Psalm 150

 

TAMBOURINE/TIMBREL   God’s deliverance of Israel from soul-destroying slavery in innermost Egypt; God’s rescue of Israel from Pharaoh’s cruelty at the shores of the Red Sea; no event would ever root itself more deeply or fix itself more securely in Israel’s consciousness. To this day Passover is a festival in Jewish homes, a day of rejoicing, frolicking, and even fun-and-games for children.

Miriam, a prophet in Israel, was one of the first to magnify Passover celebrations. She grabbed a tambourine and began to dance. In no time scores of others followed suit. The book of Exodus tells us that “Miriam … took a timbrel in hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and dancing. And Miriam sang to them, `Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and the rider he has thrown into the sea.'”

In Israel of old the tambourine provided the rhythm for dancing. People danced whenever they beheld something magnificent at the hand of God.

When David came home after a major victory over the Philistines people turned out for a ticker-tape parade; as their hero passed before them they danced unselfconsciously.

The unselfconscious dancing of David’s admirers, however, was nothing compared to the unrestrained dancing of David himself a few months later. After their initial defeat, the Philistines regrouped, raided Israel, and carried off the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark being the sign of God’s presence among his people. When David’s men managed to wrest the Ark away from the Philistines and bring it back, David’s elation soared. He danced. The English text says, “He danced.” The Hebrew text, however, says, “He whirled about.” He leapt, he cavorted with greater agility than an acrobat. (David wasn’t into ballroom “gliding”; he had passion!)

Michal, his wife, on the other hand, had none. Michal was Saul’s daughter, a blue-blood, aristocratic. Compared to her David was a vulgar oaf who came from a social class 16 levels below hers. Then why had she married him? He was everybody’s hero. Once she was married, however, she found out that David loved to dance, while she couldn’t dance at all. Michal couldn’t dance for two reasons. One, she had no passion in her; two, the Ark of the Covenant meant nothing to her. (If the Ark had meant something to her, she would have had passion in her.) To be sure, the Ark of the Covenant was only the sign of God’s presence; it was God’s presence that mattered unspeakably. Yet because God mattered supremely to David, the Ark mattered too. But not for Michal. It didn’t matter simply because David’s God mattered less to her. She could never have written, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want… for God’s goodness and mercy will drive my life for as long as I have breath”; she didn’t have it in her. When David wept his heart out over his misadventure with Bathsheba and wrote through his tears, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow”, Michal didn’t weep one tear. She didn’t have any in her.

Michal never knew David’s God. For this reason she was deaf to the song in her husband’s heart. Those who are deaf always despise those who dance, don’t they? When David danced and his kilt flew up and the servant-girls snickered at his knickers Michal sneered, “You jerk!” David replied, “What’s your problem? I was dancing before the Lord. Nothing else matters.”

One thousand years later Jesus told a story about a young man who became sick of home; in a few months — poor now, degraded, humiliated — he was homesick; then he was home again. Sick of home, homesick, home. His father threw the biggest party the village had ever seen: a feast, music, dancing.

Shouldn’t we dance when someone dear to us finally bows to God and is restored to the Father and admitted to his household and family? Shouldn’t we dance when we ourselves are the person who is home at last, and home forever?

 

TRUMPET   I want with all my heart to be a pacifist (believe it or not). I am almost “there”, almost a pacifist by conviction, when I happen to see again a film clip of little children huddled on a railway platform anywhere in Europe. Distraught parents are trying to comfort the children, trying so very hard not to let their dread betray the false hope with which they can ease their children for a day or two. As soon as I see once more a film clip of this scene, my pacifism vanishes.

Recently I was discussing the U.S. Civil War with a parishioner. We were talking about the never-before-seen horrors that emerged in the civil war. The new horror was threefold.

One, the machine gun. It cut men down like a scythe. No soldier could escape a weapon that fired hundreds of bullets per minute.

Two, the pre-set artillery fuse. Prior to the civil war artillery shells exploded upon impact with the ground. When the shell exploded, the shrapnel flew upwards and outwards. The safest place to be was flat on the ground. The smart soldier lay down during an artillery barrage and didn’t lift his head so much as one inch. Then the new shell was invented. The shell’s fuse was pre-set to detonate the shell in mid-air, 200 feet above the ground. Now shrapnel hurled down on the soldier. He couldn’t hide. Lying down was no protection at all. And in the civil war, he had no protection for his head. During the fiercest fighting there were 25,000 casualties per day.

Three, the phenomenal increase in psychiatric breakdown. This horror was the result of the first two. In previous wars relatively few soldiers had collapsed psychiatrically. Now they were collapsing in droves. During the civil war psychiatric casualties outnumbered physical casualties three-to-one. Hundreds of thousands of 20 year-old fellows would be deranged for life.

The parishioner with whom I was discussing all of this remarked, “Then there was no justification for the civil war!” Whereupon I told her a story about Abraham Lincoln. One day Lincoln stood with the crowd at a slave-auction in New Orleans. Male slaves were auctioned off at a good price. Then a female slave was led up onto the platform. She was young and healthy and strong; would be useful in the cotton fields. She had a six month-old baby in her arms. A plantation owner said to the auctioneer, “I’ll take the woman — but get rid of the child. The child will only distract the mother from her work.” And so mother and child were separated, never to see each other again. Lincoln returned home and swore he would stop at nothing to overturn this iniquitous practice.

Twenty-five thousand casualties per day; hundreds of thousands of young men deranged for life. Was it worth it? Should we prefer to see a slave-auction with a baby ripped away from its frantic mother?

St.Paul writes in I Corinthians 14, “If the trumpet gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?” I know, the conflicts he had in mind didn’t concern Jewish children in Eastern Europe or black children in North America. Nevertheless, there does come a time when the sound of the trumpet must be distinct lest someone think he has an excuse for not showing up when he should.

The conflict Paul refers to immediately is that spiritual conflict which rages in the heart of every believer. For believers would never agree with Oscar Wilde that the best way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. (Yield to it, and the temptation is over!) Jesus sweat in Gethsemane until the sweat poured off him like blood from a forehead gash. Jesus wrestled with the evil one for 40 days in a contest to see who was going to face down whom.

We are called to do as much ourselves. The trumpet must sound a distinctive note — or else the sleepyheads among us might forget there’s a battle to be fought!

In fact there are countless battles to be fought in the name of Christ. Some of them all Christians are called to fight. Other battles only a few Christians are called to fight. (For instance, the few who are extraordinarily gifted intellectually are to meet the intellectual challenges of a world that thinks its self-understanding to be the only understanding possible.) And then there is that one battle that the individual Christian is to fight: the battle against that one besetting sin that the individual alone knows about, surrender to which is unthinkable.

“If the trumpet gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?” The trumpet-note must be as unmistakable as it is undeniable.

 

HARP   Israel was — and is — unreservedly grateful for its release from Egypt. Yet Israel was not so disgusted at Pharaoh as to disdain everything Egyptian. Israel left Egypt with Egypt’s favourite musical instrument, the harp.

Throughout scripture the harp is the instrument of comfort and consolation. When King Saul was overcome by what is spoken of as an “evil spirit”, David helped Saul by playing on his harp. Now the evil spirit that overcame Saul was no small matter: Saul would become suspicious, then agitated, then paranoid, finally murderous. The harp defused his explosiveness and suffused peace throughout him.

Last October, when we honoured Isaac Watts, we learned that Watts wrote not only hundreds of hymns but also many different kinds or classifications of hymns. One classification he referred to as “Hymns of Consolation”. These “Hymns of Consolation” sing not so much about God in his glory as they do about us in our need, us in the comfort God lends us. Two of Watts’s better-known “consolation” hymns are “When I survey the wondrous cross” and “O God, our help in ages past”.

Did Watts write these hymns merely because he thought other people needed them? I think not. I am sure he wrote them also for himself. Watts, we learned last October, was mentally ill episodically. There were long periods when he had to be absent from his pulpit because he was in “different space”; very different space. Plainly he didn’t write hymns when he was ill. When healthier, however, he penned words that will comfort people until the day of our Lord’s appearing relieves them definitively.

I have been a pastor for 25 years. As I am rendered speechless at the “clobbering” life hands people, I am not at all amazed that some people break down; I am amazed that many do not.

The harp has its place. Hymns of consolation have their place. They aren’t the only hymns we should sing; they aren’t the chief hymns we should sing. But we should never be without them.

Think of some of the better-known consolation hymns. For instance, “Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts” — with its fourth stanza, “Our restless spirits yearn for thee, where’er our changeful lot is cast.” And then there is Charles Wesley’s fine hymn, “Jesus, lover of my soul”, with a poignant second stanza:

Other refuge have I none,
Hangs my helpless soul on thee.
Leave, ah! Leave me not alone;
Still support and comfort me.

 

And perhaps the most haunting of all, because written out of palpable anguish,

Come, ye disconsolate, where’er ye languish.
Come to, the mercy-seat, fervently kneel.
Here, bring your wounded hearts; here, tell your anguish.
Earth has no sorrows that heaven cannot heal.

 

The harp has its place.

