Texts: Joshua 3:7-17; Matthew 23:1-12; 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13

Date: October 30, 2011

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

          The work of art we’re contemplating on screen today, “Scale” by Steven Siegel[1], was provided with our “Seasons of the Spirit” curriculum.  It’s not a thing of great beauty; it’s a sort of grayish boulder-shaped object, probably about 15 feet high, sitting out in the woods, that is made up of what look for all the world like flat stones.  The small pieces that make up the whole are not rocks, however; they are newspapers, stacked up on top of each other.  You really can’t tell by looking at it in the photograph that it’s an arrangement of 20,000 pounds of newspapers.  They are weathered a bit, and you can’t see the print.

          It took an enormous number of newspapers to create this monumental piece.  Just imagine how many words there are, piled up on top of each other, pressed tightly together, overlapping.  It would be quite a feat to literally read this piece of art, if you took it apart and separated the leaves. 

          It’s not a bad image of Church.  Think of each newspaper as a separate human life with the life story written on it.  You’ve got your headline news, your sports section (for some of us that’s bigger than others), your comics, your recipes, your advice column, your opinion pieces.  Lost and found ads, real estate pictures, financial reports, fashion photos.  Some human interest stories, and obituaries of people you have known, theater and book reviews, travelogues, maybe the occasional personal ad.    When we come together in a faith community, all our life news gets stacked up together in some kind of shape; we’re not really blended, but we’re something all together that we are not apart.  I’ll come back to the larger work of art, but first let’s reflect on the individual editions a little longer.

          If your life was in the form of a newspaper on a newsstand, do you suppose it would be quickly purchased by the passersby eager to see what was on the pages?  For most of non-celebrity types, probably not. We’re just not all that fascinating.   I ran across a quotation from actor Kirk Douglas the other day: “Life is like a B-movie script.  It is that corny.  If I had my life story offered to me to film, I’d turn it down.”  What Kirk Douglas said about himself probably goes double for the rest of us.  We’re just plugging along, doing our jobs, raising our kids, volunteering, having dinner with friends, telling a joke, arguing with our spouses, paying the bills, singing along with the radio, sweeping the floor, changing the channel.  Headline: “Macaroni and cheese served for supper tonight!”  Critics give it two stars, saying, “Lacks originality.”    Not exactly the fodder of action movies and celebrity tabloids. 

          And yet, if you try to take a God’s-eye view of all our life stories, the flashiness of our lives counts for precisely nothing.  And every word written on the pages of our lives is significant.  It all means something.  It all adds up to something.  And even if we’re not glamorous or exciting enough to capture the imagination of those who make famous people famous, we must never forget that people are reading our lives, whether we’re conscious of it or not.  Your life story is stacked on the coffee table of some imagination’s living room, open to a story that interested the person who is musing on what you have done or said.  Oh, you’re not the only newspaper there; there are stacks of pages from other editions of Human Life and Times.  But everybody’s life story is being contemplated by someone, whether it’s a skimming of headlines or an in-depth reading of every last article. 

           I am calling this to awareness in part to underline what Paul said to the Thessalonian Christians about what he and his fellow leaders were trying to do with them.  Loving them like a father with his children, they were “urging and encouraging…and pleading that [the Christians in Thessalonica] lead a life worthy of God,” who calls us into God’s own kingdom and glory.  Lead a life worthy of God.  If the banner under the headline of your “Human Life and Times” claims to be a life dedicated to God, what is being written on the pages of your life that is worthy of God? 

          That’s a loaded word, “worthy.”  The dictionary’s first definition is “deserving,” as in “fully deserving something, usually as a suitable reward for merit or importance.”  Merit or importance are not categories of thought that mesh well with Christian theology.  Where the world is all about merit and importance, in God’s realm everyone is important, and every person receives grace regardless of merit.  When a theologian like Paul urges Christians to live a life worthy of God, he is not for a moment suggesting that we need to prove to God that we are worthy of love.  I think what he is getting at is that we acknowledge God’s goodness and try to reflect it as representatives of citizens of God’s realm, ambassadors for the gospel.  The second dictionary definition of worthy is more like what he means: “respectable,” i.e. “morally upright, good, and deserving respect.”  Live a life that will lead people to respect God and rejoice in God’s good news. 

