First Parish Unitarian UniversalistTraveling Light
A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Diane Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
November 16, 2003
In the passage I read earlier from the book of Luke in the Christians scriptures (Luke 12:22-31), Jesus is telling his followers not to worry so much. “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”
“…do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear…consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith!…For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
At the end of a similar passage in the book of Mark, Jesus says, “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matt 6:34).
One day this week, I began the morning with that awful, dreadful feeling, familiar to many, that there was no way everything that I had to do could get done. I was borrowing trouble from tomorrow, but I couldn’t help it. I felt so tense, I knew that I must get some relief or the day would be horrible. So, even though I didn’t have the time, I sat down in a chair with Quiet Mind, a book of daily reflections I’ve been working my way through, not every day, but pretty regularly.
I opened to my bookmark at the next reflection. The title was “Weariness” and the opening quotation, by Eric Hoffer, was “Our greatest weariness comes from work not done.”
I read on, “So, there you are, facing the Mountain of Too Much in the form of a desk piled high with so much work that it is difficult to estimate how long you’ll need to finish it. This is a moment for a Stillpoint at the bottom of the Mountain of Too Much.
“Take a deep breath,” I read. “Another. Just be still for a moment. What is past is past…let it go.”
Then, it suggested that I invoke something spiritually meaningful, talk assuredly to myself, and count my blessings. I did all three. It didn’t take long.
I looked up from my book and out the windows of the room where I sat. In those few moments of quiet, I saw a nuthatch, a chickadee and a downy woodpecker in the trees behind our house. I felt blessed, and grateful.
“And then,” I read on, “and then start climbing that Mountain of Too Much—a little more confident, a little less weary.” (Quiet Mind: One Minute Retreats from a Busy World, by David Kundtz, pp. 201-2).
That Stillpoint and those birds made my day! And now I was ready for it. I felt like a new person and taking that time for reflection only took five minutes! It turned out to be a fine day. It didn’t all get done, but what really mattered did get done.
In a delightful new novel with an odd-sounding name Secret Life of Bees (by Sue Monk Kidd), there’s a wonderful conversation about what really matters. It’s between the point-of-view character, a teen-aged girl—Lily— who has run far away from home, and the wise woman who has taken her in, a woman named August, whose sisters were named June and May. Their mother, you see, liked to name her children after the month of their birth. May is emotionally unstable, frequently overcome by sadness at other people’s pain; eventually in the story, May commits suicide when the world just gets too sad for her.
Anyway, the girl Lily says to August, “There’s one thing I don’t get.”
“What’s that?”
“How come if your favorite color is blue, you painted your house so pink?”
She laughed. “That was May’s doing. She was with me the day I went to the paint store to pick out the color. I had a nice tan color in mind, but May latched on to this sample called Caribbean Pink. She said it made her feel like dancing a Spanish flamenco. I thought, “Well, this is the tackiest color I’ve ever seen, and we’ll have half the town talking about us, but if it can lift May’s heart like that, I guess she ought to live inside it.”
“All this time I just figured you liked pink,” I said.
She laughed again. “You know, some things don’t matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person’s heart—now that matters. The whole problem with people is—“
“They don’t know what matters and what doesn’t,” I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so.
“I was gonna say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don’t choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? I love May, but it was still so hard to choose Caribbean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.” (pp. 146-7).
Of course, August is right, we often know in our heart of hearts what matters but we don’t always choose it. But, I think many of us also feel that Lily is right: we live day in and day out not knowing what matters most. We live on the surface of life.
This past Thursday, I had a message from the place where I was supposed to get my haircut on Friday: please call back. Well, I could guess what that was about, and it didn’t make me happy: They wanted to re-schedule my appointment because Amy, who has cut my hair for the past ten years, ever since she, being the newest hairdresser in the shop, took me as a walk-in when I was new to town, had decided not to come back from her maternity leave as scheduled.
Now, you may or may not know this, but I am very loyal, or perhaps I’m just a creature of habit. Anyway, right before her maternity leave, Amy cut my hair as short as possible so that I could go the entire eight weeks without a hair cut, and I scheduled my next cut for the day she returned!
