Sermon, June 29, 2003
3 Pentecost, Proper 8, Year B
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Sermon, June 29, 2003
3 Pentecost, Proper 8, Year B
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Earlier this week Kathy and I sat out on the front porch and our neighbor Phillip Maynard came across the street with his wonderful two-year old daughter Helen to sit with us and visit. Phillip didn’t sit very much, though. Helen was up and down, studying everything, climbing and running just like a two-year-old. Falling and getting an "owie" that needed Daddy’s kiss every once in a while. It was a joy to watch her. Helen’s favorite game was "running toward the street." "No, Helen. Bad cars," said Phillip, carrying her away from the pavement upside down like a monkey as she squealed with delight. Then he would set her down. Helen would look slyly at her dad and take off with a yelp toward the street. If Phillip didn’t get there quite on time, she would cut to the right running by the curb. Flirting with the forbidden boundary but supremely confident in the power and attention of her father to rescue her with a trapeze arm grab that always elicited more squeals.
Thomas Keating says that God’s purpose for us as we move through the cycles of maturity -- from childhood, through adolescence, youth, adulthood and elder -- is for us to retain the gifts appropriate to each period while healing the hurts and transcending the limits of each period. The spiritual journey intends for us, for instance, to retain the wonder, trust and self-expression of our two-year old selves while healing the vulnerability and transcending the self-centeredness characteristic of that age. God intends for us to retain the energy and adventuresomeness of adolescence while healing the angst and transcending the identity confusion so much a part of the teen years. We mature as we keep the gifts of each age while healing and transcending the limits.
There are those days when I come to worship and that two-year child in me is alive and awake. It can be so much fun to come to church. There’s lots to see and be curious about. There is room to be spontaneous and risky within the safe boundaries of our worship play-yard here. And sometimes in prayer, I am able to name and claim my needs like a child, without shame or pride. "I have an ‘owie’ that needs to be kissed." Occasionally there are days at work when that childlike part of me is running and exploring and having fun. I like those days. When work becomes play and my job is my big toy. Wordsworth wrote, "The child is the father to the man."
There is a moment in Paula D’Arcy’s book The Gift of the Red Bird when she is attending a family reunion watching her 10-year old daughter Beth as she swims in the gymnasium pool. Paula reflects about the child. "Her body will change over the years, but she will always be herself. The little girl who surfaces from the water today will always be with her. Hidden from sight, perhaps, but real and vital. Beth will simply grow and mature around the child. But the child will not vanish. It cannot. It is real." (p. 72-3)
That child is in you. You are still the same person who rode your bicycle with the wind in your face; who made swirling designs in the mud puddles; who stuck sticks in ant hills and climbed so high in the tree that you were invisible, spying on the whole world.
But sometimes we lose touch with that child-like part of us. Life gets so demanding, so serious. We grow up and we have responsibilities. More than that, we have roles. And it’s not too hard to take that little step from being responsible to being crazy -- that little step from being myself playing a necessary role to losing myself in the roles I am playing.
That was the way Paula D’Arcy saw her life back in 1983. "I lost myself in the roles I was playing. Mother. Author. Speaker. Friend. Counselor. Rather than these roles being channels for God to use in certain seasons of my life, they became my life. They became my security and my identity. They were how I saw myself, and who I thought I was." (Ibid, p. 59) But what happened to Paula is that she became very ill, mostly bedridden for eight months. She discovered, when she was stripped of her roles, when she had no physical capacity to be mother, author, speaker, friend, counselor -- she discovered she felt like nothing. It took her taking to her bed for her to "find and love the person behind the roles. The real me. The child of God."
What are the roles you play in your life? Are they play? Or are they very serious? Are they roles you choose or roles you fill for the approval of others? Lying for long hours in that bed, Paula asked herself a tough question: "Who has my life belonged to?" She made a list -- "the telephone, my child, appointments, my career, my church, my friends, the television, my need for approval, my guilt." (Ibid, p. 60) She looked at her list and asked why it is that we give anyone or anything permission to run our lives. It’s so easy to wind up responsible for so many things, but not responsible to our very self.
Sitting under the moon one evening, Paula took out the list. Not to criticize. That doesn’t solve anything. Rather, to wake up. She took out a black marker and started to remake the list. She put God at the top, and herself second. Number three -- her child. She scratched out the television, the source of so much of the noise in her life, noise that doesn’t fill emptiness, just space, leaving the emptiness just like it was. (Ibid, p. 61)
With her new list, she changed her style of responding to the demands of the old list. Instead of reactively saying "yes" whenever someone asked her to do something -- especially something that is good, something that "ought" to be done -- she waited. She prayed about it. She talked with friends when she needed some perspective. Sometimes she said "no."
"No!" is one of my little neighbor Helen’s favorite words. She looks at Phillip and says, "No! Daddy," and squeals with delight as she turns and runs. She can say "no" to her Daddy because she is so secure in his love. She doesn’t have to fear his disapproval. Not yet, at least, thank God. But we all know, she’ll grow up and she will fear disapproval. And she’ll have lists. She’ll grow up and have roles. We all grow up and experience the pressures that tempt us to live our lives for the approval of others and to give away our lives to our list. And that little-child freedom dies in us.
But maybe it doesn’t die. Maybe it’s just asleep. Oh the serious people will just laugh at the notion. But that child in you can be raised from the dead. It’s one of the gifts Jesus would bring you. Walk with him into that inner room where the child lies comatose. Follow Jesus into that room accompanied by your protective inner father and your nurturing inner mother. Go to that place within you where you have been spontaneous and wondering, uninhibited and free, able to feel and claim your needs without shame or pride, adventuresome and secure. Let Jesus take you by the hand and hear his voice speak -- "Talitha cum." "Little girl, little boy, get up!"
Come one, everybody. Wake up! Get up! It’s time to play.