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Good
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 Sermon
02/28/2010
And You Were Not Willing ~ by Reverend
Thomas Cary Kinder
February 28, 2010 Second Sunday in
Lent
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35
Paul writes “even with tears” as
he thinks about the people in the world whose god is their belly and
whose minds are set on earthly things. Jesus’ voice is choked with
emotion as he says, “Jerusalem,
Jerusalem,
the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to
it! How often have I desired
to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her
wings, and you were not willing!”
Their distress is what a psychiatrist might
call “a sane response to an insane world.” It is like the bumper sticker that
says, “If you are not outraged, you are not paying
attention.” But in this
case it is not just that Paul and Jesus are sane and are paying
attention, it is that they have seen what life could be and is meant
to be. They have beheld the
vision of what the 27th Psalm describes as the beauty of
God and the goodness of God in the land of the living, and they
believe in its possibility with all their hearts. So they see and weep at the
needless cruelty and devastation in a world shaped by greed and pride
and lust for pleasure or power.
Some people think that Christians should be
eternally cheerful, but to know both God and this world is to be
acquainted with sorrow. Six
chapters beyond today’s gospel reading, just after Jesus had
entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he looked around at the city and
“He wept over it, saying, ‘If you…had only
recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your
eyes.’” (Luke
19:41f)
To be sane and attentive is to see the
things that make for peace, and to see how humans choose instead the
selfishness that destroys peace, both inner peace and world
peace. To be sane and
attentive is to see that and weep.
Many of us felt that way last Sunday evening
watching the film of Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax with the children here in the Newcomb Room. After that event Scot Zens sent me
an essay written by a friend of his, Beth Sawin. Beth has a Ph.D. in biology, but
now works at the Sustainability Institute at Cobb Hill in Hartland
where she devotes much of her time to the issue of climate change. Here is how Beth Sawin’s essay
begins:
My friend Diana
[that’s Diana Wright of Thetford] told me a story once about
the woman who was a teacher to both of us, Donella Meadows. Dana, as
we called her, was working on a book chapter about food and hunger,
and Diana, her research assistant, had just provided her with a stack
of graphs about grain yields and population growth from different
regions of the world.
Dana looked through the stack one
by one... and burst into tears at the sight of the graph from Africa, where the
increase in yield per acre had been overtaken by an increase in
population. Africa was producing
more food each year, but yields were growing more slowly than the
number of mouths to feed. In
the trajectory of that graph Dana Meadows foresaw suffering to come
and wept for it. At least that
is the story I’ve told myself in the years since her death. I
never had the chance to ask for her version of the story, why she
cried, or what she felt.
Until a few days
ago, I had never cried myself in response to a graph.
Now I have…
Beth went on to describe a graph that showed
a sudden dramatic decrease in ice cover that had taken place in the Arctic. As a scientist Beth had worked in
laboratories and generated countless graphs. She knew that the graph was just
one data-set, not the whole picture, but she also knew that there was
such a thing as a tipping point, and that the melting of Arctic sea
ice could set off a run-away train effect, with the climate
destabilizing beyond our ability to put on the brakes. Beth knew that this ice-melt
happened to a large degree because humans have chosen to pump carbon
into the atmosphere, so she knew that it did not have to happen. She knew that a world is possible
where humans choose to live sustainably, where humans choose to place
things like love and beauty and goodness above their own selfish
desires. And so, knowing all
this, she burst into tears.
I will let Beth finish the story in her own
words:
I was staring at the ice-cover
graph when our ten-year old daughter walked past and asked what it
was. I explained. Her eyes became wide and tear-filled. “That's
scary,” she said. And then, after a pause, “Will our town
be under water?”
What does a mother say to a
question like this? Are data sets from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, like
pornography, something to be kept out of the sight of children? I could hide the graphs I suppose,
but there is no way to hide the planet whose pulse they record.
Now that I know a little more about
crying over graphs, I am no longer so sure that the tears in the
story about Dana Meadows were as simple as tears of compassion for
suffering to come. I think they might have been tears of frustration
and impotence, tears that came out of knowing that it doesn't have to
be this way….
Diana never told me the details of
the ending of the story about Donella Meadows’ reaction to the
African food yield graph, but I feel certain I know the general
outline. Dana dried her tears and took out her pen. She answered the
phone, wrote another essay, and taught another class.
What else do you
do, when your heart is breaking, but keep on going, saying over and
over, as beautifully as you can: this hell is of our own creation and
can be ended, as it began, by the power of our choices?
In today’s gospel passage Jesus is
doing just that, I think—reminding himself that this hell is of
human creation and can be ended, as it began, by the power of human
choices. He is as emotional as
Dana Meadows and Beth Sawin were.