 

FLUTE/OBOE/”PIPE”   Flute-like instruments (i.e., woodwinds) were used at weddings and funerals, events where people are most touched, most moved.

Let’s think for a minute about weddings. In ancient Israel a wedding was regarded as the most significant human event anyone could share in or witness, as well as the most joyful event. Because a wedding was the most joyful event in Israel, the prophets used the absence of wedding-joy as a vivid picture of national disasters. Whenever the prophets had to wake up the people to the bad times God’s judgement was bringing upon the nation, the prophets horrified the people not by saying that the interest rate was going to rise or the stock market was going to fall; they said, “There shall no more be heard in the land the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.”

Israel of old knew that there is nothing like a wedding, just because there is nothing like marriage. Marriage is the most significant human undertaking anyone can enter upon; it is also the most joyful. A rabbi’s instruction was deemed so important that nothing was allowed to interrupt it; nothing, that is, except a wedding. If a wedding procession wound through the village the rabbi and his students suspended their exploration of the word of God and fell in with the procession. They magnified the wedding-celebration and soaked up the joy surrounding it.

Scripture speaks profoundly of marriage. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife; the two shall be come one, one flesh.” Marriage entails radical exposure to each other, radical vulnerability before each other, radical commitment to each other, radical penetration of each other.

In the Hebrew bible marriage is the commonest metaphor for faith. If marriage is the commonest metaphor for faith, then faith means that God and I, God and you, are radically exposed to each other, radically vulnerable before each other, radically committed to each other; it means we radically penetrate each other, right to the other’s innermost heart.

To be aware of this can only mean that we must consecrate ourselves to God anew.

 

                                                                                             Victor A. Shepherd                                                

April 1995

 

Proverbs 2:1-8

 

I: — Many of you have voiced to me your misgivings concerning confirmation, the service itself as well as the understanding behind the ritual. No one has suggested that we cancel the service outright. Nonetheless, even those who have never suggested that the event be cancelled continue to express serious reservations about it. A few people are plainly cynical. I imagine that virtually everyone feels that something isn’t quite right with confirmation; something important is somehow not happening, a mythology if not a superstition has taken hold, a game of “let’s pretend” is being played even though most of us can’t really pretend any longer. While almost no one is content with the current practice of confirmation, no one appears to have an alternative.

Everyone knows what happens on Confirmation Sunday. Some of the confirmands we know well. We have seen them and their parents at worship for years. Other confirmands we don’t know at all. We don’t recognize the surname, aren’t acquainted with the parents, assume that the youngster is being confirmed simply because his parents have made him come to the six or seven mandatory classes and get himself “done”, the parents plainly attaching much superstition to getting “done.”

When adults wish to join our congregation through transfer of membership the secretary asks for the transfer, only to learn, quite frequently, that the person in question was not a member of the previous congregation; may have attended, but was never formally a member. I then ask the person in question if she was ever confirmed. Very often she replies that she doesn’t know; she can’t remember whether she was ever confirmed. Were I to ask her, “Did you ever get married?”, she would be able to reply instantly. Apparently confirmation is not particularly memorable.

And then there are the photographs, in the hallway outside the choir room, of the confirmation classes of years past. Where are all those young people today? As painful as it is to say it, would it be truer to say that confirmation is less the congregation’s welcome to the young people than it is their good-bye wave to us?

Many people understand confirmation as a kind of graduation. Once we have graduated from high school, for instance, we don’t go back. Once we have graduated from “church” (Sunday School being a form of church) we don’t go back.

And then there is an aspect to the confirmation service which should jar us all, that part of the service where hands are laid upon the candidate. There is only one other service in the church where hands are laid upon a candidate: ordination to the ministry. Obviously there is close connection between the meaning of confirmation in the faith and the meaning of ordination to the ministry. What is the connection? What would we think of candidates for the ministry who were ordained at a public service and then promptly disappeared from church life?

Then of course there are the promises made during the service itself. One such promise is that the confirmand will be diligent in attendance at public worship. The promise is made by the confirmand and heard by the congregation when everyone knows that diligent attendance at public worship is the last thing many confirmands (and their parents) have in mind.

The promises are followed by the commissioning: “Go out into the world to fulfil your high calling as a servant and soldier of Jesus Christ.” “Go out into the world”: it appears that the theatre, the venue of the Christian’s discipleship is vast. “Servant of Christ”: it appears that extreme self-denial is involved. “Soldier of Christ”: it appears that hardship is cheerfully to be endured. What do we expect a 15 year old to make of all this?

Lastly, at a recent meeting of the Christian Education Committee grave misgivings were voiced concerning the adequacy of six or seven 45-minute sessions as preparation for an event as momentous as confirmation. Frankly, I don’t think that six or seven sessions times 45 minutes is adequate preparation. But surely these sessions aren’t the preparation! Surely the profounder preparation is 15 years of Christian formation through exposure to Christian truth and the Christian way embodied in congregational life and witness.

II: — Many people have asked me about the timing of confirmation, the age at which young people make public promises and are said to be “confirmed”. Why age 15? I simply don’t know. I suspect that it has much to do with the fact that around this age people graduate from elementary school and move on to high school. At the same time, Sunday School customarily concludes for people 14 or 15 years old. When I was new in Streetsville I commented, at a C.E. meeting, that I was concerned about the immediate disappearance of so many confirmees. I suggested that we try something different: postpone the event for a few years to see if the losses were as great then. My suggestion was shot down instantly. “If we postpone the class we might lose those people”, I was told right away. Might lose them? But the present practice has scarcely kept them! I cannot believe that we have genuinely, profoundly “kept” people within the fellowship of the congregation just because their names have been added to record-books.

(I’ll say more about timing later. Let’s move on to the meaning of confirmation.)

III: — The meaning of the service is stated plainly in the service itself. “When those who have been baptized as children have grown up and have been taught the essentials of Christian faith and duty, they come before the church to own for themselves the covenant (i.e., the promises) of their baptism. In this act they confess Jesus Christ openly as Saviour and Lord that they may be confirmed by the Holy Spirit and welcomed to the Lord’s table.” (Let me say in passing that I should welcome any person of any age to the Lord’s table at any time, confirmed or not.) The major point in all this is that those being confirmed now own for themselves and publicly endorse the promises which their parents made on their behalf as infants on the day their parents had them baptized.

Everywhere in the New Testament baptism is a sign of several things. (i) It is a sign of repentance. To repent is to change direction. Christians take their marching orders from a different leader. We walk resolutely that road which leads to the kingdom of God. Other roads — self-inflating ambition, wealth for the sake of wealth, social superiority, self-indulgence — these roads we shun as we move in the direction of the kingdom. (ii) Baptism is a sign of faith. Faith is keeping company with Jesus Christ. Living unashamedly in his company, we share his identity. We are publicly known as those who know him and love him and obey him. (iii) Baptism is commissioning for service. While we certainly love our Lord, we do more than merely love him; we work in his name, work on behalf of others whom he loves as surely as he loves us. (iv) Baptism means one thing more. It means that the repentance and faith and service we exercise, we exercise inasmuch as God’s own Spirit, God himself, has touched us and moved us and constrained us. We haven’t “decided”, of ourselves, to follow Jesus the way we decide to buy a Ford instead of a Chevrolet or a bungalow instead of a townhouse. We are disciples inasmuch as our Lord called us; our resistance melted and we couldn’t do anything else.

Baptism means this. Parents make promises concerning all of this for their children when their children are baptized. Then the day comes when the child, now much older, recognizes what his parents have sought for him for years. He recognizes too that he wants this now for himself. Therefore he owns it all for himself and publicly declares that this is what he will pursue until life ends.

When I was pondering the meaning of “confirm” I went to the Oxford English Dictionary. The O.E.D. gives four meanings for “confirm”. (i) to establish more firmly. Certainly when people are confirmed we want their discipleship to be established more firmly. (ii) to corroborate. Certainly we want their zeal for discipleship to be corroborated, supported, by the Holy Spirit and by others. (iii) to encourage a person in a habit or an opinion. Certainly we want confirmands to persist in the habit of discipleship and persist in their conviction of truth. (iv) the fourth meaning the O.E.D. discusses only in the past tense. It uses the illustration, “confirmed drunkard”, and mentions synonyms like “inveterate”, meaning “life-long”. And certainly we want confirmands to aspire after life-long loyalty to their Lord.

The United Church service speaks of being “confirmed by the Holy Spirit”. We should all want to add, “and by the congregation as well.”

IV: — This is what the service means. How do you feel now about our confirmation practice? Having asked the question, I am in no position to receive 300 replies at this time. But I shall gladly hear from any of you at any other time.

Having asked you a question, I can only go on talking myself. What I say next is only my opinion. Feel free to disagree with it, modify it, endorse it or bury it.

I think we need many “rites of spiritual passage” in our church life. There is nothing wrong with a public service for people 14 or 15 years old, a service which acknowledges the Christian formation they have undergone so far in their lives, a service which points them ahead to deeper understanding and faith and service, a service which encourages them to persist more profoundly in it. Therefore I am not suggesting for a minute that we eliminate the “rite of spiritual passage” for people of this age.

