Do You Remember That You Have Children?
The Rev. Amy Morehous
Year B, Proper 7
June 24, 2012
One of the participants in the Wednesday women’s Bible study told a story about her grandchildren. One morning, they were crouched outside their parents’ bedroom door. They had been given instructions not to wake their parents too early, so they were trying to be patient and wait, but it was getting harder and harder, because they were getting hungrier and hungrier. Their parents, of course, were already awake, and were lying in bed listening to them whisper to each other. One child, patience pushed to the limit, finally turned to the other and said, “Do you think they even remember that they have children?”
I am fond of this Gospel passage. I even have an icon of it propped on my desk just beside my phone, because I need to be reminded of it frequently. Sometimes hourly. But contemplating this Gospel all week, I found myself in the boat with the disciples. And this time, I didn’t particularly like it. I hear the disciples questioning Jesus, and frankly, they were sounding a little whiny to me. Why did you bring us here? How can you sleep through this terrible storm? Look what’s happening to us, and what are you going to do about it? I finally realized that I was impatient with them, even irritated ...because I recognized a little bit too much of myself in them. I was cranky with this Gospel passage, even though it is one I love, because it pointed to things within myself that I didn’t want to examine too closely.
I hear in their honest and desperate question the same thing that we all ask when we find ourselves in the middle of a storm, when we find ourselves in a boat that’s too small, and a storm that is too large. Even in the hour of his death, Jesus Christ prays a Psalm of lament. “My God. My God. Why have you forsaken me?”
We have each turned to God, in our own way and said, “Don’t you remember that you have children? Do you not know that we are perishing?”
We are a people familiar with fear. We live in a culture that encourages us to be afraid. Look around you. Look at the messages you hear on TV, or in movies. On the interstate driving here, I passed under two signs that told me that 467 people have died this year on state highways, and told me not to be next. That manages to play to two of our fears at once: our fear of death, and our fear that we are just a number after death. Is it true that we cannot be convinced to follow traffic laws or remember to be careful of our own safety or that of others, unless we are somehow in fear of losing our own life?
I’ll bet you can sit and make a list for yourself of all the things of which you are afraid. We all have them. I have a long list myself. I don’t like to think of myself as a worrier, but I fear I am. This past weekend, my daughter came down with a high fever. Now, that’s not the end of the world. It happens to children every day. But I found myself growing more irritable and more anxious, beyond what was normal. And then I realized I was operating from a place of fear...irrational fear, fear beyond reason. What are those fears for you? Take a second, and think of the things that lurk in the shadows for you.
I’ll bet it wasn’t that difficult to come up with the top five. If you’ve watched or read the news at all, I’ll bet it was terrifically easy. We have had an economic reversal from which we are still reeling, and it’s an election year, and we are all hungry to be reassured that all the terrible things we can imagine won’t come true, won’t happen to us. If you listen to advertisements, politicians and companies are happy to play to our fears in order to sell us security. But what is that security costing us?
A few weeks ago I heard a professor of Christian ethics from the Seminary of the Southwest (** Dr. Scott Bader-Saye) discuss this very problem. He suggested that one of the contributing factors to our societal obsession with safety has come about because we can’t agree on what’s good anymore. We can’t agree on one single good - but we can all agree on what’s safe. And if safe is now the common good, how safe must we be? And how does that compare to the Gospel of Christ?
After all, Jesus doesn’t say that if we keep each other safe, we’ve done enough. He doesn’t say that if we keep our children safe, we’ve done enough. Dr. Bader-Saye calls this an ethic of security - it says that our main goal - the thing we pursue over all things - is staying safe. When you look at your life, what do you pursue over all things? What is your main goal in the here and now? Is it staying safe?
But what if living as a Gospel people - loving God and loving our neighbor - somehow puts us at risk? Then what do we choose? For instance, if accumulating material goods helps us ensure our own survival, then maybe I need to accumulate even more to feel truly safe. After all, I’m just trying to protect myself from an uncertain future. If a little bit of safety is good, then more must be better. Right?
That’s what our culture would have us believe. But that’s not what the gospel of Christ says. It says that our primary purpose is to be, and to make, disciples. Our purpose is to get into the boat, and head out into a future that we don’t know, and be confident that Christ will be with us in it.
In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are describing Aslan, the King of Narnia, to Lucy and her brothers and sister. Lucy is alarmed to find out that the King is a lion. She says, “A lion! Is he...well, is he quite safe?”
Mr. Beaver responds: “Safe? Haven’t you been listening....? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King....”
So, how do we orient ourselves toward the good we seek in Christ, and not the evil we fear? If you are anything like me, it’s not ‘believing’ that trips you up. It’s in the living out of the day to day. How do we continue to get into the boat with Christ - every day - to sail to other side. How do we not hold back simply because we fear the journey?
