkers, the shy and the assertive, the analysts and the activists, the long-relationships and the tentative new ones, the resolved and the unresolved from the past, the changing roles and the budding perspectives, the wistful disengagement of parents from significant roles with “children,” the discovery of parenthood, adulthood, and five toes, the prospect of age---only the mystery of love could make it mesh.

Then---grandmothers see reunions as a confusing identity crisis. The “Myth of Mother” dies hard! From being fifteen years a :career woman” who relegates the drudgery of detail, she is again fetching, fending, finding, fixing, fretting and fussing---a temporary schizophrenia! So be it!

Mostly, grandmothers see reunions as the blessed continuity of connectedness. From the splash of one original love, ripples move to many shores but never separate themselves from The Lake.

She shouldered her responsibilities as the wife of a minister with a characteristic rebel’s attitude and a wonderful sense of humor. She described the challenge of being a minister’s wife with this bit of prose she found somewhere… If she’s young, she’s much too young; if she’s old, she’s out of date;
If she talks, she talks too much; if she’s quiet, she’ stupid;
If she’s active, she’s running things; if she’s passive, she isn’t interested;
If she’s dressed well, “no wonder they’re poor,” if she’s plain, she’s dowdy:
If she disagrees with you, she doesn’t like you; if she agrees with you, she’s afraid of you;
If she’s too much out of her home, “she’d really rather not be bothered;”
If she’s strictly a housewife, “well…really…what else could she do?”
If she smiles too much, she’s a flirt; if she doesn’t smile enough, she’s unfriendly;
If she’s happy, she “certainly doesn’t act like a minister’s wife” if she’s reserved, she’s not modern. A panoply of memories - beautiful, painful, heart-wrenching, inspiring, true and imagined, bell-clear and covered by the lake's early morning mist. Lifetimes - my mother and father, their mothers and fathers, and even my great grandmothers and great grandfathers...lifetimes of joys and sorrows, of births and deaths, of repentance and renewals recorded in the journals kept there for each generation fo read and expand with its own experiences will cover me as I walk into the cabin but so will a sacred trust that here live the very elements of my life for me to re-examine, reflect upon, and use for renewal.

Why do I visit all these personal recollections on you, each of whom has his or her own precious memories of equal of greater value to any I may have…because only in such a personal way can I make “real” the subject of these remarks. I want to show the experience, the history that leads to a belief in the future. Why the reality of this place combines with expectation to create belief and trust. I want you to open the cabin door with me sharing an expectation, a belief or trust that inside that rickety structure the walls of which hold my very soul, there will be the stuff of renewal, the raw materials of substantive emotional and spiritual growth, and the opportunity to make the choices the presence of those resources demand.

It doesn’t trouble me that in this wonderful story Thomas needed to touch the hands of Jesus. For him, that bit of reality became a path to trust. The idea that reality or faith deny one another is a non-starter for me. To have faith, to expect, is not to deny reality nor replace reality; it is, rather, a path to approach reality. Further, faith and expectation are not diminished in any way by being the path instead of the point of arrival. It does not trouble me for a moment to suggest that reality may, in fact, be the basis on which faith rests.

Perhaps another way of looking at it is to suggest that reality is the composition and faith the performance. The idea that you would have one with out the other is ludicrous. To perform without of sense of structure and order, however vague, is self-indulgent and boring; to expect composition alone to thrill and inspire without performance is a fool’s errand…Reality is not enough…belief and trust create the art of life…remember Ambrose…REALISM: The art of depicting nature as it is seen by a toad. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring worm.

Well, something to think about at the lake…I need to start getting ready...I need to practice, saying,
Weather keeps up like this, the fish are gunna start bitin’ early this year.

Back to SERMONS List HOME