At the same time I have long felt that the kind of promise we ask young people to make at this age we should defer to a later age. We all agree that no 14 or 15 year old should be asked to make a promise concerning marriage. (For that matter no 17 year old should be asked, either.) We don’t ask 15 year olds to make promises concerning marriage because we know that they cannot understand the force of what they are pledging. Might it not be the same with respect to the promises made at confirmation? Teenage years are often characterized by religious enthusiasms, but also characterized by religious denunciations; doubts, perplexities, denials of all that their parents have cherished, questions, uncertainties, contradictions. A Roman Catholic woman remarked to me that when her daughter was 16 her daughter was vowing every day to become a nun; when her daughter was 17 she couldn’t get her daughter out of bed and to church on Sunday morning.

Teenagers 14, 15, 16 years old feel they have to question everything. There is nothing wrong with this. After all, none of us wants our children to grow up uncritical, mindless dupes. At this age too teenagers become aware that the world as it is is not quite the neat, cosy, justly-ordered world of their early childhood. They learn that there is nothing in the real world which unfolds like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. They learn now of the evil which excoriates the world, of the shocking unfairness which riddles life, of the misery in which most of the world’s people will have to live. And then they put all of this against the supposed goodness and mercy of God.

At this age too teenagers learn of the arguments brought against faith by Freud and Marx and Darwin. Dealing with these arguments may be “old hat” to a middle-aged person like me, but to a 15 year old it is all so new, so startling, so powerful as to hang a huge question mark above all that he has understood to date of the Christian faith. I often feel that the confirmation process stifles the teenagers’ searching, their inquisitiveness, their wrestling issues to the ground, when we should be encouraging all of this; we smother precisely what we should stimulate. Of course we should support them while they search. But what is to be gained by exerting pressure from parents, peers and congregation upon a teenager to conform to the confirmation practice when all the while some of them, at least, want to cry out, “But I’m not convinced yet; and I have many more questions; and why do I have to submit to this?”

I have long felt that we need to support youngsters throughout this searching, questioning, doubting, probing phase; support them and encourage them in it, and wait for them to emerge on the other side of it with a faith they have hammered out for themselves and can own without reservation. At this point, I feel, we should have another public “rite of spiritual passage” for those who are now 22 or 25 or 28 — or 55.

V:– While the congregation owns and supports teenagers throughout this process and then publicly celebrates the culmination of their search, its flowering into fruit-bearing faith, the congregation should also, I feel, recognize, own, support all kinds of people who act in the congregation’s name. Yes, we do recognize the UCW leadership each year when we install the executive. “Install”? We install heavy appliances, like stoves, fridges, washers and dryers. We shouldn’t “install” these women; we should commission them. We should commission them on behalf of the UCW for the ultimate blessing of the whole congregation. We shouldn’t “install” Sunday School teachers as we call it at present. We should commission them to bring to children, in the way that children can understand, the faith which this congregation as a whole owns. We commission the teachers to render this service for us.

What about the prime neighbours? We need a service which sets forth the way in which the neighbouring program extends Christian hospitality, and what we are trusting to result from this ministry.

The thrust of the visiting program is different. Whereas the prime neighbours have others into their own homes, the visitors go out to other people’s homes, with a different purpose in view. We need a service which recognizes this and commissions them for it.

Youth work in the congregation: youth group, girls’ work, Boy Scout/Girl Guide work. It all happens here in the congregation. We need a public service of recognition, gratitude and commissioning.

VI: —And then I think there may be one thing more needed. Perhaps we need to allow an individual to speak on Sunday morning from time to time. Not to make an announcement in the announcement period, but rather to share her testimony of God’s victory somewhere in her life, or to request special intercession of us in special circumstances, or to lay an extraordinary concern before us which is searing her heart. Do we need a place for this as well?

VII: — Let me say again what I said a minute ago. You asked for a sermon on the meaning and timing of confirmation. I have put before you my best thinking on the subject. But it is only mine. I need to hear yours. Speak to me, to anyone on the Official Board, to anyone on the Christian Education Committee, to anyone in the Sunday School. But be sure to let us know what is on your mind.

F I N I S

                                                                        Victor A. Shepherd
January 1994

Proverbs 4:14 -18        1^st Corinthians             John 6:22 -34

 

 

[1]         When the Japanese besieged Hong Kong sixty-plus years ago and began starving the people inside the city, a British banker was found sitting on the curb with his feet in the gutter. He was dressed like a British banker: cutaway coat, Homburg hat, pin-striped charcoal trousers, grey spats. He was the picture of upper-class privilege.  He had found an orange in the gutter.  The orange had been stepped on several times, had been exposed to the sun, and was covered with grime.  He was about to bite into it when a British soldier knocked it out of his hand, shouting, “Do you want to get sick?”   Whereupon the banker, still sitting on the curb, hung his head and blubbered like a child.

Hunger is terrible. Hunger bends people. Hunger finds people behaving in ways they otherwise never would.         Hunger forces people to be what they never thought they’d become. The British banker would have given everything he owned, even his indexed civil service pension, for one slice of bread.  But there was no bread.

Bread was the all-important commodity in the ancient east.  Bread? Not money?   Money didn’t even exist in old, old Babylon ; in lieu of currency grain was the medium of exchange.  Hundreds of years later, in Hosea’s day, Hosea lurched broken-hearted to the market in order to purchase his “hooker”-wife from the clutches of the local pimp.         Hosea paid part of the purchase-price in grain.  In our society there are few public officials more important than the minister of finance and the president of the central bank.  In the ancient world, however, the most important public official was the one responsible for bread.

 

[2]         Bread isn’t eaten the way ice-cream or chocolate is eaten.  Bread is consumed in large quantities.  It’s one of life’s necessities.  Because bread looms so large in our lives and is essential to life, we use the word “bread” metaphorically.  “I’ve got to have a second job just to put bread on the table.” Everyone knows what the expression is meant to convey.  When we pray, as we are taught to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”, we are asking for all of life’s necessities: bread, to be sure, but also water and clean air and safe cities and national security and effective schooling and adequate medical care. What, after all, would be the point of bread (literal) to sustain us if disease then carried us off? What would be the point of eating bread to forestall malnutrition if we then had to breathe lung-corroding air or live in lethal streets or succumb to military aggression? When we pray for daily bread we are praying for all of life’s necessities as symbolized by bread.  When our Lord multiplied the loaves and healed the sick and raised the dead he wasn’t doing three different things.  He was doing one thing: bringing with him that kingdom whose manifestation we long to see.

Then is bread a physical matter or a spiritual matter?  To put such a question is to pose a false dichotomy.         All of us in Schomberg have been schooled in the logic of the Hebrew bible, and therefore we know that to dichotomize life into the physical (or material) and the spiritual is to dichotomize life falsely.  Dennis Niles, a thoughtful South Asian Christian of an earlier era, used to say, “If I lack bread – that’s a physical problem; if my neighbour lacks bread – a spiritual problem.”  Since the Christian community is birthed by the Spirit of God and is concerned with spiritual matters, the Christian community is therefore concerned with material matters – which is to say, the Christian community is always concerned with bread of every kind.

 

[3] While we are speaking of bread metaphorically we should recall the way the older testament speaks of the bread of tears and the bread of affliction and the bread of idleness and the bread of adversity.  Because bread was the staple food in the ancient world, it was eaten in huge quantities. Then as now people knew that in one sense they were what they ate. What they ate became so thoroughly a part of them that they were characterized by what they had had to swallow.

When the Hebrew bible speaks of the bread of tears or the bread of sorrow, it means that someone is so thoroughly grief-saturated she’s consumed by her grief; someone has been so thoroughly saddened that she’s characterized by her sorrow and is now identified with it.

Life is relatively easy for me.  (At least it has been to date.)  For others, however, life is exceedingly difficult.         We all know people whom adversity has devastated so thoroughly and so often that we would say, were we living in the time of our Hebrew foreparents, that they have eaten the bread of adversity.  As soon as we hear the word “adversity” we think of those people who exemplify adversity and whom we now identify with it.

We know too people who have eaten the bread of wickedness.  In scripture those who eat the bread of wickedness are also said to drink the wine of violence. People who plunge themselves farther and farther into wickedness have no choice but to maintain themselves by means of violence.  They have become so very wicked and necessarily so very violent that they are now identified with it all.

 

[4] In view of the different kinds of bread that we can eat and do eat, it’s plain that we need one more kind of bread as we need nothing else: we need him who is the bread of life. We are sinners and we are sufferers. We need our Lord, and he meets us at every point of our need.

In Israel ’s 40-year trek through the wilderness there was given them a most glorious anticipation of Jesus Christ, the bread of life.  They were given manna. Manna sustained them in that era when bleakness loomed wherever they looked.  “Manna” is a Hebrew word meaning “What is it?”  They were sustained by God’s provision, the nature of which they couldn’t explain (let alone explain away), yet whose presence and significance they couldn’t deny. “What is it?” How God sustains his people is always a mystery; but that he sustains them is never in doubt.  Manna appeared to be so very ordinary, yet it was extraordinary in its origin, its nature, its effectiveness.

