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GET OUT OF JAIL FREE | Psalm 23 | April 21, 2002 |
“Mr. Smith, you’re doing fine,” she said, “but we have to know how you intend to pay for your stay here. Are you covered by insurance?”
“No, I’m not,” the man whispered hoarsely.
“Can you pay in cash?” she asked.
“I’m afraid I can’t, Sister.”
“Do you have any close relatives, then?”
“Just my sister in New Mexico, but she’s an unmarried nun with no family or resources.”
“Nuns are not unmarried, Mr. Smith,” the nun retorted. “They are married to God.”
“OK,” the man said with a smile, “then bill my brother-in-law.”
There is a part of us that would like to bill God for all our expenses in life. But God is Shepherd not comptroller. God is not responsible for the activities of our lives, whether good or bad, but is rather according to David’s psalm, that which leads and prompts and provides opportunities for connection to holy purpose. It is not so much what happens to us that matters as it is our hope that the activities of our lives connect to the larger scheme of things.
Do we see every good that occurs as a reward? Do we see every bad thing as a slap on the wrist? If so, then God is comptroller. But David reminds us that God is shepherd. Whether we are in the valley of the shadow of death or feasting at the table of plenty, we shall not want. It is not activity, it is attitude.
Those of my generation grew up playing Monopoly. Here one bought properties, built houses and hotels, and collected rent all in the attempt to gain the monopoly of the whole board. It was a game of life that was never finished. Now and then, one landed in jail, and the only way out was a lucky roll of the dice or a ‘get out of jail free’ card. And while in jail, you could not collect rent or buy properties. For all practical purposes, one was temporarily out of the game while in jail.
For reasons of our own making and sometimes from external circumstances beyond our control, we are thrown in jail. Green pastures elude us; still waters are only a dream. The valley of the shadow of death looms like a vulture waiting to devour us, and the presence of the enemies of illness or depression, failure or change threatens our well-being.
God is not to blame; God is not to be billed for damages or repairs. God is Shepherd whose presence is a banquet in the midst of those things that imprison us, freeing us in mind and spirit even though our circumstances have not been removed.
The well-known preacher William Sloan Coffin preached a sermon after his son died tragically in a car accident, and spoke these words:
Many things can be said when a person dies, but there is at least one thing that should never be said. The night after Alex died, I was sitting in the living room of my sister’s house outside of Boston when the front door opened and in came a nice-looking middle-aged woman carrying about 18 quiches. When she saw me she shook her head, then headed for the kitchen, saying sadly over her shoulder, “I just don’t understand the will of God.”
Instantly, I was up and in hot pursuit swarming all over her. “I’ll say you don’t, lady!” I said. (I knew the anger would do me good, and the instruction for her was long overdue). I continued, “Do you think it was the will of God that Alex never fixed that lousy windshield wiper of his, that he was probably driving too fast in such a storm, that he probably had had a couple of ‘frosties’ too many? Do you think it is God’s will that there are no streetlights along that stretch of road, and no guardrail separating the road from the Boston Harbor?”
Nothing so infuriates me as the incapacity of seemingly intelligent people to get it through their heads that God doesn’t go around this world with his fingers on triggers, his fist around knives, his hands on steering wheels. God is against all unnatural deaths. And Christ spent an inordinate amount of time delivering people from paralysis, insanity, leprosy, and muteness.
Believe me, when the dark waters of Boston Harbor closed over my son, God’s was the first heart to break. (Lectionary Homiletics, April 2002)
It is freeing to release God from this responsibility precisely because our struggling to understand why God would do this to someone or not take that away from someone imprisons our souls in the valley of the shadow of death. It frees us from the need to blame or explain or justify.
Rabbi Lionel Blue reminds us that sometimes it is our religion that stifles us and becomes our valley of the shadow of death. In Judaism it tends to take the form of obsessive-compulsive neurosis; in Christianity it becomes sado-masochism, born out of an obsession with guilt and punishment; and in Islam it is megalomania. (Doubts & Loves: What is Left of Christianity. Richard Holloway.)
The freeing truth is that freedom is a gift. Green pastures and pools of fresh water may come to us in the form of a friend who understands, it may come in the form of an insight or a strength we gain from an experience. We may be freed of prison even while we’re in it when we realize that the external circumstances do not define the moment in its eternal context. As much as I was amazed by the atrocities of the Nazis while standing in the middle of Buchenwald, I was even more amazed by the stamina of those who survived and endured. The walls of a concentration camp would not determine who they were or change who they were; it might have broken them for a time, but ultimately it empowered them as a people toward a freedom that superceded the power of the prison.
I was also in Wittenberg, Germany and I saw the church door where Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses for debate with the church, arguing that as an institution the church had become rigid in its demands, and imprisoned rather than freed the world. People ought to follow their conscience to God, they ought to be free to know God in their own circumstances apart from a select few telling them what to believe. Standing by that door reinforced the need for a faith that is ever changing, swelling and retreating, growing and experimenting and challenging. A faith that is institutionalized isn’t faith. A faith that is too rigid to accommodate a dynamic rather than a static God isn’t faith. If our thoughts about life and our ideas about faith haven’t changed in the last five years, we’re stuck. We’re in jail. It is precisely that same faith, refreshed and renewed and revised by the activities of life, that sets you free. We must move beyond the jail cells of oughts and prison bars of shoulds of religion and live in the delights and joys.
Avis Clendenen reminds us that Easter is not a commemorative event, a date on a calendar nor a liturgical season, but the praxis of being reborn into the uncompromising commitment to contend against the forces of death and domination. (Lectionary Homiletics, April 2002) Easter is a reminder to laugh at ourselves, to not take life so seriously and thereby enjoy this life and the life to come. And whatever happens, our spirits can frolic and cavort like sheep following the Shepherd. So be it. Amen.
–Gary L. McCann
Koran reading:
On that day no soul shall suffer the least injustice. You shall be rewarded according only to your deeds. On that day the heirs of Paradise will be busy with their joys. Together they shall recline in shady groves upon soft couches. They shall have fruits therein, and all that they desire. ‘Peace!’ shall be the word spoken by a merciful God. (God’s Breath: Sacred Scriptures of the World)
| Copyright © 2002 by Gary L. McCann. All rights reserved. |