Sermon, March 14, 2004
3rd Sunday in Lent, Year C
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Wake Up Before You Die
Eight-year old Bertram Salzman was slumped in his seat in Mrs. Braverman's music appreciation class in Public School 20 in Brooklyn. He still missed his mother who had died over three years ago, and life in the orphanage wasn't much. "C'mon already, Mrs. Braverman, let's get it over with," he mumbled, staring at a beam of sunlight on the head of the girl in front of him. The sun moved a little bit, and a bright beam fell across the lap of his corduroy knickers. He bent forward and it hit him directly in the face. He leaned back and noticed that rays were starting to come in through the large windows. As he watched, he began to feel happy in his chest, something he'd never felt before.
Mrs. Braverman taught her students to memorize classical pieces by matching word rhymes to melodies. She explained that the record she was about to play was the "Morning" movement from the Peer Gynt suite by Edvard Grieg. She said Peer Gynt, who lived high in the Alps, would get up every day at dawn to look at the sunrise of the distant peaks. At the right moment, he would raise his arms up to heaven, and the valley down below would fill with bright rays of golden sunshine, as though Peer Gynt himself had given a command. "How great!" thought Bertram. And he began to sing loudly along with the other kids: "Morning is breaking and Peer Gynt is waking."
He stood up and raised his arms up as Peer Gynt did, concentrated on the light shining in through the big windows, and began swaying with the music, which filled his head and heart. All of a sudden, the whole assembly hall turned bright; everything and everybody was glowing in a golden light. His head filled with a vibrating feeling that he could actually hear. It sounded like a million fireflies in his brain. His whole body was shaking and glowing. For the first time in his life he was truly happy and completely peaceful. He looked into the bright light and smiled; something in that golden light knew how he felt and breathed love back into his heart. He kept singing, "Morning is breaking and Peer Gynt is waking."1
"Wake up before you die!" sing the scriptures today. Sometimes I think that the real test God offered with the burning bush was to see if Moses would be awake enough to stop taking care of his cattle long enough to look. God knew, if he just stopped long enough to look deeply, God could get his attention. If God could only get his attention, no telling what might happen.
But when you have work to do, day by day, whatever your daily version of herding goats might be, whatever it takes in your life to secure food and water and shelter, it is so easy to become distracted and unaware. We get busy; we feel pressured. We get into ruts and routines. Our horizons recede, and we are bored and lonely, or else stressed and insecure. Without even realizing it, we begin to feel bad about ourselves and our situation. We are not fully alive, not fully awake. And in such circumstances, we are vulnerable.
St. Paul talks about some of those vulnerabilities in his straightforward letter to his friends in Corinth. He reminds them about how easy it is to get lost. Using their ancestors' journey through the wilderness as a corporate memory, he reminds them that those people lived a Eucharistic life, fed and cared for by God in the desert. But they got bored and weary, their tasks felt too burdensome for them, and that led them into trouble.
They started living like the other people, running wild, he says, being sexually immoral. Isn't that the way it happens? These people were stuck while Moses was away up the mountain, delayed in returning. They began to feel insecure, bored, lonely. That's when distractions catch us, isn't it? When we feel bad about ourselves and our situation. That's when we are vulnerable to myriad available distractive addictions that promise either to dull our negative sensations or to stimulate us in some way that makes us at least feel like we are alive. And they never work, these false gods. They always poison us in some way. Some by sinking us deeper into distractive sleep; others by complicating entrapments that can threaten everything truly valuable to us.
Wake up before you die! In today's gospel people tell Jesus of some unfortunates who were killed in sudden catastrophes. "Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others...?," asks Jesus. "No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did." Unless you repent, you will die without having fully lived; you will perish surprised and unprepared.
I used to think that the word "repent" was talking about how I had broken God's rules and was deserving of God's punishment. That's not what it means. The Biblical meaning of "repent" is not primarily contrition, but resolve. It is the language of movement out of bondage into freedom. Return to God. Reconnect with God. Resolve to walk the way that leads through the wilderness to the land of promise. The Greek roots of the word "repentance" combine to say "go beyond the mind that you have." Wake up! Go beyond the mind that you have -- a mind shaped by culture and the materialistic self-centered messages that surround us -- go beyond that and embrace a new mind shaped by Christ. To repent is to wake up and resolve to embrace that new mind, returning to your source.
You can feel and taste that resolve in the Psalm we read today. The poet cries out to God from an aching heart "my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is."2 I've been there. Haven't you? Those times when life dries up and parches us. This thirsty poet remembers having tasted God's glory, and now resolves to return to that way of life that once connected him with God. "Early will I seek thee, ...to see thy power and thy glory." And here's the key to his hope. Here's why he is resolving to leave the thirsty place and return to drink at the source again, where he knows God is: "because thy lovingkindness is better than life."
Lovingkindness. That's what we want, isn't it? Lovingkindness Most of the false gods are tempting us with things that make us think they'll give us lovingkindness. But only God gives us complete, full lovingkindness. Everything turns around with that word. The poet exclaims, "Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips." He is alive. Fully alive. He's felt the lovingkindness of God. And his new living even reaches into his intimacies. "When I remember thee upon my bed," he says, "and meditate on thee in the night watches." His bed has changed. Even those sleepless nights have changed. He is resolved and returning from a dry place to a place of lovingkindness, and he is alive and grateful. "Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice." He is back on the right path. "My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me."
Wake up before you die! "Morning is breaking and Peer Gynt is waking." Wake up to the burning bushes God is lighting each day to get your attention. Repent; change your mind, your attention. Resolve to return to your home and your source, which is your living within the eternal now of the lovingkindness of God.