Sermon: Laying Down Our Plans

Texts: Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29; Luke 19:28-40

Date: March 28, 2010

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

            The air in Antigua, Guatemala this week will be heavy with incense, The streets will be carpeted with gorgeous color, and hundreds of disciples will be out on the streets.  It’s Holy Week, Semana Santa.  We were lucky enough to travel there a few years ago during Holy Week and observe one of the most beautiful public expressions of devotion I have ever seen.

            I did a little “light research”—the kind that doesn’t mind looking at Wikipedia.  (So don’t write any research papers that footnote this sermon, please.)  I was curious about how the tradition of making alfombras, “carpets” in the streets got started.  One internet source says to look at the gospels for the very beginnings; the procession of Jesus into Jerusalem is accompanied by people spreading their cloaks on the road.  But they didn’t invent that practice for Jesus.  In the Ancient Near East, it was a custom in many lands to cover, in some way, the path of someone thought worthy of the highest honor.  Some of those old traditions still endure—such as the use of the red carpet for movie stars at the Academy Awards.  But enough about George Clooney.

            One of the internet sources I found suggested that in pre-Hispanic times the natives of Guatemala, the Mayan people, might have made carpets for various ceremonial reasons, to remove negative energies and bring positive new ones.  If such is the case, the practice of destruction of the patterned artwork may have been part of the process of carrying away negative energies.  Regardless of the pre-Hispanic tradition, it is clear that the practice of making decorative artwork in the streets to honor Christ during Holy Week came to Guatemala in the 16th century.  Materials such as dry flowers, branches, pine needles, sand, gravel, crushed eggshell and colored sawdust are used to carpet the streets of the city, where statues of Christ and the disciples will be carried in elaborate processions. 

            [In the sanctuary we look at some pictures taken by John Eisenhauer. Web readers, if you want to see some good pictures, I suggest you look at the link footnoted below.[1]]

            There are two main varieties of carpets made in Antigua.  One type is made with brightly colored sawdust.  The artists lay down a bed of sand to level the cobblestones.  The background colors are laid down and then heavy cardboard stencils in the desired patterns or pictures are laid on top and sawdust sprinkled carefully in the spaces.  Artists use two-by-fours raised slightly above the surface as scaffolding to reach the center of the design.   

            The other variety of carpet is made from pine needles, flowers, fruits, vegetables, and so forth.  They don’t have quite the intricacy of the sawdust carpets but are also beautiful works of art with geometric or representational designs.  (And they smell wonderful!)

            The planning and design starts months in advance.  The processions through the city take various routes, which are publicized.  Some ten to twelve hours before a procession is due in the neighborhood, families and business owners will begin work on their carpets.  Some are relatively small, others might stretch for as long as a city block.   Then the procession comes along.  First come the incense bearers.  Then there are citizens costumed as disciples or soldiers or other figures in the passion story who walk alongside the carpets.  They are followed by enormous wooden platforms (andas) weighing up to 7,000 pounds, upon which are placed sacred images of Christ, Mary,  and other figures in the passion story.  Some of these religious sculptures have been in use for hundreds of years; they are carefully stored and brought out during Holy Week for these processions.  The carriers of the andas walk over the carpets that have been prepared for them.

            Afterwards, the works of art in the street are a heap of rubble.  These days, there are professional sanitation workers who follow the processions, sweeping up the remains. 

            It’s all quite beautiful, and very temporary.  I was talking to Carl Florea who has also witnessed Semana Santa in Central America, and we were both appreciating the soul of a people who would be willing to put so much into a work of art like one of these elaborate carpets just to see it walked on, scuffed up and swept up an hour or two after it was finished.  Carl speculated that if North Americans were involved in such a practice we would probably want to find a way to preserve it.  Shellac it or something.  Or make it out of more permanent material so it would be there year after year, a monument to our creativity and ingenuity.  How about colored concrete instead of colored sawdust and flowers? 

            One of our confirmation students writing a statement of faith answered a question about faith like with a concrete metaphor.  The student said that like concrete, faith at this stage in life was sturdy, and like concrete it would harden with the passage of time.  The student thought that beliefs would change somewhat in the meantime, but there seemed to be an expectation that the constructs of faith would harden over one’s lifetime. 

