"Not Who We're Going to Be"

“Not Who We’re Going to Be”

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

December 1, 2013; 1 Advent, Year A

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 24:36-44)  Jesus said to the disciples, "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour." 

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Advent themes. 

Do you know what time it is?  It is the moment for you to wake from sleep.  At an hour you cannot know, the Son of Man will come like a flood.  He will take one and leave another behind.  So be alert; be awake!  Be ready to change in the blink of an eye. 

But know that there will always be resistance.  The householder doesn’t want this divine thief to break in and change the status quo.  Those who are comfortable and empowered don’t like it when one is taken away, out of their influence, and they are left behind.  But like a thief, Jesus comes and liberates.  So be alert; be ready to awaken from your stupor. 

I heard an interview on KUAF’s Ozarks at Large last Friday.  Kyle Kellums was interviewing two Nashville songwriters who spoke of a bit of wisdom they picked up from another, more successful Nashville writer.  Rodney Crowell said, “I really struggled with my voice until I discovered I have to write songs only Rodney Crowell could write.” 

Much of the spiritual journey is learning to sing with your own voice – finding your true self – the authentic, unique person God has created you to be.  And sometimes, that is very different from how you started out. 

Kyle’s interview Friday morphed into a conversation about singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker.  He’s the guy who wrote Mr. Bojangles.  You probably know that song.  (And he’s a friend of parishioners Walt and Linda Eilers.)  Anyway, Jerry Jeff Walker is one of the renowned Texas Outlaws;  he’s known as the Texas Troubadour.  But he was actually raised in upstate New York, and his original name was Ronald Crosby. 

The guys Kyle was interviewing liked that story so much that they wrote a song they call Ancient History.  It starts with the words “Cassius Clay was Muhammad Ali,” and it continues with some great images of change:  Harold Jenkins was Conway Twitty; Roanoke, istoryVirginia is the Star City; Ervin Johnson was Magic Johnson; Richard Starkey was Ringo Starr; Frances Gumm was Judy Garland; the secret sauce was Thousand Island; the eighth world wonder was the Astrodome.  And the chorus that repeats throughout the song:  It is what it is / Not how it’s gotta be / From my point of obstructed view / We are who we are / Not who we’re gonna be / Every passing moment / Is ancient history.[i]

“We are who we are, not who we’re gonna be.” 

I hear stories from so many people who have come to St. Paul’s because they have found here a new way to be who they really are.  Some of them tell stories of coming from places where they were shamed, or frightened with guilt, or made to believe they couldn’t be themselves. 

One parishioner said, “I remember the day I suddenly knew, I couldn’t be the way they were – my family, my friends, my community.  I simply could never fit into their world and their world view.  I realized, for me to be sane – to be whole and real and authentic – I had to leave that place.  I love them, but staying there would have been like drowning.  I had to leave in order to breathe.” 

For him, it was like the drowning flood that Jesus speaks of in today’s gospel – two were working together, when the Lord came, and one was taken and one was left.  Jesus came like a thief, and snatched him away into a new life.  It was an Advent moment for him.

There are Advent moments when God’s reality breaks upon us, and we are changed.  Here’s how it happens for some people.  Many of us are told we’re not good enough, we don’t measure up.  Some of us went to churches that told us that we are totally depraved, that all human beings are sinners in the hands of an angry god, that we are judged and condemned, and that we deserve everlasting damnation. 

Christ’s Advent happens when we realize that’s not true – when we realize that God loves us and pours out divine love upon us continually and eternally.  When we realize that God made everything in creation and declared, “It is good!” 

We are fundamentally good, and God loves us.  To quote Thomas Keating:  “The fundamental goodness of human nature, like the mystery of the Trinity, Grace, and the Incarnation, is an essential element of Christian faith.  …Our basic core of goodness is our true Self.  Its center of gravity is God.  The acceptance of our basic goodness is a quantum leap in the spiritual journey.”[ii]

Did you hear that?  A quantum leap.  Lothar Schafer talked about quantum jumps in his three lectures about What Quantum Physics Reveals About How We Should Live.  Change tends to happen in jumps and leaps, including evolutionary change.  We may be living in a stable, even stuck place, thinking we are unworthy – that we are failures, we are misfits, we are unlovable – then all of a sudden grace breaks in.  We realize we are loved.  We are loveable.  We are good.  We have potential.  We can thrive.  We can be who we are – and Ronald Crosby leaves upstate New York behind; he becomes Jerry Jeff Walker and writes songs only Jerry Jeff Walker can write.

For most of us, these Advent quantum leaps seem to reoccur over and over in our lives, often around the same theme repeated at deeper levels of our spiritual consciousness.

Like my friend who felt he couldn’t fit in, could never measure up to the expectations of his home of origin.  He left home and found new space to be and new freedom to become who he really is.  But after a while he found himself again working to earn acceptance, yes, in a different, more compatible world, but it was in some way just another verse of the same old song.  Now he was trying earn his new friends’ approval, dancing the same old dance in a different key.  So in another Advent quantum leap, he quit trying to earn others’ acceptance, and became his own reference point.

But after a while, he found that he was an even harsher judge upon himself than his friends had been toward him.  And once again he had to go through the same Advent process of being taken away – this time he had to let Jesus come again and take him away – take him away from his own self-judgment. 

Now he says he’s struggling not to pass on the infection to another generation.  Not to act as he was taught to act; not to act in a judging way toward his children and his colleagues.

At ever deeper levels of consciousness, he is allowing the love of God to flood him and to take away the condemnation and to raise him out of the bondage that he has known.  “It is what it is / Not how it’s gotta be…  We are who we are / Not who we’re gonna be.” 

So be ready.  You know what time it is.  At any moment the love of Christ could come like a thief in the night to wake you from sleep and to snatch you out of your dark place of stuckness, to raise you to a new place of light, over and over, until you write the songs that only you can write, and find your voice to be the Word that God intends to speak and sing through you.

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[i] Peer Cooper and Eric Brace, Ancient History, sung on Ozarks At Large, KUAF, The Art of Writing a Song, 11/29/13.  http://www.kuaf.com/content/art-writing-song

[ii] Thomas Keating, Open Heart, Open Mind, 2006, p. 158

 

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