Sunday, July 20, 2014

Children of God (7.20.14)

A Meditation on Romans 8


1.

This spring, I spent my 52nd birthday in the Meteoran Rocks of Central Greece, a nearly indescribable formation of stony obelisks rising dramatically from the plains of Thessaly.  At the very tops of these great obelisks sit seven great Orthodox Monasteries, seven hundred, eight hundred years old, and still active.  The rocks themselves seem something like monks at prayer, great stony mystics kneeling reverently and unexpectedly in fertile fields.  I chose these rocks and monasteries deliberately, a first stop on my spring sabbatical, looking for some kind of sanctuary there, and hoping for inspiration and renewal.

Because, to be completely honest, I was tired towards the end of my 52nd year.  I couldn’t put my finger on the reasons why.  And I wasn’t quite sure: tired of what?  But there was an unfamiliar weariness in my bones over the winter, and I read that weariness as a call to reflection and pilgrimage.  And the Meteoran Monasteries offered mystery and iconography and something like the holy unknown.  As I rolled out of bed on my birthday, I was looking for something like that, something fresh, even something unexpected.  I craved it.  The holy unknown.

That morning, a Frenchman at my guesthouse recommended a challenging trail.  We’d chatted at breakfast about my hopes for the day, and he was curious about the whole pilgrimage thing.  He’d suggested a relatively unknown route into the heart of the great rocks and through them to the monasteries beyond.  He said something about inspiration and solitude: the right words for the right guy on the right day.  So I set out on my 52nd birthday, with lunch and a tiny cake in my pack, hoping to reach the Roussanou Monastery by lunchtime.

Well, at some point, I took a wrong turn.  I was enjoying the singing birds and the bright spring wildflowers, and I took a far right fork when the near right fork might have been better.  I forked badly.  And I found myself on a steep and treacherous stretch, inching up the face of a kind of cliff, and trying hard not to look back or down at the dramatic drop behind me.  Did I mention I was looking for renewal, for inspiration?  Mount Everest is not on my bucket list.

But, by midmorning, I was standing nose to nose with a huge boulder; and this huge boulder was wedged defiantly between two huge obelisks and blocking my way forward.  Pretty much I had two choices: turn around, inch my way down and off that cliff, or find a way up and across that boulder.  I mumbled something about the absurdity of the so-called holy unknown.  I deployed several choice French words I learned from a foul-mouthed teacher in high school.  And then I took a good long look at  that rock.

And I clawed at it and I pulled at it.  And I kicked at it and I pushed on it.  I grabbed at something halfway up and pulled my weary self as far as I could pull.  I did it once.  I did it again.  And again.  And again.  I kicked and pulled, and pulled and kicked; hoping beyond hope that some Greek god or angel would push me up and over the top, and onto the trail again.

I mentioned that I was tired and weary, right?  I mentioned my hankering for mystery and surprise?  Well, there I was, in these great rocks, on my birthday, and I’m thinking wow.  I’m just too old for this.  I’m just too big and heavy and old for this.  Screw the holy unknown and get me a big bowl of chocolate ice cream.  Fast.

2.

Well, for whatever reason, I kept at it.  The clawing and the pulling, and the kicking and the pushing.  And on the fortieth or the forty-first try, I heaved my sorry self on top of that huge boulder.  My forearms were scraped.  My sneakers were sliced in a half-dozen places.  And sweat, my sweat, was rolling in waves off my forehead and down my neck.

And just a few yards ahead, I stumbled to a sudden stop, as obelisks on either side opened into a green, leafy and lush valley.  Just as the Frenchman promised at breakfast.  And the valley was surrounded by other obelisks, and on top of those other obelisks were ancient monasteries, and on the valley’s floor were bright green fields and groves of trees and birds singing wildly and brightly.  And it was paradise.  There’s just no other word for it.  It was paradise.

So I sat down there, scraped from head to toe, sweating like a human volcano: and I pulled out the tiny birthday cake I’d packed away that morning.  I imagine I was quite a sight.  But I felt fully alive, energized in every way, and rested: as rested as I’ve felt in a long, long, long time.  I knew I was out of shape.  I knew I was absurdly lucky the boulder hadn’t finished me.  But I also knew—in a deep-down, God-loving kind of way—that it was all mine.  The valley below, the wildflowers in a thousand different colors, the birds singing and the trees waving, and the rocks and the monasteries and the plains of Thessaly.  It was all mine in the way the whole world is indeed ours—when we come to love God with all our hearts and with all our souls and with all our strength.

And my heart—my little 52-year-old heart was beating just then like a bunny in heat.  Like a drummer’s sticks in a Coltrane tune.  Like a hummingbird’s wings in a field of blossoms. 

And I realized something up there in the rocks.  I had a kind of epiphany as I scarfed down my cake and emptied a water bottle and watched a hawk cruise the valley below.  I realized something about all that weariness, all that fatigue I hauled off on sabbatical this spring.  What exhausts me isn’t the hard work.  What wearies my soul isn’t the grueling ascent, the challenging climb; it’s not even the bruising and scraping along the way.  What exhausts and wearies me is fear.  What exhausts and wearies my soul is anxiety.  I get weary when I worry.  You know what I mean?  Does anybody out there know what I mean?  I’m afraid of being ineffective, in my work perhaps, and in my most important relationships.  I’m afraid of being irrelevant: as a person of faith in a culture sprinting hard and fast in the other direction.  I’m afraid of daily situations—the encounters that challenge my core beliefs and question my wisdom and competence.  Fear just wears me out.

