String Too Short to be Saved

       

     Donald Hall, the poet laureate of New Hampshire, went into his grandfather’s attic one day. Some people are keepers, and some are throwers, and Hall’s grandfather was most definitely a keeper. One of the many boxes in the attic was filled with short pieces of string, and bore the hand-lettered label, “STRING TOO SHORT TO BE SAVED.” Hall later wrote a poem, which states the obvious, that his grandfather saved the string that was too short to be saved.

          Maybe you know what it feels like to be, in your own way, a piece of string too short to be saved.

          Because even with all the emphasis over the past decades on boosting self-esteem, on feeling good about ourselves, I think that deep down we realize that we really just don’t measure up, because we continually finds ways to fall short of living as we know we ought to live.

          The church has a word for that failing to live as we ought to live: sin.

          I think, deep down, we all know the power of sin in our lives. It is not just “out there”, where it is easy to see and label, but it is in here, in me, in you, and it is among us. It is in here, in each of us personally, and it is among us as well, a force and power that infects our institutions and social organizations.

          And we know how impossible it is, really, to ever totally reform and put sin behind us. No matter how many times we resolve not to do it,

we blow up at the kids,

or succumb to road rage,

or refuse to forgive an old slight,

or grudgingly put up with the abuse,

or say to ourselves for the millionth time that I or my needs are not that important,

or give in to the fear which makes us grasp tightly onto our possessions, as if they could save us.

          If you’ve ever felt that you are string too short to be saved, Paul the Apostle’s words for us are bound to be good news for you. “There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:1-11)

          God has saved us all – it has happened already, it has already been done, it is not something that you have to wait for – God has saved us all in that great attic. Nothing is ever lost to God.

Not the boy who stepped in front of the train.

Not the spouse that cheated and abandoned their family.

Not the solider who went over the line in combat.

Not the young woman struck down by cancer.

Not the child hurt by the trusted adult; not the adult who hurt the child.

Not even me – and not even you.

We will each appear to be string too short to be saved – and our God will judge us -- and yet God will not be frustrated, and will save us still, will not condemn us. God accepts the unacceptable. God loves the unlovely. With arms wide open, God welcomes you just as you are. You have been set free from the law of sin and death, you have received within you the Spirit of the one who was raised from death by God, so that you, also, might rise to new life through the in-dwelling of Christ.

          A string too short you might think you are, but you can live in the knowledge that you are worthy of storage in God’s spacious attic, where you shall be knotted together forever with all the other too short strings into a seamless tapestry, one with its creator.

So as the Thanksgiving holiday nears we can indeed say, "Thanks be to God!"

“’You Are Not a Winner’ – Don’t Believe It!”

Some time ago, on a day like most other days, I got up and proceeded to make breakfast for myself. Noticing that the fridge was empty of cranberry juice, my preferred breakfast beverage, I grabbed a new bottle out of the cupboard, and with only a minor amount of wrestling succeeded in unscrewing the top. As you know, often manufacturers will try to entice you to purchase their products by awarding prizes to those who are lucky enough to buy one of their products, and evidently Ocean Spray was running one of those sweepstakes at the time, as there was a short message on the inside of the bottle top. This is what it said, in capital letters and a bold font: “YOU ARE NOT A WINNER”!

            Now the cap did not say, “Sorry, this is not a winning cap”, or even “Sorry, try again.” No, it had to make it personal, had to gratuitously rub my nose in it. Not only had I not won a prize, I was not a winner. Ergo, I was a loser.

            Annie Lamott, author of Traveling Mercies, knows what I am talking about here. She knows how easy it is to fall prey to the message “YOU ARE NOT A WINNER”, to fall into the trap of thinking that we are never good enough.

            In one of her essays she writes of buying a used car, of her fear of being taken, of how she hired a mechanic to evaluate the car, of how she waited until it got a clean bill of health. She did everything right. But then, just a few days later, right in the middle of a busy intersection, the car just died. Traffic backed up; no one would help; people were yelling at her. It was, she writes, “my own private New York City.” She goes on,      

“It would be hard to capture how I felt at that moment. It was a nightmare. Bad Mind kicked in. Bad Mind can’t wait for this kind of opportunity: “I told you so,” Bad Mind says. It whispers to me that I am doomed because I am such a loser.” (Page 109).