Twelve hundred years after the wilderness episode some descendants of wilderness-survivors said to Jesus, “Our fathers ate manna in the wilderness. Moses fed his people.  What can you do for us?” Jesus replied, “It wasn’t Moses who fed your foreparents; it was my Father.  He gives true bread from heaven, and I, Jesus of Nazareth, am that bread. I am the bread of life, just because I am living bread. Whoever comes to me will never hunger; whoever comes to me will never perish.”

Manna was an anticipation of Jesus Christ.  To say the same thing differently, Jesus Christ was the hidden truth of the manna in the wilderness.  It was he who sustained the people even though they knew it not.  “Now, however”, says our Lord, “you people are to know that I am God’s provision. To be sure, I appear so very ordinary as to be readily overlooked.  Yet my origin, nature and effectiveness are rooted in the mystery of God. I am living bread, the bread of life; whoever comes to me from this moment neither hungers nor perishes.”

 

[5]         Today is communion Sunday. In the service of Holy Communion we eat ordinary bread, everyday bread, bread plain and simple, and yet we are fed him who is the bread of life.  The bread that sustains our bodies (and therein our minds, since the human mind is never found apart from the body) also sustains, by God’s grace, our life in him as our Lord Jesus Christ gives himself to us afresh.

Let’s make no mistake. It is by God’s grace, and only by his grace, that we are sustained in our life with him, advanced in it, and ultimately perfected in it, for of ourselves we are fallen creatures who are found eating the bread of wickedness again and again. Like all who eat the bread of wickedness we unfailingly drink the wine of violence, since there’s no wickedness that isn’t intrinsically linked with violence. The wonder of it all is that the human wickedness which conspires against our Lord, and the human violence which torments him and finally slays him; this, our sin, becomes, by God’s grace, the occasion of our restoration. Our sin becomes the occasion of our salvation. For at the cross the crucified one absorbs our violent wickedness and renders it that sacrifice for us apart from which we can only die the death that wickedness merits.

Everyday bread that we eat to sustain life is made the vehicle of the bread of life as Our Lord continues to feed us who crave the bread of wickedness. As he continues to fee us we find the bread of heaven quickening a new appetite in us, an appetite for living bread.  For this bread profoundly satisfies even as it never satiates.

 

Honey

[6]         Honey is a sweetener. Then is honey only a confection like candy?   No. While honey is a sweetener to be sure, scripture speaks everywhere of honey as a foodstuff. The book of Ecclesiasticus lists “the chief necessities of human life.”   They are water, fire, iron, salt, flour, milk, the juice of the grape, clothing, honey. (Ecclus. 39:26)         In the older testament honey is mentioned matter-of-factly with other items that everyone recognizes to be foodstuffs: wheat, barley, beans, lentils, cheese. (2 Sam. 17:29)  At the same time honey is that staple, a foodstuff, whose sweetness renders it especially attractive.

We modern food-procurers cultivate honey by building beehives and placing the beehives in orchards and clover-fields.  In this way we can maximize honey production and collect the honey conveniently. In Israel of old, however, there were no carefully constructed beehives: honey was simply gathered wherever it could be found.

And where was it found? It was found in the hollow of rocks, rocks that were unremarkably ordinary. It was found in trees, trees that were stately and beautiful.  John the Baptist found it in the wilderness of Judaea , the wilderness being just that: wilderness. Samson found honey in the carcass of a dead lion – which is to say, in the midst of rottenness.

Honey, our Hebrew foreparents said, is one of life’s necessities, and honey can be found anywhere. It can be found amidst life’s ordinariness, life’s beauty, life’s wilderness, and even life’s rottenness.  In other words, honey can be found wherever life lands us.  No one is so foolish as to think that life’s assorted settings produce honey; they certainly don’t produce it.  But the assorted settings of life are precisely where honey, God’s provision, can always be found.

 

The psalmist tells us repeatedly that the Torah is sweeter than honey. Torah is the truth of God and the will of God and the way of God as well as the path that God appoints us to walk, even our companion on the path.  Jesus Christ is Torah Incarnate.  He is the truth and will and way of God made flesh. In his company we find ourselves on the path through life that he has pioneered for us, even as he remains our companion on the path.   He is Torah incarnate. We have found him to be the necessity of life, even as we have found him to be so wondrously attractive as to leave us saying of him, “sweeter than honey.”

 

Today at our communion service let us eat bread, drink wine, savour honey (at the coffee hour, a part of congregational life), knowing that honey can be found anywhere in life.  For everywhere in life, in every crevice and corner, nook and cranny, in whatever beauty or bleakness, our Lord is to be found.  He is even to be found at a service of Holy Communion in a village church in Schomberg to be sure, but also on every occasion, on any day, anywhere.

 

                                                                                                      Victor Shepherd   

January 2007        

Proverbs 17:22 ; 15:15   

Exodus 16:2-3                       2^nd Corinthians 9:11-12                 Colossians 2:7             John 16:33

 

I: — Petulant whining, complaining, grousing, grumbling; it always strikes us as so very childish. It rains on the day of the picnic. The child pouts and sulks, mumbles and mutters. Finally her mother has had enough. “I can’t to anything about the weather,” mother says, thinking that her reasonable word to the child will undo the child’s irrationality and sweeten the child’s sourness. Not a chance. The child seems to prefer to mumble and mutter petulantly, seems to enjoy being miserable. Mother, still assuming that her rationality can undo her child’s irrationality, sweetly replies, “All right; so we can’t have a picnic today. Just think of all you have to be grateful for.” Petulantly the child mutters that she can’t think of anything at all. Of course she can’t. Ingratitude shrivels hearts and distorts perception and perverts understanding. At this point mother shakes her head and finds consolation that one day her child will be an adult and will see such matters as powerlessness over weather from an adult point of view. At which time gratitude will appear and life will be assessed quite differently.

Yet there are some adults who, while “adult” in the sense of being post-adolescent, never mature. Ingratitude born of short-sightedness never gives way to gratitude for blessings visible everywhere. An unthankful spirit, worsened by petulance, is always a sign of childishness, to say the least.

But more than the least has to be said. In other words, while ingratitude is a sign of childishness, it’s also a sign of something worse than childishness. It’s a sign of grave spiritual sickness.

When scripture speaks of ingratitude and the grumbling that noisily advertises ingratitude, it gathers up the inner attitude and the outer manifestation in one onomatopoeic word: “murmuring.” Everywhere in scripture unthankful people are said to murmur.

We first read of God’s people murmuring when they are in the wilderness, halfway between Egypt and the Promised Land. Earlier they had been slaves in Egypt , and had found slavery unendurable. They had cried out in those days, and God had been moved by their outcry, since they had grounds for crying out. God had delivered them with his outstretched arm. Then he had forged them into a people after his own heart at Mount Sinai when he had given them the Ten Words, a way of living that would end forever the social chaos and the spiritual disintegration they had seen in the pagan nations. The only thing left them to do was to fall on their faces in gratitude; sheer, adoring gratitude. After all, they had been spared the misery and humiliation of slavery as well as the confusion and corruption of ungodliness. In view of what God had spared them, the hardship of the wilderness – rigorous to be sure – would nevertheless have been inconsequential. However, as their gratitude evaporated, reasonableness evaporated too. Now they wanted to go back to Egypt . “At least we had lots to eat in Egypt ,” they whined, “even if we were slaves.”

Are the ungrateful people, now advertising their ingratitude through grumbling, willing to forfeit their calling as God’s people? Do they really want to hand themselves over to the indignity and dehumanisation of slavery? Do they really want to embrace the spiritual vacuity and the amorality of the nations that haven’t been to Mount Sinai ?

Yes. Insanity of the sort just described is a spin-off of ingratitude. In view of what God had done for them; in view of what God continued to do for them; in view of all this, ingratitude could only spell disaster as surely as gratitude would have guaranteed their faithfulness as God’s people and guaranteed the fulfilment of their vocation as a light to the nations.

I am moved whenever I read the Heidelberg Catechism, written in 1563. The Heidelberg Catechism is the crown jewel of the shorter Reformation writings. It is a gem. The first section of the Catechism is titled “The Misery of Man.” Ten questions and answers realistically probe and portray the human predicament in the era of the Fall. The second section is titled “The Redemption of Man.” Seventy-Five questions and answers tell us of God’s glorious mercy and patience and persistence, all motivated by his oceanic love of sinners. The third section is titled “Thankfulness;” simply that: “Thankfulness.” This third section begins by posing the question, “Why should we obey God?” It doesn’t answer that we should obey him lest we provoke his anger. It doesn’t even say that we should obey him out of enlightened self-interest (things will go better for us if we obey him.) It says that we should obey him out of gratitude to him for all that his goodness has done for us. In other words, according to the Heidelberg Catechism the whole of our discipleship, our obedience, whatever renunciation is asked of us; it’s all motivated by one thing: thankfulness.

By the time the Catechism gets around to speaking of prayer it’s at question #116. “Why is prayer necessary for Christians?” Why do you think prayer is necessary for Christians? Because it’s the instrument for getting what we need? Answer #116: “Prayer is the principal element in the thankfulness God requires of us.” Every aspect of our response to God derives from our gratitude.