Jesus responds to the death threat from Herod first with
anger—“You go tell that fox for me….” Then he responds with
determination—Jesus is performing healings, opposing
Herod’s greedy and cruel world with beauty and goodness, and he
says he is going to keep right on doing that work, even in Jerusalem,
even if it kills him.
From there Jesus shifts into compassion and
grief, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem…how often have I desired to
gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her
wings, and you were not willing.” Then Jesus seems to sigh and feel
resigned to the way things are, saying, “See, your house is
left to you.” And
finally he turns again to hope, knowing that change is possible if
people will choose to bless “the one who comes in the name of
the Lord.” Jesus knows
that people may yet see the goodness of God in the land of the
living, if they are willing.
Last Sunday evening put some of us through a
similar progression of emotions.
The adults sat in folding chairs in the back half of the
Newcomb Room and the children lounged in front of them in their
pajamas on blankets and cushions spread on the floor, and we watched
Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax
on the big screen. Some of us
felt anger that the vision of the world portrayed by Dr. Seuss is
true: that there are people whose greed will not listen to the voices
of those who warn them that they are ruining the earth. There are people even in Vermont
who leak deadly toxins into groundwater and then lie and deny and
justify in order to keep making more and more money. And there are people who buy
products they know involve the oppression of workers or damage of the
earth, but are unwilling or feel unable to change the choices they
make. We are all to some
degree or another part of that system. And anger and frustration are appropriate
responses.
But so are compassion and grief. The character who has done the
damage in The Lorax is
named the Once-ler. He lives
shut inside a ramshackle old house, surrounded by the polluted world
he created by making his belly his god, by setting his mind on
selfish things. Jesus said,
“See, your house is left to you.” The Once-ler’s
house is a very sad place. Now
at last he recognizes how wrong he was, and we can feel compassion
and grief.
I felt this mix of emotions as I watched the
movie, but when the lights went up, there were our children right in
front of us, and that greatly increased the intensity of the
feelings. Why do our children
have to live in such a world?
And why do they have to know about it? Can’t we at least give them a
beautiful fantasy childhood?
Why do they have to see the ugliness and cruelty in the world
at their age? It makes me
angry, and it makes me sad, because in our society today, as Beth
Sawin pointed out, the knowledge is inescapable.
Dr. Seuss must have wept to find himself
writing such a book for the children he loved, but he knew he had to
do it. He knew he had to place
in the hands of children this seed of knowledge, just as the Once-ler
gives the young boy the last seed of the Truffala Trees. Dr. Seuss recognized that our
children truly hold our last hope in their hands. As I heard our children discussing
the movie, I felt that hope rising beyond my anger and grief.
This is why Jesus said, “let the
children come to me,” and “unless you receive the realm of
God like a child, you will not enter it.” Children can’t help being
self-centered—that is what they need to be,
developmentally— but children are also attracted instinctively
to beauty and goodness and love, and they can be moved to be
generous-hearted. They have
not lost the capacity for wonder or idealism or simple truth, and we
heard that in their comments Sunday evening. Jesus would approve of the
Once-ler’s wisdom of entrusting the seed of hope to a
child.
And yet, the children are not alone against
a selfish, cruel world. There
may not be many adults who are willing to receive the realm of God
like a child and choose Christ’s way of love, there may not be
many who are willing to deny their selfish impulses for the sake of
seeking God’s beauty and goodness, but there are some.
What about us? Will we stand with the
children? Will we protect them
and guide them and help them plant and nourish the seed? Will we devote the resources of our
church to give the children the training they need to fulfill the
hope we place in them? Will we
commit our own precious time and money to provide programs for
them? Will we educate
ourselves and organize ourselves to create an alternative culture now
in our lifetime, a culture of unselfish compassion and nonviolence,
of beauty and goodness, of mercy and peace? Will we do our part to establish
the realm of God on earth, to lighten our children’s load?
If we are willing and dare to make those
choices, we know that we will come into conflict with the Herods of this
world, those who profit from the earth’s devastation. But we know also that Jesus is
offering his wings of refuge for us, his wings of healing and
courage, strength and peace.
We know that the Psalm promises that people who take shelter
under those wings will be able to sing, “The Lord is my light
and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be
afraid?” Jesus spreads
his wings and some are not willing to come in, but what about
you?
Beth Sawin said, “This hell is of our
own creation and can be ended, as it began, by the power of our
choices.” Are you
willing to make the needed choices in your own life to help establish
God’s realm on earth?
Let
us pray in silence…
[After the service Norm
Marshall stood up and said that he had been a student of Donella
Meadows at Dartmouth. He told us that one of the books
she required students to read for her courses was Dr. Seuss’s The
Lorax.]
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