Part of me didn’t blame her for extending her leave. It’s hard to leave your newborn to go back to work. I could surely let someone else cut my hair, just this once. I like Amy. I called back.
“It’s about your appointment with Amy tomorrow. Have you heard her news?” Something told me this wasn’t going to be happy. “Her baby passed away. We thought you should know before you come in.”
Amy talked straight through my cut. One of the things she said was, “When something like this happens, you find out what really matters.”
As the Gospel of Luke tells it, Jesus is quite clear about what really matters. Just preceding the “lilies of the field” lesson, there’s the Parable of the Rich Fool. (Luke 12:13-21).
Someone in the crowd had said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” (According to Jewish law, the elder received double the younger’s share).
Jesus said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life doesn’t consist in the abundance of possessions.”
Now, that must have been upsetting to hear: Jesus didn’t challenge the in equitable distribution of resources in Jewish law, and tells the man he shouldn’t covet even what is rightfully his?!!
That said, Jesus then told the crowd a parable, a story about a rich man whose land had produced so abundantly he decided to tear down his barns and build larger ones, so that he could hoard it all, eat, drink and be merry.
“But, God says, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
So, the rich man died. What good did his riches do him then? Turns out that he had invested in the wrong thing. People who store up their treasures for themselves don’t know what true riches are.
In his book called The Good Book, Christian preacher and teacher at Harvard Peter Gomes explains,
“Wealth, for Jesus, is a subordinate good, a means rather than an end. The trick to moral, faithful living is…not to be deluded by the tangible as a substitute for the imperishable. Upon those who have wealth there is a burden of responsibility to use it wisely and not only for themselves. In fact, how one uses wealth in this life will have significant consequences in the life to come, and that is important because the life to come lasts longer than this one.” (p. 299).
“To be ‘rich toward God,’” Gomes says, “is to realize that the only wealth that counts is the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. Wealth is thus neither having nor getting. Wealth for the Christian begins with receiving that which God is generous enough to give, and from that wealth all charity proceeds.” (p. 310).
After telling the parable of the rich man, Jesus turns to his disciples, who were not wealthy, and warns against worrying, as we’ve already heard.
Here we see an interesting juxtaposition: in the parable, Jesus preaches responsible investing (as opposed to hoarding in order to live the “eat, drink, and be merry” life) and to his rag-tag disciples he says, “don’t worry. God will provide. You gain nothing by worrying. Seek the kingdom and all these things will be yours as well.”
I think they are related; it’s no accident that these lessons follow one after the other. They remind me of another of Jesus’ stories, which I think explains the meaning of being “rich toward God” in another way.
It’s the story about the great judgment day when all the nations are before God and he separates those who will have eternal punishment from those who will have eternal life. The latter, the righteous, God says, will inherit the kingdom because “when I was hungry you gave me food, when I was thirsty you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ But, the righteous don’t remember doing any of that and so he explains, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these [my brethren], you did it to me.” (Matt 25:31-46).
When you share what you have been given with those in need, you are being rich toward God, because God is in each of them, Jesus would say. Everyone has something to share, for there are many in need only of a kind word. Each and every one of us, rich or poor or in between, can choose to lift another person’s heart. Like August said, “Now, that matters!”
But, Jesus also said, quoting the Torah, “love your neighbor as yourself.” This suggests that we ought to also choose to lift our own hearts. And not just as a secondary bi-product of helping someone else. In and of itself, it matters that we show love and care toward ourselves, to do what really matters for us, too. The best way to travel is light, carrying with us only what matters most.
That’s what the Time for All Ages today was all about. We wondered if it was too “adult” for children, but given how busy and possibly over-scheduled many of them are, it seemed that a lesson about knowing what really matters might be important for them, too.
In the original version of that exercise, which is to my knowledge anonymous, it was a philosophy professor who stood before his class, not a DRE before a group of children. Without saying a word, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous "yes."
The professor then produced a can of beer and a pot of tea from under the table and poured the entire contents of both into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.
Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things--your family, your children, your health, your friends, your favorite passions--things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.
"The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else--the small stuff. If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.
The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house, and fix the disposal.
"Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beverages represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a beer or a cup of tea with a friend."
So may it be! Amen!