It was not the car that got the blame here, anymore than that bottle cap took the blame for not being my ticket to some fabulous prize. Lamott blamed herself, Bad Mind told her that she had failed in buying that car, that she was inadequate, that she was a loser.

Where do we come up with this pattern of self-denigration? Where do we get the idea that we only have worth when we are a success, when things go our way? Where do we get the idea that we are what we do?

Is it true that our value, our worth, our identity, consists only of what we do and how well we do it at school or on the athletic field or on the job or in the home?

If you go to work each day for years and years, if you work overtime and put everything into your job, and then one day it happens that there are lay-offs and they let you go – are you a loser?

If you marry the person of your dreams and eight years later they walk out for a newer, more attractive in their eyes model, are you a loser?

If despite all your efforts to reach out to others you look around and see you don’t have as many friends as someone else, are you a loser?

If despite all your cleaning and decorating your house still does not measure up to Martha Stewart standards, are you a loser?

We all want to be winners. We work hard at it, constantly looking for clues on how to be winners. Maybe it’s the right clothes, the right car, the right people to hang with, the right activities to do with them. Because maybe if we succeed and win and keep winning then we will get what we really want, deep down: we will be loved. Because everyone loves a winner.

If there ever was a winner, there’s Jesus. He’s our winner, isn’t he? He is the one we want to pattern our lives on, the one we want to emulate. Wise, loving, courageous, strong, compassionate, he had it all, and we know he was a winner in God’s eyes. God even said so in the reading we had today: “You are my beloved Son; in you I am well-pleased.” (Mark 1:9-11)

And yet, look at the timing of God’s declaration of love and delight. It comes not at the end of Jesus’ life, at the point where he is faithful even to the point of suffering on the cross; it comes not at an earlier time, when Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem, knowing even as he did so that he was walking to his death; it doesn’t come even earlier than that, after the Sermon on the Mount.

No, God’s declaration of love comes right there at the start of the Gospel, before Jesus has even begun his ministry, before he has done anything to earn God’s love and praise. God’s love comes first.

This is the Gospel message: you are love, accepted, God’s child. As it was with Jesus, so it is with you. God saying to you, you are not a loser, you are my beloved, with you I am well-pleased. God saying to you, I don’t care about anyone’s yardstick, you are my child, and I love you.

When Camden was only six months old we took a sort of pilgrimage to a holy place, a place that always had special meaning for me, my grandparents’ farm in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains. My grandmother, Camden’s great-grandmother, was 93 and bed-ridden, at home with round-the-clock nursing care. We had feared that our visit would be too late, but the day finally came when we drove down that old shaded lane and parked beside the barn and walked out of the mid-August heat into the cool of the old stone farmhouse, and there she was. I held her great-grandson, all of six weeks old, out to her, and laid him in her arms. It took most of her strength, but she bent way over and kissed him on the top of his newborn-smelling head and crooned gently, “He’s a good boy. He’s a good boy.”

Camden’s great-grandmother got it. At six weeks of age, no accomplishments behind him, no awards received, no achievements racked up: “He’s a good boy.” Loving him simply because he is.

“You are my beloved .. with you I am well-pleased.”

God’s message for each one of us.

So own it. And live it. 

“Live for Greatness”

“Live for greatness.”     So reads the boldface ad copy on an advertisement from last week’s New Yorker magazine. In the background, a softly-focused photo of the talented and fetching jazz musician Diana Krall; in the foreground, an Oyster Perpetual Datejust Special Edition Rolex watch. “Live for greatness.”

    You may have heard the story of three masons who were working at chipping chunks of granite from large blocks. The first seemed unhappy at his job, chipping away but looking frequently at his watch. When asked what it was that he was doing, he responded, rather curtly, “I'm hammering this stupid rock, and I can't wait ‘til 5 when I can go home.”

A second mason, seemingly more interested in his work, hammered diligently, and, when asked what he was doing, he answered, “Well, I'm molding this block of rock so that it can be used with others to construct a wall. It's not bad work, but I'll sure be glad when it's done.”