Ask yourself what drives you forward each day. Are we being drawn toward something we love, or are we running away from something we fear? Are you being drawn toward a relationship with a God that loves you beyond all reason? Or are you fleeing the thing of which you are most afraid?
I’m not knocking safety, and I’m not advocating being reckless. When I speak of living in fear, I don’t mean average, everyday fear. I’m talking about disordered fear: Fearing the wrong things, or fearing the right things too much. Disordered fear deforms us, it warps the way we make decisions, the way we live our lives. It keeps us from climbing into the boat with Christ each morning, confident in the other shore, because we become afraid of what might possibly happen to us in the process. Traveling with Christ might possibly make us uncomfortable, and we shun being uncomfortable. If we’re uncomfortable, it must mean that we’re being threatened in some way, and how can we live with a threat like that, when what we seek is to be safe above all else? It’s a circle of thought that leads only to more fear.
Staying on the shore and securing our own boundaries is not what we are called to do as children of God. We are called to love God, and love our neighbor with hope and courage. As Aristotle wrote, and Thomas Aquinas repeated, the mean of recklessness and cowardice is courage.
Christ did not call us to live our lives in fear. Christ came to set us free from the bondage of fear to be a people of hope and courage. Contemplate what your life would be like today if you acknowledged your fear of the future, your fear of uncertain times, but did not let it shape the way you live your life. What if we let our relationship with God and each other be our highest aim, our chief goal, our greatest good?
Yes - there will be storms. Sometimes those storms will come up without warning, and threaten to overtop us. Sometimes, it may even feel as if the boat has flipped over, and dumped us into the ocean. The world around us pulls us toward a life full of fear and uncertainty, until we are enslaved by chains that we can’t even see. But we are called to hope, and to courage in the face of those storms. When we doubt, when we ask questions, Christ is with us in those. When we struggle, when we fail, Christ is with us each time. Even in the most overwhelming of circumstances, Christ is with us.
We hope not because it is easy, not because it is simple, but because we are called to do so by a living God. Be courageous enough to be honest about your fears before God. Know that God’s love is larger than any fear, God’s justice is stronger than any human condition, and God’s grace is wider than our imagination. God always remembers that we are His children, and He will never forsake us.
Amen.
** I am greatly indebted to the ideas and work of Dr. Scott Bader-Saye. His book is Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear, and I recommend it for further reading.
Year B, Proper 7
June 24, 2012
One of the participants in the Wednesday women’s Bible study told a story about her grandchildren. One morning, they were crouched outside their parents’ bedroom door. They had been given instructions not to wake their parents too early, so they were trying to be patient and wait, but it was getting harder and harder, because they were getting hungrier and hungrier. Their parents, of course, were already awake, and were lying in bed listening to them whisper to each other. One child, patience pushed to the limit, finally turned to the other and said, “Do you think they even remember that they have children?”
I am fond of this Gospel passage. I even have an icon of it propped on my desk just beside my phone, because I need to be reminded of it frequently. Sometimes hourly. But contemplating this Gospel all week, I found myself in the boat with the disciples. And this time, I didn’t particularly like it. I hear the disciples questioning Jesus, and frankly, they were sounding a little whiny to me. Why did you bring us here? How can you sleep through this terrible storm? Look what’s happening to us, and what are you going to do about it? I finally realized that I was impatient with them, even irritated ...because I recognized a little bit too much of myself in them. I was cranky with this Gospel passage, even though it is one I love, because it pointed to things within myself that I didn’t want to examine too closely.
I hear in their honest and desperate question the same thing that we all ask when we find ourselves in the middle of a storm, when we find ourselves in a boat that’s too small, and a storm that is too large. Even in the hour of his death, Jesus Christ prays a Psalm of lament. “My God. My God. Why have you forsaken me?”
We have each turned to God, in our own way and said, “Don’t you remember that you have children? Do you not know that we are perishing?”
We are a people familiar with fear. We live in a culture that encourages us to be afraid. Look around you. Look at the messages you hear on TV, or in movies. On the interstate driving here, I passed under two signs that told me that 467 people have died this year on state highways, and told me not to be next. That manages to play to two of our fears at once: our fear of death, and our fear that we are just a number after death. Is it true that we cannot be convinced to follow traffic laws or remember to be careful of our own safety or that of others, unless we are somehow in fear of losing our own life?
I’ll bet you can sit and make a list for yourself of all the things of which you are afraid. We all have them. I have a long list myself. I don’t like to think of myself as a worrier, but I fear I am. This past weekend, my daughter came down with a high fever. Now, that’s not the end of the world. It happens to children every day. But I found myself growing more irritable and more anxious, beyond what was normal. And then I realized I was operating from a place of fear...irrational fear, fear beyond reason. What are those fears for you? Take a second, and think of the things that lurk in the shadows for you.