Now I don’t know if this rings true for any of you.  But it really hit me in the Meteoran Rocks that day.  That there’s this profound correlation between fear and fatigue, between worry and weariness.  And looking out at all that beauty, feeling all that beauty in me and around me, I let the fear go.  Just let it go.  Because that day, that gorgeous Greek day, my birthday, I heard something like the voice of Jesus say: “Don’t worry about your life.”  “Look at the birds of the air.”  “Consider the lilies of the field.”  I heard something like the voice of Jesus say: “Seek first the kingdom, the kin-dom, the beloved communion of God.”  “And all the rest will be added unto you.”  I heard something like the voice of Jesus say: “Don't worry.”  It’s all yours.  It’s always been yours.

3.

So I’m a little late in getting to Romans 8 this morning.  But it’s interesting, I think, that Paul wrote this letter from someplace near Meteora, from a Greek city not far from those great rocks.  Paul, you see, had a profound awareness of fear and the power of fear in our lives.  He appreciated how fear worked in our hearts, how it manipulated our energies and made us slaves to small dreams and ordinary desires.

Most especially, Paul understood the ways of empire in human hearts and communities.  He understood that empires control us through fear and death, through anxiety and worry.  Watch for the commercials on your favorite TV shows.  If you worry enough about crime in the neighborhood, if you obsess enough about home invaders behind every bush, you’ll buy the latest and greatest security system.  If you worry enough about finding the right partner, if you obsess enough about having the clearest skin in the office, you’ll buy the latest and greatest skin cleanser.  Paul believed that this is the way sin works.  It rules, he said, through the power and threat of corruption, death and decay.  Be afraid, it says, be very afraid.

And here’s where Paul can be very, very powerful.  And even liberating.  Because Paul says that “all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.”  And Paul says that we didn’t receive that Spirit to fall back into fear, but to live in freedom and faith.  The whole Jesus story is summed up, for Paul, in this good news.  Because God raised Jesus from the dead, because God said NO to his destruction, you and I have nothing to fear.  Nothing can control us.  No empire can make us fearful.  No sin can make us its slave.  No ruler can frighten us into small dreams or mindless consumerism.  Because God raised Jesus from the dead, nothing can separate us from God’s love.

So what Paul’s saying today, what he’s saying here in Romans 8, is that the whole creation is waiting for children who live this way.  The whole creation is longing for the revealing of the faithful and fearless children of God.  Your fearlessness, after all, liberates your voice—and makes you a musician in the band of God’s angels, a voice in the choir of God’s prophets, an instrument of God’s peace.  Your fearlessness releases you from the empire’s addiction to violence, from the economy’s addiction to consumption, from the mind’s obsession with image.  Your fearlessness gives free range to a kind of relentless hoping, a kind of courageous believing.  And the whole creation—from Gaza to Ocean Street, from Ukraine to Malaysia, from Westlake Elementary to Santa Cruz High—the whole creation is waiting for you and me.  Waiting for the fearlessness of the children of God.

4.

When I turned toward the valley that afternoon, I was greeted by a most unexpected gift.  Somewhere below, on the valley floor, a lone saxophonist had found just the right spot and was practicing, riffing, dancing across the keys of his instrument.  His song rose up into the great obelisks and then dove like doves back to the valley floor.  It was sweet and soulful, it was mystical and lovely and familiar and not familiar: at the same time.  I stood for several minutes, just stunned by my dumb luck.  All this beauty.  All this wonder.  All this music.

To be completely honest, the trail down wasn’t much easier than the trail up had been.  For starters, there didn’t seem to be a trail at all: I couldn’t find a path and I found myself jumping and sliding, and I even stumbled to my knees a couple of times.  But the saxophonist in the field guided me all the way down; his sweet song reminding me of my friends Brad Hecht and Dayan Kai and all the other musicians whose gifts bring hope and light to my life.  By day’s end, I was 52 years old, and a bloodied, bruised, happy mess of a man.

I don’t expect that I’ll be fearless forever or that you’ll never know anxiety or weariness ever again.  The truth is these things roll through our lives in cycles, like seasons; and we know they’ll always be with us.

But I want you to hear Paul’s testimony today, just the same.  And I want you to know that this gospel is coming your way, and coming and coming and coming.  Jesus is raised from the dead for you and for me and for the whole creation.  God says NO to the power of destruction and corruption and decay.  God says NO to bombing Gaza and shooting planes out of the sky.  God says NO to Madison Avenue’s strange standards of beauty and power and plenty.  And God says NO to our little ideas about who’s cool and who’s hip and who’s in and who’s out.  The gospel of freedom is coming our way.  That's the Christian message.  That's the surprising, amazing good news of Jesus.  And we have nothing, in the end, to fear, because all this is ours.  All this love.  All this beauty.  All this creation.  All this music.  It’s all ours.  Always has been and always will be.  And nothing can take it from us; nothing can ever separate you or me from the love of God.  Amen.