The third mason hammered fervently at his block, taking time to stand back and admire his work. He chipped off small pieces until he was satisfied that it was the best he could do. When questioned about his work, he stopped, gazed skyward, and proudly proclaimed, “I am building a cathedral.”

In  the Bible (Haggai 1:1-15), it seems that what God is concerned with, as Haggai brings God’s message to the people, is a building – the Temple. The message is clear, the goal clearly stated: you people have rebuilt your homes, and in a grand style, paneled walls and all; but you have left my home, the Temple, in ruins; so call the contractor, line up the subs, hie thee to Home Depot, and get to work chez moi!

            But a closer reading reveals that it is not just about a building, it is also about the building. It is not just about a noun (a building), but about a verb (rebuilding). And what it is that needs rebuilding is not just a structure, but a Spirit-filled, outwardly focused community which lives as if it were an outpost of the promised kingdom of God.

            For the problem in Jerusalem ran much deeper than a structure which lay in ruins –there was a community which lay in ruins as well. The first was emblematic of the second. God had brought the exiles out of two generations of captivity in Babylon, had restored the people to their former home, had blessed them in abundance. But what is their response?

The wealthy construct for themselves the ancient equivalents of present-day McMansions, homes luxuriously appointed with fine paneling. The powerful, the religious and political leaders, refuse to provide the funds for the reconstruction of the Temple – an expense which would have cut into their pocketbooks. Once this had been a people keenly aware of and dependent on their God, a God who stood with them in time of trial, who had comforted them when they were afflicted, who brought them out of captivity into new life; once they had cherished their covenant with their God, a covenant which called for them to live in response to the blessings they had known – to love God and neighbor, to look after the poor and the widow, to live lives of thanksgiving to God and blessing to others. But no longer.

            And so Haggai’s message to them—and to us – is that it is not just about the building, it is also about the need to be building. It is about the Temple, because the Temple is more than a building – it is the site of God’s life-giving, community-sustaining presence. The call to rebuild the Temple is a call to rebuild the Spirit-filled, caring community as well.

            They were called to live for greatness – to harken back to the story of the three masons, to not just chip away at a rock, not just build a wall, but to construct a cathedral.

             And how can we not remember, on this Founders’ Day at West Parish of Barnstable, Henry Jacob and John Lothrop? Two men who lived for greatness in their day, who despite persecution, imprisonment, and loss responded to God’s call to form the first congregational church, and then brought it over the stormy sea to safety here on Cape Cod.

And how can we not remember, on this Founders’ Day, Elizabeth Crocker Jenkins? That same Elizabeth Crocker Jenkins who lived for greatness in her time, who  over the course of three decades, laboring not to build a cathedral, but to restore this Meetinghouse to its original glory – not just for its own sake, although that would have been enough, but as the keystone towards the revitalization of the West Parish Congregational Church.

            I’m not so sure that many of us find it in ourselves to live for greatness these days. Maybe it has a lot to do with the tough economic times we have known over the past decade. Maybe it has something to do with the entertainment-saturated culture we live in, when the media glues its attention on trifles like cable celebrity Kim Kardashian and her shocking (!) decision to end her 72-day long marriage. Maybe it has something to do with our culture’s move away from that foundational understanding on which this nation was founded, the idea of community and covenant and being in this together, and towards the sort of radical individualism which constricts our view of the good life to what is good for me, period.

            Mary Oliver’s poem (Magellan) is a call to live for greatness, lest, she warns, “we go down in comfort and despair.” Thank God that in the time of the prophet Haggai, at a time when the community was going down in comfort and despair, God’s call came to the people to live for greatness, to work together and give together and sacrifice together for the good of the entire community – and that, as they together risked the wildest places, they experienced a community reborn. And thank God for God’s call to us in this day as well, a call for us to live for greatness; thank God for the gracious invitation to us to be partners with God in that most holy of tasks, that of building, one person and one heart and one community at a time, the kingdom of God.

            Come, Lord Jesus, and be with us, for we would be a-building; we would risk the wildest places, and live for greatness. Amen.