I’ll bet it wasn’t that difficult to come up with the top five. If you’ve watched or read the news at all, I’ll bet it was terrifically easy. We have had an economic reversal from which we are still reeling, and it’s an election year, and we are all hungry to be reassured that all the terrible things we can imagine won’t come true, won’t happen to us. If you listen to advertisements, politicians and companies are happy to play to our fears in order to sell us security. But what is that security costing us?
A few weeks ago I heard a professor of Christian ethics from the Seminary of the Southwest (** Dr. Scott Bader-Saye) discuss this very problem. He suggested that one of the contributing factors to our societal obsession with safety has come about because we can’t agree on what’s good anymore. We can’t agree on one single good - but we can all agree on what’s safe. And if safe is now the common good, how safe must we be? And how does that compare to the Gospel of Christ?
After all, Jesus doesn’t say that if we keep each other safe, we’ve done enough. He doesn’t say that if we keep our children safe, we’ve done enough. Dr. Bader-Saye calls this an ethic of security - it says that our main goal - the thing we pursue over all things - is staying safe. When you look at your life, what do you pursue over all things? What is your main goal in the here and now? Is it staying safe?
But what if living as a Gospel people - loving God and loving our neighbor - somehow puts us at risk? Then what do we choose? For instance, if accumulating material goods helps us ensure our own survival, then maybe I need to accumulate even more to feel truly safe. After all, I’m just trying to protect myself from an uncertain future. If a little bit of safety is good, then more must be better. Right?
That’s what our culture would have us believe. But that’s not what the gospel of Christ says. It says that our primary purpose is to be, and to make, disciples. Our purpose is to get into the boat, and head out into a future that we don’t know, and be confident that Christ will be with us in it.
In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are describing Aslan, the King of Narnia, to Lucy and her brothers and sister. Lucy is alarmed to find out that the King is a lion. She says, “A lion! Is he...well, is he quite safe?”
Mr. Beaver responds: “Safe? Haven’t you been listening....? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King....”
So, how do we orient ourselves toward the good we seek in Christ, and not the evil we fear? If you are anything like me, it’s not ‘believing’ that trips you up. It’s in the living out of the day to day. How do we continue to get into the boat with Christ - every day - to sail to other side. How do we not hold back simply because we fear the journey?
Ask yourself what drives you forward each day. Are we being drawn toward something we love, or are we running away from something we fear? Are you being drawn toward a relationship with a God that loves you beyond all reason? Or are you fleeing the thing of which you are most afraid?
I’m not knocking safety, and I’m not advocating being reckless. When I speak of living in fear, I don’t mean average, everyday fear. I’m talking about disordered fear: Fearing the wrong things, or fearing the right things too much. Disordered fear deforms us, it warps the way we make decisions, the way we live our lives. It keeps us from climbing into the boat with Christ each morning, confident in the other shore, because we become afraid of what might possibly happen to us in the process. Traveling with Christ might possibly make us uncomfortable, and we shun being uncomfortable. If we’re uncomfortable, it must mean that we’re being threatened in some way, and how can we live with a threat like that, when what we seek is to be safe above all else? It’s a circle of thought that leads only to more fear.
Staying on the shore and securing our own boundaries is not what we are called to do as children of God. We are called to love God, and love our neighbor with hope and courage. As Aristotle wrote, and Thomas Aquinas repeated, the mean of recklessness and cowardice is courage.
Christ did not call us to live our lives in fear. Christ came to set us free from the bondage of fear to be a people of hope and courage. Contemplate what your life would be like today if you acknowledged your fear of the future, your fear of uncertain times, but did not let it shape the way you live your life. What if we let our relationship with God and each other be our highest aim, our chief goal, our greatest good?
Yes - there will be storms. Sometimes those storms will come up without warning, and threaten to overtop us. Sometimes, it may even feel as if the boat has flipped over, and dumped us into the ocean. The world around us pulls us toward a life full of fear and uncertainty, until we are enslaved by chains that we can’t even see. But we are called to hope, and to courage in the face of those storms. When we doubt, when we ask questions, Christ is with us in those. When we struggle, when we fail, Christ is with us each time. Even in the most overwhelming of circumstances, Christ is with us.
We hope not because it is easy, not because it is simple, but because we are called to do so by a living God. Be courageous enough to be honest about your fears before God. Know that God’s love is larger than any fear, God’s justice is stronger than any human condition, and God’s grace is wider than our imagination. God always remembers that we are His children, and He will never forsake us.
Amen.
** I am greatly indebted to the ideas and work of Dr. Scott Bader-Saye. His book is Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear, and I recommend it for further reading.
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