Gift Horses and Lucky Shirts

We may not agree with these adages, they may not be what we believe is true for ourselves, but we live in them. Our culture, our shared memory, shared hopes move in and out of these sayings. We may not want to live in the reality of might makes right or to the victor goes the spoils, but this is the ocean we swim in.  Exceptions to these rules can be found, flaws certainly, but dominating power and a drive to succeed is our culture, our humanness.

All these sayings in one way or another comes down to power. How we gain power, use power, keep power. Power as held by those who take it, those who abuse it.  However, and whenever we engage in power, these are the sayings echoing in our subconscious, justifying, fueling, guiding.  There are many more.  And it is not just America believing you must look out for number one or claiming the end justifies the means, but the drive to outdo, out-perform, come out on top is who we are as a people.

The internet knows I am going to France so little videos and ads, websites are popping up.  A recent one was a comparison of how the French do business and how we do business.  The French businesswoman is on the phone, and she is describing a project moving forward, but she is leaving soon for a month, and the second person who could handle the account is away for a year traveling the world, and the third person is already on leave.  So, she says, let’s pause the project until September.  Then the video shifts to an American businesswoman who says, “okay, we’ve had our legal look it over; we’re good and waiting for your edits.  If you can get back to us in two days, there is no reason we can’t get this project started by the end of next week.

It is true, good things take time and Rome wasn’t built . . . in a day.  Yet it is as if we have edited these sayings: good things don’t need delay and Rome took more than a day, but it need not take more than a week.  This is who we are. 

The New York Times covering the recent train strike suggested that the disruption, while inconvenient, would not deter Jersey.  The writer claimed, Jersey will just keep going.  The state never stops.  We seek to gain, to control, to direct all things as fast as possible with a relentless focus and determination.  It’s like the motto: Jersey Strong.  Strong in what way?  Not sure, but we’re strong. Power.

I love the poem of Stephen Crane, a short poem of great truth about power and ambition.  He wrote:

I saw a man pursuing the horizon; 

Round and round they sped. 

I was disturbed at this;   

I accosted the man. 

“It is futile,” I said, 

“You can never —” 

“You lie,” he cried,   

And ran on.

I know this is sacrilege, but quite often I find our progress is not all it was meant to be.  The relentless pursuit of more simply to have more; the unbridled devotion to faster and faster; the foggy memory of purpose where we know we were meant to achieve something but somehow we lost sight of it along the way and now we are not quite sure why we are building, digging, making, but we cannot stop.

Our inability to stop, to pause, to trust is why most people get sick on vacation.  Chances are good you have at some point spent the first few days of a vacation in bed because your body was forced to readjust every schedule, every instinct, every routine from relentless work to the forced burden of relaxation.  So unaccustomed were you to the slow pace of the beach, the poolside, the rocking chair your body went into shock. 

Full confession, I am not good at this.  As I put one more book to read into my suitcase and bringing it closer and closer to fifty pounds, I have learned to laugh at myself.  Will you really read a book a day for ten days?  The effect of my self-realization is usually I will take one book less.  Nine, nine books are about right.

Recently our denomination, the Presbyterian Church USA, recently we voted to provide 13 weeks of family leave to all pastors.  If someone in your family is ill, you can take up to 13 weeks of paid leave to care for them.  If your spouse has a baby, you can take up to 13 weeks of paid leave.  At the presbytery meeting where this change in national policy was being debated there was a lot of snide comments about “I didn’t take time off” or “we are making it too easy.”

The detractors were mainly expressing a distrust of rest, of stepping off the path of relentless pursuit of the horizon.  Every older generation believes the next has it easy, so such critiques didn’t bother me.  What did bother me was how ill-prepared people are for such extended times of rest, of not-working.  In 2008 we stepped away from our life in Watertown and took a sabbatical in Malawi.  There were many challenges to this, but one that was really hard was to not be in the grove, in the pursuit, in the grind so to speak.  Having never taken more than a few weeks away to study, 13 weeks on a sabbatical nearly killed me.  I had no idea how to decompress; how to let go; how to gain the energy, the power that comes from ministry, I didn’t know how to gain that power in any way other than work.