            I don’t think the student meant this in a negative way; if anything it was a neutral observation about the way it seems to go with people of faith.  I am guessing that the youth was in some measure looking forward to a period of steadfastness or certainty later in life, whereas questions are more the order of the day when you’re 14 or 15 years old.    Nevertheless, the student’s metaphor and the image of all the short-lived carpets of Semana Santa have been tug-of-warring in my imagination. 

            If you’re ready to take a metaphorical leap with me, what I mean is this.  I have been mulling over the idea of laying down your life to honor Christ—laying your life down like one of those intricate carpets laid down in the streets of Antigua.  I’m not talking about laying down your life in quite the same way Jesus was going up to Jerusalem to lay down his life.  Our discipleship in this day and age doesn’t usually end in martyrdom.  So put that idea of making the ultimate sacrifice on the back burner; I don’t think of laying your life down as the equivalent of volunteering for martyrdom. 

            Nonetheless there is a powerful theme in our faith tradition that has to do with surrender.  Think of laying down your life as surrendering to God’s will or God’s leadership in your life.  Suppose every person in this room had made that decision, and was in the process of laying down their life in some fashion.  Even within this little church there would be a great variety of patterns of discipleship.  People might pass by, like the tourists in Antigua, and see very unique depictions of what it means to lay down one’s life as a disciple of Christ, to honor Christ and follow Love’s lead.    That’s a good and beautiful thing, just as the variety of design in the streets of Antigua adds to the appeal of that devotional practice. 

            Imagine your life laid out like a brightly colored carpet to honor Christ.  What kinds of images or patterns would be depicted there?  Is there something that you hold so dear that the image of your life would have to include it or it just wouldn’t be you?  A musical note, a wedding ring, a place, a shape, a face?  Think about that for a minute.   

            Do you have plans or ideas about how your life of faith will or should unfold?  I realize this is a little more abstract, but reflect on what you consider the pattern of a faithful life.  Is it orderly?  Is there a repeating pattern that hints at discipline and tradition?  If you imagined words, are there particular ideas that would decorate your carpet? 

            Now, what is that carpet made of?  Is it the kind of material that the resident artists of Antigua use, which is by its very nature transitory?  Or has the pattern of your life of faith hardened into something more like concrete? 

            The impulse to ask this question comes out of my pondering what it means to have Christ traverse the life pattern I have laid down.  I have laid down my life presumably to honor Christ.   Yet I confess that it makes me twitch to think about Jesus scuffing up my gorgeous intentions and lovely patterns.  Are you with me?  Suppose I have in my life’s depiction images of sweet suburban and small town churches that I have loved.  There’s the Paradise church, where I was nurtured; there’s the Kirkland church, where I was ordained; there’s University  Place, where I was pastor for nine and a half years, and there’s Eagle Harbor Church.  Perhaps I have an expectation that there’s another agreeable middle class church in my future, and I have the vague framework of that future place in my neatly repeating pattern of churches.  Along comes Christ who steps squarely into my tidy pattern and makes it into I don’t know what unknown place of service.    I have this wild image of myself hurtling off the sidewalk and tackling Christ to get him the heck off my lovely carpet.  Or alternatively, having surreptitiously swapped all the sawdust for brightly colored concrete, so Christ can walk all over it and not alter my plans one whit. 

            The hard part of “surrender,” it seems to me, is to hold on to our plans and image of ourselves rather lightly.  It’s difficult not to get attached to our ideas about how our lives should unfold.  Eastern religions have a keen interest in non-attachment or detachment.  Buddhism, for instance, teaches that suffering in this world rises out of attachment to or thirst for sensual pleasures, worldly manifestations of a good life, even attachment to one’s own thoughts, emotions and image of oneself.  Insofar as I understand it, a practicing Buddhist would seek to hold everything about her or his life—the  good, the bad, and the ugly—all  rather lightly.  Hindus strive for the goal of truly being in the moment.  So while a person is expected to be active and responsible in the world, one does not worry about the past or the future.  One tries to remain detached from the results of one’s actions.  The Abrahamic faiths teach detachment from material things as well.  There are teachings in all three Abrahamic traditions pointing to the transitory nature of this life.  Human life is compared to grass and flowers, which wither and fade while the word and work of God endure.  The Quran teaches believers to view this world only as a passage, and to love God more than anything in it.

