Bob the Dog

Bob the Dog

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

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

April 5, 2014;5 Lent, Year A

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Romans 8:6-11)  To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law-- indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 

But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.   

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There is a dog who needs a new home.  His name is Bob.  Bob the Dog.  We kept Bob for a few days, but Bob was miserable.  Except when he was in a lap or curled up near a human being.  As long as Bob was with a person, Bob was okay.  As soon as Bob was not with a person, Bob panicked.  He barked a high, anxious bark; he howled; he scratched at doors and windows. 

Bob did not bond with the other dogs.  He didn’t play with them.  He paid them no mind, except when they got in his space – then he let them know he was the alpha dog.

Unfortunately, our family’s life is too complicated for one of us to always be with Bob.  So it just didn’t work out.  It seemed a shame.  I really liked Bob.  I did my best to explain to him:  “It’s okay, Bob the Dog.  Just trust me a little bit.  When I go away, I promise I’ll return before long.  If I go upstairs, I’ll come back downstairs again.  Don’t worry.  In the meantime, have some fun.  Play with the other dogs.  Relax.  Lie down.  Chase a squirrel.”  He didn’t.  He just howled.

I thought about Bob when I read today’s passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.  I’ve been spending some time with Paul lately as I prepare for a new Sunday School class on Paul and his letters.  Much of what Paul writes sounds a little bit like what I was trying to tell Bob.

Paul says there are two ways of being in the world.  One way is full of anxiety and even fury.  Life in the flesh.  The other way…?  Well, he calls it living according to the Spirit.  And it has something to do with letting go of our self-absorbed anxieties and trusting God.  Trusting that God is near.  Trusting that God actually loves us and forgives us and accepts us.  Just as we are.  So we can relax.  Have some fun.  Play with the other people.  Lie down in peace.  And chase squirrels.  I’ve got lots of squirrels in my life.  A lot of them are on my “to do” list.

In his former life, Paul was like a nervous dog who thought he had to make everything right in his life.  And not only make everything right in his life, Paul thought he had to make everything right in everyone else’s life.  That’s what he was doing on the road to Damascus.  He was busy trying to straighten out some mistakes.  He was going to fix those Jesus people. 

And Paul had a vision.  Suddenly he knew – he knew deep in his bones – he knew that he didn’t have to fix anything.  He didn’t have to fix himself.  God accepted him and loved him infinitely.  He didn’t have to fix other people or make them in his own image.  Instead, he could just forget himself and simply serve others. 

So, Paul gave up his project of trying to measure up, and he simply accepted the fact that he was okay, he was safe, he was loved, he was accepted.  We all are.  And it’s a sheer gift from God. 

That’s like the gift I wanted to give Bob the Dog too.  Just trust us, Bob.  You’re safe.  We’ll come back.  In the meantime, relax and have fun.  Enjoy the other dogs.

But Bob was trapped in a prison of his own making.  If he couldn’t control his humans and make them stay with him, he was going to be miserable.  And that’s a miserable way to live.

I live with a wonderful grandchild who is in what some call the “terrible 2’s.”  Every once in a while she decides she needs something, and if she doesn’t get it she will melt down into an apocalyptic despair.  “NO!  I want the orange t-shirt, not the blue one!”  There follows a torrent of tears and a wailing that sounds like imminent death.  Instead of getting the blue t-shirt she wants, she usually gets a “time-out.”  Prison, in other words.  A prison of her own making.

Paul described his old life like a prison.  His old life of trying to measure up, and trying to control himself and everyone else.  When he gave that up and instead simply trusted whatever the Spirit would do in him, he experienced a new freedom. 

Here’s what Pauline scholar Robin Scroggs says about Paul’s freedom.  “What are we freed from?  All sorts of things:  freed from the old world and that part of it which is our own past history; freed from what people think about us; freed from what we think about ourselves, either positively or negatively.  Thus we are freed from the agony of failure and the tense striving for success, either in memory or in prospect.  We are freed from the tyranny of someone else’s claim about what is true and what is morally correct behavior.  We are freed from the claim that some set of rules and regulations is ontologically true and eternally binding.  We are even free from the fear of going to hell unless we can subscribe to a given set of theological dogmas.  As Paul says, it is more important to be known (by God) than to know God.” [i]

I decided to try it out.  You see, I carry some anxiety about preaching.  I want to preach good sermons.  I’d like all of my sermons to be good.  They aren’t.  But I’ve learned to live with that. 

This week was one of those weeks when I had something like writer’s block.  Good scriptures – Dry bones and the raising of Lazarus.  But I was dry bones.  Didn’t have a angle or a hook to get started.  Worse – I didn’t have a story.  A good story can always save a bad sermon.  And I was out of time. 

So I looked at this little passage from Paul and said to myself – Okay.  God loves me infinitely whether I write a good sermon or a stinker.  It really doesn’t matter whether people sleep or are saved.  God loves them too.  That’s what’s important.  So relax.  Trust the Spirit and just write what you can.  You never know what people will hear anyway.  The Spirit inside a listener’s ears can make my most mundane words a treasure.  And without the Spirit, eloquence falls flat.  

I decided that I could be miserable trying to research and study and force myself to write something wonderful when it’s not there.  Or I could feel guilty, or judged, or less-than, or even afraid – what if people quit coming to church because of me?!  That’s a miserable way to live.

So I just decided to start writing and hope the Spirit would take me somewhere.  And I decided to trust that if it wasn’t any good, most of you will probably come back again next week anyway.  It’s okay to preach a stinker every once in a while.  God loves me anyway.

So I knocked this out pretty quickly.  And then I went downstairs to have some fun with my wife, my dogs, my son, and my wonderful two-year old granddaughter.  I even laughed a bit as I typed this last line.

P.S.  If there is someone who takes care of a loved one at home who can't get out much, I do know a really good dog who would love to keep you company.  Let the Spirit guide you.

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[i] Robin Scroggs, Paul for a New Day, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1977, p. 

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