           Thinking of a daily newspaper as a metaphor for a record of my life puts me simultaneously on edge and at ease.  One the one hand, it seems like every day is newsworthy, and every action, (or lack thereof), every word, even, has consequences.  It’s all “on the record,” so to speak.  A writer whose name is lost writes, “Watch your thoughts; they lead to attitudes.  Watch your attitudes; they lead to words.  Watch your words; they lead to actions.  Watch your actions; they lead to habits.  Watch your habits; they form your character.  Watch your character; it determines your destiny.”  I think this is true, and it leaves me a little on edge to consider that I need to constantly attend to not just my actions, but the mental and spiritual motivators behind them.  In Christianity for the Rest of Us Diana Butler Bass mainly writes about Christian practices, which means acting like Christians, or doing Christian things, as one aspect of Christian life.  Another aspect we are to foster is Christian wisdom, which she describes as “thinking like Christians.”  Both greatly affect how one’s life story progresses from day to day.  Both Christian practice and Christian wisdom require daily cultivation.

          The flip side of being on edge about the daily interior and exterior vigilance that is required of one trying to live a life worthy of God is the at ease-ness of knowing there will be another edition tomorrow.  I always appreciate the column of corrections that often appears on page 2 of the daily news, acknowledging that in spite of best efforts of careful writers and fact-checkers and editors, mistakes were made in yesterday’s edition.  Christian life always makes space for corrections.  God is always willing to forgive the errors made by commission and omission.  And each day we are indeed a new creation, we are given a new opportunity to write our story again, better this time. 

          There is also the at-ease-ness of knowing that the stuff of our daily lives is not all headline news, but it still adds up.  Every small story—the ones that only take up a paragraph on page C-6—are part of the big picture, and therefore offer opportunities to live life worthy of God in small,  humble episodes of daily life.  Novelist Eugenia Price once wrote, “The great doing of little things makes the great life.”  Think of the little stories of your life that add up: “Don buys jar of peanut butter for Helpline House while grocery shopping.”  “Richard nearly flips off rude driver, waves in friendly manner instead.”  “Cora gives lonely neighbor ten minutes of loving attention at the mailbox when all she really wants to do is go home and drink her tea while it is still hot.”  I think these small things are what Jesus had in mind when he urged his disciples to look for opportunities for humble service that wouldn’t attract any particular attention or admiration.  It’s the daily-ness of such things that add up to habits and wisdom, that add up to a life worthy of God.  There are also regular habits, the ones that would show up in the calendar section under the heading “Ongoing.”  Things like Sunday worship, or a regular commitment to volunteering at Helpline House or the animal shelter.  They may seem inconsequential, but they are imprinting a life in a positive way that is influential as others learn from you how to live a Christian life.

          It’s quite a spiritual challenge to try to be intentional about humble service while maintaining actual humility.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it well, writing, “Our activity must be visible, but never be done for the sake of making it visible.”  Along the same lines, Paul Anderson notes, “Humility is tricky business. I’ve caught myself being proud of my humility. It’s like the skeleton of the body — it needs to be there to undergird everything else, but it only shows if something is broken. The skeleton is grotesque when that’s all you see. So is a protruding piety.”  I imagine we’re all guilty of “protruding piety” once in a while when we are striving to do the right thing.  Good thing there’s tomorrow’s edition to look forward to, with its corrections and candid shots of all that other stuff we did yesterday that help keep us humble.

          I’ve been focusing on the daily opportunities for humble service that present themselves to us, the small stories that make up the narrative of our lives.  I think it’s good to remember that most of us are not destined to be Saints (with a capital-S), and that’s OK.  However, we may also be offered opportunities to make headline news in the Kingdom of God.  Doors open even in the humblest of lives to take bold action for God’s Kingdom.  A few of us have been studying the book of Acts for a number of months now, and we see in its record some truly heroic tales of dedicated Christians fearlessly bringing the good news of the gospel to places where it wasn’t particularly welcome.  The book of Acts is not meant to be a written melodrama for Christians to enjoy from the comfort of their couches; it is meant to inspire Christians to take up the work of Christ wherever they are, fully expecting the Holy Spirit to work through them. 