“Gratitude for what?” someone asks. All Christians, together with our Hebrew ancestors in faith; all Christians have stood at the edge of the Red Sea; all Christians have stood at the foot of Sinai; and all Christians have stood, above all, at the foot of the cross. We are the beneficiaries of God’s goodness so many times over that minimal spiritual sanity means maximal gratitude. Ingratitude, murmuring, can only mean that we are so blind to what we’ve been given as to be insane.

 

II: — “Is unthankfulness as serious as that?” someone asks. “Is grumbling that dangerous?” Yes it is.

In the parable of the workers in the vineyard Jesus points out that ingratitude, grumbling, reveals resentment and reinforces it. In this parable some men are hired to work in the vineyard. At the end of their eight-hour shift they are paid the agreed-upon sum. Other workers, hired late in the day and therefore who have worked only four hours or two hours or perchance one hour; these other workers receive the same sum. This parable, we should note right here, has nothing to do with economics or labour relations. This parable has rather to do with God’s grace and mercy and help. You see, in ancient Palestine day-labourers, the bottom rung of the working class, were paid at the end of each day. They had to be. They lived so close to the line that they had no savings at all, nothing in reserve. With the money they were paid for that day’s work they fed their families the same evening and next morning. The men in the parable who had worked a full day were given one day’s pay – and immediately used it to sustain themselves and their dependents. The men who had worked less than a day were nonetheless given a full day’s pay. Why? Because anything less than a full day’s pay would have been useless. If they had received a quarter of a day’s pay for a quarter of a day’s work, they and their dependents would have starved. Because the owner of the vineyard was generous, all the men were given what they needed regardless of what they deserved. Even so, says Jesus, people with ungrateful hearts murmur and mutter and grumble at the vineyard owner inasmuch as they resent seeing others appear more fortunate than they. Had they been grateful themselves, they would also have rejoiced to see other needy people given as much as those people needed.

A clergyman who had served in the prairies during the Great Depression told me of the joy in his village the day a boxcar of vegetables from the east was uncoupled from the train and left in the village. People were given cabbages and turnips and carrots and corn and ever so much more. It so happened that the postmaster was the only man in the village with a permanent job. Therefore he was extraordinarily privileged. And when the vegetables were distributed, the old clergyman told me, this postmaster denounced the fellow-villager who had been given a slightly larger turnip. Ingratitude reveals resentment and reinforces it.

 

Ingratitude does something more: it cloaks a mean spirit. Thankfulness publicises a generous spirit; unthankfulness cloaks a mean spirit.

A woman fell at the feet of Jesus and poured out on his feet the costliest bottle of cologne as she wiped his feet with her hair. Why did she do this? She did it out gratitude to him for all that he done for her. Mark tells us that several bystanders, people who plainly were possessed of no gratitude at all, carped and complained, muttered and murmured, groused and grumbled, “This money could have been given to the poor.” Since when were these grumblers concerned with the poor? When have complainers ever been concerned with the poor? Every time Jesus had eaten with the poor the murmurers had murmured. They weren’t concerned with the poor. They were ungrateful people whose mean spirits found them relishing every opportunity to complain.

The price of the cologne indicated the depth of the woman’s gratitude. Then how grateful was she? She had spent 300 denarii on the bottle of cologne; 300 denarii, an entire year’s income. Luke tells us that the woman was a harlot. In those long-ago days of sweaty-hot Palestine when bathtubs and water were scarce, harlots used cologne as a tool of the trade. In other words, her gratitude moved her to a public renunciation of her sin and her sin-begotten employment. Her gratitude moved her to a public penitence. Her gratitude moved her to a costly sacrifice, for this woman had given up her livelihood.

How grateful are you today? And I? Grateful enough to renounce sin and proffer penitence and gladly make that sacrifice whose cost we count only to forget? Are we so grateful that compared to our gratitude the sacrifice our Lord asks of us is nothing?

Bystanders who watched the woman carped at her and complained, ungrateful grumblers that they were. Their inner ingratitude and their outer murmuring merely cloaked a mean spirit.

 

Ingratitude is lethal for yet another reason. Inner ingratitude and outer murmuring blind us to God’s breaking in upon us in the most ordinary moments and circumstances. It’s just the opposite with the grateful heart. The person whose heart is characteristically grateful recognises the incursion of God in her life in the most ordinary circumstances and in the most undramatic ways. The grateful person instantly, gladly, gives thanks. Whereupon she finds herself discerning more sensitively even more subtle incursions of God in her life. Once again she instantly, gladly, gives thanks. Whereupon she finds herself discerning even more sensitively the even more subtle incursions of God in her life. It all keeps spiralling up as her gratitude is rewarded with discernment and her discernment with greater gratitude and her greater gratitude with still greater discernment.

It’s just the opposite with the ungrateful grumbler. Everything spirals down for him. Jesus quietly announces that he is the bread of life, that gift of God no less miraculous than the manna which sustained God’s people day-by-day when they had no other resources. Immediately the murmurers around Jesus begin to murmur. “How can he be the bread of life? We know his mother and father. He’s nothing more than a carpenter’s son. He’s too ordinary to be God’s visitation and God’s definitive blessing.” Murmuring shrivels our heart, dulls our understanding, numbs our spiritual sensors. Murmuring invariably blinds us to those moments, ordinary to be sure yet not ordinary, when we know that God has spoken to us, whispered to us or shouted at us, nudged us or shaken us, startled us or quieted us, convicted us and corrected us yet also finally comforted us. We alone are aware of it inasmuch as the public event surrounding it is so very ordinary even as the private event within us is overwhelming. Ungrateful grumbling blinds us to this. Ungrateful grumblers find it all spiralling down as ingratitude is punished by non-discernment or insensitivity, insensitivity by colder ingratitude, colder ingratitude by still duller non-discernment.

 

It’s plain that prophet and apostle weren’t exaggerating when they insisted that inner ingratitude and outer grumbling were together a spiritual sickness severe enough to find the ungrateful person soon on the critical list. Neither were prophet and apostle exaggerating when they insisted that gratitude, thankfulness, wasn’t merely a sign of spiritual health but even the way to better health.

 

III: — It’s plain that prophet and apostle agree with the writer of Proverbs, “A cheerful heart is a good medicine; a cheerful heart has a continual feast.”

Today is Thanksgiving Sunday. Words like “continual feast” are therefore especially telling. “Continual feast” suggests “continual thanksgiving.” And continual thanksgiving is precisely what we find everywhere in scripture. The thanksgiving we are to render God, say prophet and apostle, is never grudging, never paltry, never “once-in-a-lifetime.” The apostle Paul says that the heart of the Christian “overflows in many thanksgivings to God.” As “grace extends to more and more,” he tells the Christians in Corinth , it will surely “increase thanksgiving to the glory of God.” He tells the same congregation that God’s goodness enriches us “in every way for great generosity” to others, and our “great” generosity in turn moves these other people to great thanksgiving to God. He tells the Christians in Colosse that they are to treasure Jesus Christ, with the result that they “abound in thanksgiving.” The psalmist tells us he customarily joins fellow-worshippers at church in “glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.”

Clearly the picture painted for us is a picture of the heart throbbing with thanksgiving. It’s the heart that “abounds” with thanksgiving, “overflows” with thanksgiving, is “greatly” grateful. It is this heart that is cheerful and has a continual feast.

Then do we ever have grounds for grumbling? Of course we have grounds for grumbling. In everyone’s life there is a ceaseless undercurrent, an undertow even, of stress, difficulty, suffering, disappointment, apprehension, uncertainty, illness, grief. Therefore there are grounds for grumbling.

Then is grumbling finally permitted, even though scripture insists, and we saw earlier, that grumbling is spiritually lethal? No. Grumbling isn’t finally permitted. It’s not permitted for one reason: our grounds for grumbling are always less than our grounds for gratitude. In a verse from John’s gospel that I memorized when I was barely past infancy (and therefore the last thing I’m going to remember when I’m a senile old man in the nursing home) Jesus tells his followers, “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Our Lord has overcome, has already overcome, everything that is grounds for grumbling. In other words, our grounds for grumbling have been eclipsed by our grounds for gratitude.

Several years ago my mother had a major heart attack and was hospitalized for 75 consecutive days. In the course of visiting her I noticed that she never complained about her damaged heart or her restricted activity or her protracted institutionalization. On the contrary she always appeared grateful for the slightest service rendered her. When I visited her on Thanksgiving weekend I noticed on her tabletop her church bulletin, in which she had written fellow-parishioners thanking them for their many kindnesses. At the conclusion of her note she had written, “Psalm 59:16.” I looked it up. Psalm 59:16 is an exclamation of thanksgiving to God. “I will sing aloud of your [i.e., God’s] steadfast love, for you have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress.” Since the fortress and refuge of God’s steadfast love were known and dependable; since tribulation had already been overcome, her grounds for gratitude would always be greater than her grounds for grumbling.

It is the ever-grateful heart that is ever-cheerful, and this ever-cheerful heart has a continual feast.

Blessings on you, every one, on this, the festival of Thanksgiving.