In our reading today from Luke, Jesus is being tricky; he is using a rhetorical device or philosophical maneuver to evoke a confession from his detractors.  He is affirming his audience in their belief, creating a sense of shared perspective: house divided against itself can’t stand, we all know that; a strong man defends his house until someone stronger comes along, this is true right?  The trick is that Jesus gets them to affirm what they believe even though what they believe is their ruin.

We all know a house divided cannot stand.  Yet you cannot read a newspaper or listen to a podcast that doesn’t promote or seek victory through division.  Somehow, even though we know a house divided is a failure, we live as if it doesn’t apply to us, is not true for us.  From the many one, e pluribus unum, is found on our money, it is motto we hold dear.  But it is not how we live.  From many one is not us; we are more from many comes two sides that seek to destroy the other. ex multis duabus partibus se destruentes.  Not quite as clean, pithy as            e pluribus unum, but certainly closer to our truth, and the truth Jesus sought to evoke.

We all know to the victor goes the spoils.  Yet, the victory has an expiration date.  You get the spoils, true; and they are yours, true; but only so long as someone stronger doesn’t come and take them from you.  Sharing is caring works in preschool; it is not our business model, our foreign policy, our career path.  We like win, win, win.  But only if we are the bigger part of the win.

Jesus leads the crowd to affirm this.  We could easily do the same.  Yet, the adages and truisms he conjures (unity and strength), neither of these are what he teaches.  Jesus teaches, if you want to keep your life, you must lose it; if you want to be first, you must be last; if you want to be great you must be least, come as a child.  To have the courage to become the servant, to sacrifice, to live in humility (blessed are the meek), to live this way is incompatible with “to the victor goes the spoils” and “might makes right.”  Completely inconsistent. 

The gospel of Jesus doesn’t contradict the possibility that might makes right or there are winners and there are losers.  He doesn’t say, that is not true; that is false.  What Jesus says is this: you cannot live in the kingdom of God like this.

Violence begets violence; if you are struck on the right cheek offer the left.  Can you imagine this as a foreign policy or a legal code to serve our communities?  Jesus teaches lend without expectation of return.  Can you imagine banks doing this?

Quite a while ago, the famous preacher Henry Emerson Fosdick went south and worshiped at a church in Charlotte, North Carolina, the banking capital of the south.  Fosdick was shocked that the church changed the lord’s prayer from debts and debtors to sin and sins against us.  He asked the pastor how he could make such a change as he wanted to do the same.  The pastor said, so many of our members are bank presidents they just could not pray “forgive our debtors” each week.  Wasn’t true. 

If Christianity is victory over death, the sacrifice of one for the many, a perfect atonement accomplished on the cross that we need only accept, if this is Christianity then there is not much a of challenge, not much of a demand.  You can believe Christ died for you as you plunder, as you deride, as you crush and divide and mock.  Teachings about Jesus do not challenge our life and our actions.  The teachings of Jesus do.

Don’t be angry; don’t lust; don’t seek revenge.  Love your enemies.  In Luke Jesus doesn’t say I love you; he tells us to love those we hate.  Emperor Constantine, legend has it, held off his baptism to the end of his life knowing he could not be an emperor and live the teachings of Jesus.  Impossible.

At the end of our lesson today is a cryptic saying about gathering and scattering.  Like most of what Jesus teaches it is not hard to understand; it is just impossible to live.  Let me recast it this way: if you gather with Jesus you give your life away; if you gather with Jesus you find the blessedness of mercy and meekness and hunger, poverty and shameless trust of what is good and true and beautiful; if you gather with Jesus you empty your heart of desire, lose all impulse to control and determine others.  And the hardest of all, if you gather with him, you do not resist the evil doer.  That one is tough. 

In the same way, if you want to be the victor who gains the spoils, you will be scattered, tossed aside from Jesus; if you want to be the might that is right without opposition or challenge, you will be scattered from the kingdom of God.  Such power cannot not mingle with Jesus.  Mingle with our culture, our life?  Yes.  You can climb the ladder of success, you can.  But Jacob’s ladder, the ladder that leads to heaven’s door, this one you cannot climb if you fight fire with fire. Jesus says no.

Jesus doesn’t contradict the idea that the strong survive until someone stronger comes.  This is all too true he says.  It just has no part of his kingdom.  Amen.