          The story in the book of Joshua assigned by the lectionary today is a strange and complicated tale.  I just want to pick out one of its many details for comment.  I find the picture of the priests carrying the symbol of God’s presence (the Ark of the Covenant) into the river stirring.  In the story, at least, there is no hesitation on their part.  They trust God, and trust the leader who is speaking on God’s behalf, and plunge right into the swiftly flowing waters of the river.  God doesn’t stop the flow of the river until they get their feet wet; they are not allowed to wait for safety before they act.  And they do it!  The interruption of the flow of the river was one miracle, and a miracle just as great was the confident response to God’s call by the people.  This was an episode in the story of God’s people that became headline news about trust, faith, submission, courage, and triumph. 

            Followers of God in every era find themselves, on occasion, with impossible rivers to cross, and a clarion call to cross them anyway, trusting that God goes with us and opens a way.  Mustering the courage to respond becomes headline news in the Human Life and Times of many a saint.  When we are experiencing such a call, whatever form it takes, we have a choice about what kind of story it becomes for us.  Something like many recent stories in the newspapers about deadlocked leaders, where the forces for yes and the forces for no result in a no-action stalemate while the society deteriorates?  Or a story about how one person or an intrepid little group made a difference, whether the headline is a New York Times or Bainbridge Island Review (or Eagle Harbor Church Communicator) sized story?  I found myself musing on the Susan G. Komen story this week, after watching football players wearing pink armbands and pink socks while hurling each other around the field.  Komen died from breast cancer at age 36, but during her 3 year illness spent her time thinking of ways to make life better for other women who were ill at the same time she was.  Moved by her compassion for others, her sister Nancy Brinker promised her sister that she would do everything in her power to end breast cancer forever.  That promise is now the “Susan G.Komen for the Cure” which has raised more than $1.9 billion dollars for research since 1982.  They have more than 100,000 volunteers working in 124 affiliates.  It’s not a perfect organization, but it’s an example of what one person’s commitment can do.

          Perhaps you have experienced a calling of some sort, and you are wondering how or whether to follow through.  We do not have to make these choices alone.  We’re piled up in this lump of overlapping stories, as in Siegel’s artwork, “Scale.”  We’re drawing wisdom, inspiration and courage from the Word of God captured in scripture, tradition and hymnody.  And not only those sources,  but drawing wisdom and guidance also from the life stories we see being written next to us, which we are “reading” in real time and looking back to reflect on as the years pass. 

          I want to tell you something else about the art work “Scale.”  The artist built this thing out of all these newspapers and went away and left it for a few months.  Winter passed.  When Siegel returned in the spring to visit his work, he found it sprouting with all kinds of little green shoots.  It had absorbed the life around it and was growing beautiful in a way he hadn’t anticipated. 

          I know that’s what happening to us, too, Church.  Our stories are becoming part of what St. Hildegard of Bingen called the “greening” of creation.  She addresses one of her meditations to “Good People, most royal greening verdancy, rooted in the sun.”  In another meditation she speaks of God’s WORD being in all creation, visible and invisible.  The WORD, she sings, “is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity.”  The Word manifests itself in every creature, in every story.  Our stories grow more beautiful than we can imagine, as we keep the faith. 

Beloved, trust that your story is part of God’s story, an indispensable element in what God is still creating in this world.  We are part of God’s story, thanks be to God, and God help us!  Be intentional about what is being written on the pages of your life.  But don’t fret, because the meaning of it all isn’t up to us. Inspiration we can’t foresee or conceive of is being planted in all the little episodes and front-page news of our lives, in the pictures of kindness, in the corrections column, in the bold opinion pieces, in every word remembered and forgotten.