 

                                                                                           Victor Shepherd                                                                                                        

Thanksgiving 2004

Proverbs 16:18

                                                   Daniel 5:20 -23                     James 4:1-6                         John 13:1-15

 

I: — Recently I walked into a major department store, looking for an article I was eager to purchase. I didn’t know where to find it. I asked a salesperson. I thought she would be eager to help for three reasons: one, I had money to spend; two, she had no other customers to wait upon; three, I was in a hurry. But she wasn’t eager to help. “Over there”, she waved in no direction at all, “it’s over there, somewhere.” Doesn’t she have any pride in her work?

Some hockey players are known as “floaters”. They have above-average ability. They work hard for part of the game. They work hard if the score is still tied early in the game, or they work hard if they haven’t scored yet themselves. But as soon as their team is two goals ahead or two goals behind they “float”. As soon as they’ve scored a goal or two themselves they skate at three-quarter speed and avoid heavy traffic. Their name is now in the scoring column and they are taking the rest of the night off. “Floaters”. Don’t they have any pride in what they’re doing? Shouldn’t they be ashamed of themselves for drawing a huge pay-cheque for so little effort?

Speaking of shame, our society assumes that shame is everywhere and always detrimental, and therefore we should all aim at becoming shame-free. In fact nothing could be worse. The person with no capacity for shame is like the person with no capacity for guilt: he’s to be pitied (since his condition is genuinely pitiable) and he’s to be avoided (since he really is dangerous – he’s a psychopath). It is false shame that is detrimental and is therefore to be eliminated. False shame is being shame-bound when we have nothing to be ashamed of. But to remain unashamed when we should rightly be ashamed is nothing less than pitiable.

Plainly there are two distinct meanings to “pride.” One we shall discuss soon. The other meaning, the one presupposed so far in the sermon, pertains to the pursuit of excellence. Pride in the sense of the pursuit of excellence has nothing to do with pride as sin. In fact, not to pursue excellence is sin.   Irving Layton, late Canadian poet, has penned the line, “The slow, steady triumph of mediocrity.” He’s captured it, hasn’t he. Mediocrity will triumph if only because the many purveyors of mediocrity, joining forces, can always outvote and outmanoeuvre and outmuscle the few who are committed to excellence. Mediocrity is threatened by excellence and longs to submerge it.

Pride isn’t sin when it’s simply the pursuit of excellence. Pride is sin when it’s a God-defying and neighbour-disdaining arrogance. The key is the distinction between excellence and arrogance.

Then why is pride in the sense of arrogance to be abhorred? If the consequences of arrogance were merely that we appeared somewhat snooty and snobby then pride would be a trifle. Yet our mediaeval foreparents named it one of the seven “deadly sins”, the deadly sin. And in fact the consequences of spiritual arrogance, so far from being trivial, are ruinous.

 

II:(i) — Think of how arrogance blinds us. Pride blinds us to our fragility, our frailty. Pride leads us to think we are Herculean, a “cut above” everyone else, impervious to all the things that collapse and crumble those whom we deem “lesser breeds”. The hymn writer cries, “Frail as summer’s flower we flourish; blows the wind, and it is gone.” “Not so”, we whisper to ourselves, “not so. We aren’t frail and it’ll take more than a puff of summer wind to scatter us.”

When arrogant people boast of physical invulnerability, thinking themselves to be beyond the reach of disease and debilitation, we pronounce them fools. We also stand back and wait a while, knowing that soon they will prove themselves helpless against the tiniest microbe.

Yet having learned our lesson so thoroughly with respect to physical health, we appear to learn nothing about our spiritual well-being. Having detected the pride that leaves people foolishly thinking themselves to be physically invulnerable, we appear unaware of the pride that leaves us on the edge of spiritual collapse.

The saints of every tradition have known, for instance, that there is no spiritual resilience without frequent, habitual, heart-searching prayer on behalf of oneself and the same frequent, habitual, self-forgetting intercession on behalf of others. But if we have concluded that we have no time for this, not so much as ten minutes per day, we are pride-blinded to our own vulnerability and to the world’s need.

If we were to appear in public with lipstick on our teeth or our slip showing by three inches; if we were to appear in public with our zipper undone or egg-yolk on our necktie we’d be annoyed at those who saw us like this but never took us aside and told us quietly what had to be done. Certainly we’d never thank those who failed to spare us embarrassment, let alone humiliation. Yet our pride blinds us to our spiritual need and blinds us yet again to the gratitude we owe those who point out our spiritual deficits in order to spare us public embarrassment. When people who know us well, even those we deem good friends, gently try to tell us that we are unknowingly flirting with something that is going to be our downfall, our pride suddenly sours us and we resent being told this. We don’t thank them. We tell them to mind their own business; we tell ourselves that we are invulnerable. Why, our discipleship could never be collapsed. What can be next except collapse?   The person who thinks he’s beyond disgracing himself is already on the edge of doing just that.

Frail as summer’s flower we flourish? Not we. In no time our proud denial of our frailty publicly demonstrates our frailty. Pride blinds us to our frailty, our fragility, our spiritual vulnerability.

 

(ii) — Another reason that our foreparents, wise in matters of the Spirit, deemed pride to be the arch sin: pride is also the arch-corrupter. It corrupts everything good; it corrupts everything that the gospel struggles to bring to birth in us.

Think of courage. Courage is the work of Christ within us, the work of him whose most frequent word to his followers is, “Fear not.” As soon as we are proud of our courage, however, we become show-offs. Show-offs are soon reckless. Reckless people are dangerous, dangerous to themselves and dangerous to others.

Think of affection. Affection too is fostered by him who loves us more than he loves himself. Yet as soon as we are proud of the affection we pour upon others, they feel patronised by our affection. So far from exalting others, our affection (now corrupted) demeans them.

Think of both thrift and generosity. (Thrift and generosity have to be considered together, since only thrifty people have the wherewithal to be generous.) The gospel quickens generosity in us. (After all, we are rendered Christian by the self-giving of him who gave up everything for us). Yet as soon as pride appears it corrupts, since the person proud of his thrift becomes stingy, miserly even, while the person proud of his generosity uses his generosity to advertise himself.

There is nothing that pride doesn’t corrupt, and corrupt thoroughly.

 

(iii) Our theological and spiritual foreparents, however, were quick to attack pride chiefly because they knew that blindness to our vulnerability and the corruption of our graces, important as they are, are mere spin-offs of the ultimately hideous illusion that our pride visits upon us. I speak now of the illusion that we are not creatures in that we acknowledge no creator; we are not sinners in that we acknowledge no judge; we are not to be servants in that we acknowledge no master; we are not to spend ourselves for others in that we acknowledge no claim upon us; and we are not to submit ourselves to the Other in that we acknowledge no one to be our Lord. This is the ultimate illusion.

Psychiatrists tell us that people who live in a world of cognitive illusion are psychotic. The word “psychotic” means that someone’s ability to test what is actually “out there”; this ability is grossly impaired or has even been lost. Our society is horrified at the appearance of psychotic people; our society’s response is to move them off the scene as fast as possible. In our horror at psychosis (which is a giant, all-encompassing cognitive illusion) we blithely overlook that spiritual psychosis which is far more common; universal, in fact, apart from a miracle at God’s hand. Spiritual psychosis is the spiritual condition where someone’s ability to discern God’s presence, God’s truth, God’s way, God’s inescapability; someone’s ability here is broken down (or not so much broken down as never quickened). Are we horrified at this? Not at all. The ultimate evil of pride is that it destroys our capacity to perceive the truth about ourselves under God. It even destroys our awareness that we are under God. This is the ultimate illusion and, if we were sensible at all, the ultimate horror.

The book of Daniel tells us that when King Nebucchadnezzar became swollen with pride his spirit was hardened; he was deposed from this throne; his glory was taken away from him; he went mad and ate grass like an animal. His pride brought on “melt-down”. His pride blinded him, blunted him, dehumanised him. The text tells us that he remained in this state “until he knew that the Most High God rules the kingdom of men….”

 

III: — Since all of us are afflicted with a pride comparable to Nebucchadnezzar’s, all of us desperately need to be cured of it. What is the cure? Where does the cure begin?

 

(i) It begins with truth; the truth (i.e., the truth of God); the whole truth. The truth is, we are unrighteous people who have nothing to plead on our own behalf. Since we can plead nothing of ourselves, we can only plead God’s mercy, his forgiveness, his remission of our sin.

As long as we think there is anything in us that God can recognise and reward, we are pride-deluded. The fact that our only righteousness is God’s gift tells us that there is nothing in ourselves that we can call up or brandish or use as a bargaining chip with God. Several years ago I was counselling a woman, on her way to a divorce, when her husband — a Texan — dropped into my office to pay me for the service – many hours of counselling – I was rendering his wife. I told this Texan that there was no counselling fee; I was paid by the congregation, and I was paid adequately. He insisted on writing a small cheque ($25.00) to the congregation. “I may not have a great deal of money”, he told me vehemently, “but I’m no ‘field nigger’.” Plainly a field nigger is someone with no standing and no respectability. This man was telling me he had some. But the fact of God’s pardon, his forgiveness, his mercy, his remission; the fact of this means that you and I are beggars before God. To be sure, forgiveness means more than this, a great deal more; but it never means less. The fact that we can live before God only by his mercy means that we have nothing to call up or brandish or use as a bargaining chip with God.