            It’s a delicate balance to which we are called: to truly love this world and be uniquely and fully engaged in it; and yet to be open to change, holding ourselves and our engagement with the world lightly, ready to change our patterns if they are not honoring Christ as beautifully as they might.  How is this accomplished?

            I went hunting for stories, and happened to pull a book off my shelf that our church book club read a few years back: Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There.  Without going into the whole story, it’s about a village in the French Alps that ended up sheltering an enormous number of Jewish refugees during World War II.  I want to say a little about three of the people involved in that village.

            One was the village pastor, Andre Trocme.  As a young man, he had committed himself to keeping close to Christ by helping those who were suffering.  He was also utterly committed to non-violence.  He asked permission from his parishioners to leave the village and go to the south of France to help with the great number of refugees coming over the border.  He made connections with the Quakers who were working there.  The author of the book explains his interest in their mission by saying “Trocme knew that Quakers had long ago grown proficient in carving out for themselves an ethical space within which they could move in comparative freedom.”  They had established themselves as no nation’s enemies and no nation’s friends; they knew their only enemies were suffering and killing, and each human being was their friend.  So he was attracted to their philosophy and their work.  They helped him decide that he should go home and make Le Chambon a place of refuge for children, particularly those whose parents had been deported or imprisoned.  

            The Quaker leader who had consulted with Trocme later said this about him: it was the humane warmth of Trocme and his openness to fresh feelings and new ideas that made him the man to lead a place of refuge and set an example of overcoming evil with good. [2] Did you hear that?: openness to fresh feelings and new ideas—within the framework of his commitments to non-violence and helping those who suffer.  Imagine his carpet.  See him framing his carpet, laying down the foundation, setting up the border, and then inviting Christ leave footprints all over his life.

            His wife, Magda Trocme, was a very different sort of person.  She didn’t have the magnetic warmth of her husband, or his theological training, or his zeal for the mission of the church.  She and he, while they loved each other passionately, argued over ideas and plans on a regular basis.  But she participated fully in the work of sheltering refugees.  They had an open house for years; there might be as many as 30 unannounced guests at their dinner table any given day.  She said this about what the work meant to her:  “I am not a good Christian at all, but I have things I really believe in.  First of all, I believe and believed in Andre Trocme; I was faithful to his projects and to him personally, and I understood him very well.  Second principle: I try not to hunt around to find things to do.  I do not hunt around to find people to help.  But I never close my door, never refuse to help somebody who comes to me and asks for something.  This I think is my kind of religion…When things happen, not things that I plan, but things sent by God or by chance, when people come to my door, I feel responsible.  During Andre’s life during the war many people came, and my life was therefore complicated.”[3]

            Imagine her carpet, an image of her life laid out to honor Christ.  I see a big picture of an open door.  Whoever needed to walk through it was made welcome.

            The third person in this story I want to mention was named Alice Reynier.  She came from a nearby religious community similar to a convent.  The Trocme family needed help badly, and though Magda was worried about what a very devout person would think of her worldly, not-very-pious self, they sent a call to Alice’s community.  Alice at once dropped to her knees and prayed to God that she might be able to offer aid to the family.  She was a sweet woman, but she had a very quick and volatile temper.  Anger could overwhelm her.  Therefore she asked people to begin calling her “Jispa.”  The name was an acronym for the commitment she made when coming to the household: that she would serve the family with joy, in peace, and in love.  She hoped that being called “Jispa” would remind her not to be impatient and angry but to serve everyone she met with joy, peace, and love.  She planned to be with the family for three months, and stayed more than thirty years.[4]

            Imagine the carpet of her life.  I see a stencil with that name, “Jispa,” cut out so that she could write that commitment again and again, all over her colorful days laid out in service. 

            In these three I see models of godly life laid down to honor Christ.  To have sturdy commitments that frame and stamp one’s life, and at the same time to be open to a new calling to meet the needs of the day—beautiful.  When my life is over and the fragments are being swept up into the dustbin of history, I hope it will bear the footprints of Christ, and that I will have had the grace to let God scuff up my life when Love passed through my town.    

[1] http://picasaweb.google.com/Lifesstorypix/SamantaSantaSlideshow02#slideshow/5099008071333226466

[2] Hallie, Phillip Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There.  New York: HarperPerennial, 1979, p. 138

[3] Ibid p. 152-53

[4] Ibid p. 151