When Richard Nixon was charged and convicted, Gerald Ford, his successor, granted him a “Presidential Pardon”. The fact of Nixon’s pardon meant there wasn’t one person who could think of one thing to excuse one offence. Since there wasn’t one person who could think of one thing to excuse one offence, either Richard Nixon was to be sentenced or he was to be pardoned. He was pardoned. His pardon, however, presupposed his guilt. We must be sure we understand this point: Nixon’s pardon meant he was indisputably guilty. What is excusable we excuse; the wholly inexcusable, the utterly guilty, can only be pardoned.

If we think no pride remains in us, then we need to ask ourselves if we understand what God’s forgiveness means: it means that our Father can’t think of one thing that would excuse anything about us. God’s gift of righteousness – his gift of right standing with him pressed upon those who cling in faith to the ever-righteous Son – means that of ourselves we have no standing with him and aren’t fit to appear before him.

 

(ii)   If the first truth about us is that the gospel unmasks us, exposes us, the second truth about us is that the gospel gloriously heals us and exalts us. The second truth is also a second test: are we willing to wrap the healing/exalting gospel around us despite the gospel’s bloodiness (say pseudo-sophisticates) and despite the gospel’s narrowness (say the supposedly broadminded) and despite the gospel’s Jewishness (say the anti-Semites among us)?

Naaman was commander of the Syrian army. He learned he had leprosy. He longed to be rid of it. A young Israelite woman, a prisoner of war, told Naaman’s wife that a man named Elisha, a prophet in Israel , could cure Naaman. Naaman swallowed his pride and called on Elisha. What a humiliation. He, a military commander, a cosmopolitan Gentile, appearing cap-in-hand before this scruffy enemy fellow who also belonged to that people the world loves to loathe. Naaman was so humiliated he knew there couldn’t be any pride left in him — until Elisha told him what he had to do to be cured. He would have to wash seven times in the Jordan River (the Jordan being then what the Don River is today). Naaman stormed off, shouting at Elisha, “Can’t you just wave your hand and make me better? And if I do have to wash, can’t I wash in a river of my choosing?” That was what Naaman really wanted: he wanted to wash in a river of his choosing. He hadn’t quite swallowed all his pride. Meanwhile, Elisha was adamant: the Jordan or no cure.

All of us want an easy cure for our pride. We’d all prefer a wave of the hand; or at least a cure of our choosing. We all want relief from symptoms; we all want deliverance from self-deception and corruption. At least we all want deliverance from self-deception and corruption at the same time that we want to cling to our own righteousness, the righteousness we think we have, lest we have to admit with the hymn writer, “Nothing in my hand I bring; nothing.”

Naaman went home and thought it over for a while. He thought it over until his loathsomeness was as loathsome to him as it had long been to everyone else. Then he did as the prophet had commanded: seven times in that river proud people didn’t go near.

Seven is the biblical symbol for completeness, for wholeness. Naaman, a Syrian, (today we’d call him an Arab); this Arab remained immersed in the river of Israel until he was completely cured, whole once more.

You and I must remain immersed in the gospel until our life’s end; we must remain immersed in the gospel until that day when faith gives way to sight and our arrogance is behind us forever.

 

(iii) The third truth about our pride-warped hearts and the cure we need is this: we need to wash feet. Jesus washed feet. It was the work of a servant, never the duty of the householder. Jesus knew it was the work of a lower-class servant – and he said it was pure privilege.

The next time we are asked to do something we instinctively feel to be beneath us, something that makes us feel small, we need to do it. We must come to see that footwashing is a privilege in a world that boasts of its self-importance but only displays a shrivelled heart. We must come to see that only a very small person is ever truly big.

 

(iv) The fourth truth about us and the cure for our deep-seated pride: we have to allow our own feet to be washed. In some respects it’s much harder to be washed than to wash, because at least when we are washing someone else’s feet we likely feel somewhat heroic and hugely generous. To admit that our own feet need washing, by anyone at all, is very difficult. Years ago I spoke with a university professor who was struggling desperately with a temptation whose details we needn’t discuss; the professor told me the only man who had been able to help him was a truck driver who had been delivered from the same addiction – and he needed this truck driver as he needed no one else.

Thomas Watson, my favourite 17th century Puritan thinker, has written, “All Christian growth is finally growth in humility.

                                                                                                Victor Shepherd                                         

 February 2006

 

Proverbs 15:15 ; 17:22-9      Genesis 11:1      Matthew 6:16 -18

 

I: — Early one morning a hotel guest took his seat in the hotel dining room and ordered breakfast. He told the waiter he wanted two boiled eggs, one so runny that it oozed all over the place, the other cooked so hard that it bounced like an India rubber ball; a piece of toast so dried out that it disintegrated when you tried to cut it; some bacon whose grease was congealing on the plate; lastly, lukewarm coffee, half in the cup and half sloshed into the saucer. “Your order is highly unusual,” replied the waiter; “I don’t know if we can manage it.” Well,” the hotel guest came back, “You had no trouble managing it yesterday.”

Robertson Davies speaks of “that saddest of all spectacles; the person of one joke.” The person of one joke is the saddest of all spectacles for two reasons. One, he’s boring; two, he’s – sad. The person of one joke has far too little joy in his life. The book of Proverbs tells us, “A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones….A cheerful heart has a continual feast.”

Humour, laughter, are gifts of God for which God is to be praised. Paul tells us that everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. Humour is God’s gift; laughter is even God’s command. In the sermon on the mount Jesus says, “Don’t look dismal; whatever you do don’t look dismal. Looking dismal doesn’t honour God; neither does it help anyone else.” Still, we don’t avoid looking dismal by trying hard not to look dismal; trying hard will only make us look grim. Only by laughing can we avoid looking dismal, grim, gruesome even.

What’s more, I’m convinced that we have to laugh if we’re going to be life-affirming. I love the Hebrew toast, leChaim, “to life.” We can keep on affirming life only if we can laugh, just because there are so many contradictions and reversals and oddities everywhere in life. Laughter gets us through situations we can’t avoid and which would otherwise stress us frightfully.

Like hospitalization. My mother has always said that when we are hospitalized the first thing we lose is our modesty. She’s right. Now my mother and her offspring are unusual, perhaps, in that we Shepherds seem never to have had much modesty to lose. But if you have much modesty to lose, be sure to lose it laughing when you are hospitalized, because you are going to lose it anyway. In my various sojourns in hospital I’ve had roommates who were wound so tight, anxious and nervous and obsessed with saving face, their physical ailment seemed a trifle alongside their emotional distress.

Hospitalization is only one episode in life we’d like to avoid but can’t. Life is full of bizarre developments and incongruities. Humour helps us through them all. A year after our daughter Catherine was born in rural New Brunswick it was thought she might have water on the brain. The nearest paediatrician was in Moncton , 200 kilometres away over roads whose potholes resembled bomb craters. We set off. Catherine was strapped into an infant’s car seat between Maureen and me. My hat was on her feet. The rough road made her ill and she threw up on my hat. It was cold in Moncton that day, minus 20 degrees. Now I happen to be exceedingly prone to sinus infections, and I simply must wear a hat. I put my hat on my head. It was a red hat; it was now an odd-looking red hat, since it was adorned with yellow abstract art. Uptight now, in my mind I worked out a believable explanation I could offer quickly to anyone who saw me and wanted to put me in a strait jacket. Then I relaxed. If my hat was the occasion of laughter for someone who would otherwise look dismal, so much the better. Whereupon I wore my red-yellow hat proudly. Soon Maureen, Catherine and I were waiting for Dr. Paul Legere, no doubt the most popular people in his waiting room. Eventually Maureen took Catherine into his examining room where Maureen told him Catherine’s stomach had been upset. “No kidding,” was Dr. Legere’s only comment.

I know, life is a serious business. Only a fool thinks anything else. But “serious” doesn’t mean “grim” or “joyless” or “humourless.” Kierkegaard, a great philosopher, was surely correct when he said that genuinely serious people are those whose profundity is riddled with humour; serious people who lack humour, he added, are merely stupidly serious.

Humour allows us to be life-affirming in the midst of distresses that would otherwise submerge us. Jewish humour has been described as “tears dipped in honey.” It’s their humour that has allowed Jewish people to shout “LeChaim” despite their history of atrocious suffering. I love the humour that comes out of the Yiddish villages of Eastern Europe , especially the one-liners like, “When a poor Jew eats chicken, one of them is sick.”

Peter’s second epistle finds people crying, “Where is the promise of the Messiah’s coming? For how much longer do we have to suffer like this?” If we stare at the world’s grief and anguish we can be undone by it, for the Day of the Lord, with its resolution of distress and its alleviation of heartbreak; the Day of the Lord appears to tarry, doesn’t it? One day a schlemiel (“schlemiel” is Yiddish for a fellow who is an utter social misfit and is always a nuisance, always underfoot, someone whom everyone wishes would disappear); one day a schlemiel begged the village authorities to give him a job. He was put to doing many little things, but messed up at them all. Someone had a brain wave: send him up on the highest roof to watch for the Messiah. When he saw the Messiah he was to scamper down and inform the villagers. The villagers could then prepare themselves for welcoming the one they had awaited for centuries as their suffering cried out for relief. Week after week, month after month, the schlemiel climbed up onto the roof and watched. Eventually someone asked him how he liked his job. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “watching for the Messiah doesn’t pay very well, but it looks like steady work.” Tears dipped in honey.

Humour allows us to see and admit truths about humankind that we are otherwise prone to overlook. One day a vehement capitalist and a vehement socialist were arguing as to which system was better. A bystander jumped into the fray and settled the argument instantly. “Under capitalism,” he said, “people devour people. Under socialism it’s the other way around.”

Surely one of the most important features of humour is this: in laughing at ourselves we can laugh at our deficiencies and defects. The former treasurer of my congregation in Streetsville used to drop into my office frequently (every day, in fact) and only a little less frequently remind me that while it was easy to bring a minister to a church, it was very difficult to unload a minister. I never did figure why he mentioned this to me as often as he did. Nevertheless, his reminder always brought to mind the story of the rabbi in Montreal who was a terrible rabbi. The congregation wanted to unload him, yet knew that another congregation would take him off their hands only if they “hyped” him. And so the Montreal congregation told everyone they could that this fellow was a terrific rabbi. Why, he was like Moses; he was like Socrates; he was even like God. In no time a Toronto congregation called him. Within six months the Toronto people were enraged, and accused the Montreal people of false advertising. “There was nothing false about our advertising,” the Montreal people replied; “we told you the truth. We said he was like Moses. Moses stuttered; this man stutters. We said he was like Socrates. Socrates knew no Hebrew; this man knows no Hebrew. We said he was like God. God isn’t human, and neither is he.”

 

II: — At the same time not all laughter is born of humour; some laughter is born of cruelty. Think of the racist joke. Racist jokes are ‘funny’ for one reason only: deep down it is believed that black people or Asian people or aboriginal people are inferior or stupid or bumbling or silly or naïve or socially clueless. A joke about aboriginal people which substituted the Japanese wouldn’t be funny at all.

Sarcasm is another form of humour not funny at all. Sarcasm is saying one thing, meaning the exact opposite, and doing all of this with the intention of wounding someone. The committee member is scheduled to bring forward her report. Everyone knows that her reports aren’t the most detailed or the most accurate or the most helpful. Still she does her best, and shouldn’t be put down or humiliated in any way. The committee chairperson, however, priding himself on his malicious cleverness, thinks it’s smart to amuse himself and entertain everyone else at the expense of this woman. With a flowery, flattering introduction he announces that Mrs. Jones’ report will now be heard, “prepared, no doubt, with that matchless thoroughness we have all come to expect.” People titter or smile or smirk or even laugh uproariously. The chairperson said one thing, meant the exact opposite, and did it all with the deliberate aim of wounding. Sarcasm.

My psychiatrist-friends tell me that sarcasm destroys children. The child upsets his milk accidentally. Because it was an accident he’s not expecting any rebuke. His mother, fatigued and frazzled by 6:00 p.m. , has “lost it.” Beside herself, not knowing what to do next, she does what comes easiest: deal with the child by tormenting him verbally. “Isn’t that wonderful,” she remarks; “just wonderful. You spilled your milk. You should be commended. I suppose you’ll even want an extra dollar in your allowance on account of your grand achievement.” The child isn’t certain if his mother means what she says, but in any case he’s not going to pass up a dollar. He asks for his dollar – and gets cuffed in the head. Now he’s utterly confused; the breakdown in communication couldn’t be worse; and the pain of it all, inflicted deliberately, will prove destructive in the child’s mind and heart.

Sarcasm, however, clever, is never funny. Worse than non-funny, it’s lethal.

 

III: — Then what about God’s sense of humour? In several places in scripture God is said to laugh. I used to be bothered by the occasions of God’s laughter, since God’s laughter seemed to be mocking, contemptuous, derisive. Psalm 2 is a case in point. “Why do the nations conspire?…. The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and his anointed….He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord has them in derision.” I used to think that God was sneering at the puffed up politicians in Israel who fanned the flames of nationalism. I realize now, however, that there is no contempt. God is simply amused at the laughable spectacle of grown-up men and women making pompous speeches and strutting about pretentiously when in fact they reflect the same wild exaggerations of children at play, the same naiveness, the same silly pride and petulance and preposterousness of children at play who imagine themselves to be magnificent. Don’t you and I smile in amusement at the three year old who tells us he’s all grown up now and who fancies himself the world’s leading whatever?

Hitler ranted about his kingdom of purebred Aryans. It was to last a thousand years and model the kind of human superiority that only his Teutonic people could achieve and exemplify. A thousand years? The Third Reich lasted twelve. All it ever modelled was something people can’t mention to this day without loathing. God laughs at the spectacle of human pretence and puffiness, for it’s as silly as the six year old announcing that he’s leaving home and never coming back – as long as it doesn’t rain.

I was amused when the CN tower was erected in Toronto . It was publicized as the “tallest free-standing structure in the world.” It was going to put Toronto on the map. Immediately I thought of the Tower of Babel and its builders who said, “Let us build a city, a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves.” (Genesis 11:4) Word of this pride-soaked project reaches God. Whereupon God says to his assistants, “Let us go down and see this thing that they have made.” The tower is so small, such a pipsqueak, that God has to get down on his knees and get out his magnifying glass to see – see what? – the tallest free-standing structure in the world with its top in the heavens, by which people have made a name for themselves. Before God the tower is no taller than a toothpick, and the puffed up people who strut are laughable, for they resemble the child who has just learned to ride his tricycle and now tells the world he can pilot a jumbo jet.

I understand why God is amused at the ranting of the nations. “Barring catastrophe, shocking to think of, Canada will one day be ruled by the French-speaking people,” said a nineteenth Century political spouter. The French-speaking people constitute 20% of the Canadian populace (down from 55% at Confederation), and shrinking every year. “The sun never sets on the Union Jack.” I heard this repeatedly when I was a youngster. “The sun never sets on the Union Jack.”   Plainly it was a declaration of the superiority of the British Empire . Superiority? Today Britain ’s per capita wealth is the same as Italy ’s; economically the nation is three steps from sinking into the North Sea . Napoleon took France off the seven-day week (it was too biblical, he said) and put it on a ten-day week. This arrangement lasted one month.

The posturing of the nations, the puffed up pretences of the nations’ leaders; these are the occasion of God’s laughter, not because God is contemptuous but because God is amused at the unreality of it all, in the same way that we are amused at the unreality of the child’s fantasies.

 

IV: — Humour is wonderful inasmuch as it lets you and me admit how puffed up we are and how silly our posturing appears to others. The visiting preacher was taken to the farmer’s home for supper before the evening service. The farmer’s wife had gone to great pains with the dinner. The visiting preacher declined the fine meal, informing her, with more than a touch of arrogance, that he simply could not preach on a full stomach, any more than a world-class opera singer could sing a full stomach. Disappointed, the wife stayed home to put the food away and wash up the dishes. Her husband drove the preacher to the church. When her husband returned homes she asked him how the preacher had done. “He could have et,” the farmer opined.

Charlotte Whitton, the former mayor of Ottawa – feisty, formidable – was introduced to the mayor of London , England . He was bedecked in all the medals and chains of his office, while she had only a flower in her lapel. There was something fitting, about this, wasn’t there, the London mayor asked. After all, what was Ottawa , a city of 600,000, compared to London , twelve million? Whereupon he leaned forward and said most haughtily, “If I sniff your rose, will you blush?” Charlotte replied, “And if I pull your chain, will you flush?”

Humour does more than expose our ridiculous self-importance and let us see it. Humour also lets us admit our secret shame; humour lets us admit our secret shame without being crushed by it. Jesus came upon a woman beside a well in a village in Samaria . They began fencing with each other and kept it up for a while. Finally Jesus decided the fencing had gone on long enough and determined to end it. Right out of the blue (someone must have whispered something to him beforehand); right out of the blue, apparently, he said, “Go call your husband.” Not missing a beat the woman tossed back, “I don’t have a husband. With a twinkle in his eye and a grin on his face, I’m sure, Jesus said to her, “You are telling the truth; you don’t have a husband. You’ve had five husbands, and the man you’re living with now isn’t your husband. It’s always good to hear people tell the truth.” Why am I sure he said all this with a twinkle in his eye and a grin on his face? Because the woman didn’t flee him; she stayed with Jesus, kept talking with him, got serious, came to believe on him and loved him ever after. If Jesus had simply denounced her, simply berated her, she would have stormed away, cursing him for his nosiness and insensitivity, furious with him at the way he had humiliated her. It was our Lord’s gentle humour that both allowed her to admit her secret shame and drew her to him at the same time.

Because humour is a gift of God, it’s true that a merry heart does good; more profoundly still, the more loudly I laugh – especially at myself – the more I shall be aware of my need of my saviour, and the more dear my saviour will ever become to me.

 

                                                                                                      Victor Shepherd    

April 2005