Under / Over
Luke 7:1-10
There is an illustration that I want to use this morning, but first I have to apologize for it. It comes from a fictional time; such as was idyllically depicted on television programs like the Andy Griffith Show. Some of you will remember a character named Otis, the town drunk, who was both lovable and harmless. Every weekend, after a week of working as a glue dipper at the furniture factory, Otis would get drunk, walk to the jail, lock himself in his reserved cell, and sleep it off. For Otis and the rest of Mayberry, public intoxication was both predictable and under control.
While I will admit that I liked the character, whose last name was after all “Campbell”, I also admit that I was raised by a functional alcoholic. I want to assure you there is nothing funny or harmless about public intoxication. So, by telling this story, I am not recommending or encouraging binge drinking, excessive drinking, or drinking at all.
So, why am I telling the story, if it is so awful? This story uses a temporary condition in an accessible way to illustrate what is unfortunately a more permanent problem in humanity. We are more likely to recognize and acknowledge the problem if we think it is only temporary. We are more likely to deal with the problem if we think the solution is both predictable and under control. And now the story.
A drunk was staggering across a bridge over a quiet river one night when he ran into a friend. The two of them leaned over the guard rail of the bridge and began chatting for a while.
“What’s that down there?” asked the drunk suddenly. “That’s the moon,” said his friend.
The drunk looked again, shook his head in disbelief and said, “Okay, okay. But how did I get way up here?”
The late Anthony de Mello, a Spanish Jesuit priest who served in India, collected and published that story. We know, apparently even when inebriated, that the moon is supposed to be high in the sky over us. So when the drunk saw the moon under him, it could only mean that he had himself somehow gotten high over it.
We can laugh at that story because we know that this misunderstanding is temporary. When the drunk sobers up, he will figure out that what he saw under him was a reflection of the moon, and not the moon itself. His understanding of over and under will be made right once again.
Most of the time, we are pretty good at dealing with the concepts of over and under. This is something we learn at a very early age. Gravity has a lot to do with that understanding, as it helps us keep firm footing under us, and helps us to avoid possibly hitting our heads on things over us. But when we get “over and under” wrong, it can speak volumes about our human condition.
One of the misunderstandings that is popular online is the saying, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you will land among the stars.” I am usually pretty easy going and accepting, but this saying feels like grit in my shoes. If the moon is up, then the stars are way, way up – literally light years farther away than the moon. In other words, the stars are over the moon, the moon is under the stars. If you miss the moon, you are still nowhere near any of the stars. This is just one small example of how we can get over and under wrong.
As a culture, we may need to go back to the classic Jan and Stan Berenstain book, “Inside Outside Upside Down.” Many of you have read this book to your children or grandchildren. Using only 23 different words, we learn about inside, and outside, and upside down. We can even learn some complexity in how those terms relate to each other, as the little bear in the story can, all at the same time, be inside a box, upside down, while outside the house.
That is important to know because over and under are not always absolutes. Something can be over one thing but under another thing. That is both true in physical relationships, and well as in social relationships. And this is important to know because there is some of that complexity in our reading for today. We have a Roman centurion who is under the authority of the Emperor, and over the local soldiers and citizenry.
To many people, a Roman centurion is like the moon above them, with authority over all persons they come into contact with. If a Roman centurion tells you to do something, you do it or risk jail or death. It doesn’t matter if you are the local priest, a high priest, or even the Roman-appointed governor, you do what the centurion tells you to do.
The centurion knows he has this power over others because he is under the authority of the Emperor. But in our reading, the centurion discovers that, despite all his power and authority, there is nothing he can do to help a favored dying servant. And since there is nothing he can do, the centurion seeks someone who seems to have the power needed to bring healing and life. To recap: The centurion is over the people, under the Emperor, upside down in his problem to get help inside for his servant.
A request is made through channels to have Jesus come to the centurion’s home to heal the servant. The priests tell Jesus that even though the centurion is over them, he was under no obligation to build them a synagogue, so they believe the centurion has an inside track for turning the servant’s life right-side up again.
When Jesus was almost at the home, word comes again. The centurion has figured out that he is under the level of worthiness, and that Jesus is over him when it comes to God. The confession that the centurion makes is more than just an observation about the lines of authority and command. The confession is that Jesus has authority over demons, and sickness, and the powers which can take all of us under.
Walter Wink, the late professor at Union Theological School, wrote a series of books examining this authority over the elemental powers. We are all under the elemental powers, but Jesus as God was over these powers. The centurion confessed that Jesus is over the elemental powers that we are all under. The centurion, in a way that Jesus recognized even as most of us did not, confessed that Jesus is God. That is why Jesus replied, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”
Faith includes getting the under and over relationship right. We are under the sentence of suffering and death, upside down on the outside of the Garden of Eden. The wages for our sins is death. Christian faith comes, and our hearts are strangely warmed, when we accept that we are under the grace of Jesus Christ, who is Lord over all.
Until we get that part right, we may be little more than drunks, inebriated by what we believe to be our mastery over the scriptures, looking at the reflection of the moon below us and thinking that we are over the moon. Until we have a sober relationship with God that acknowledges that we are sinners who cannot save ourselves, we may think we are inside and right-side up when we are actually outside and upside down.
This understanding and complexity of under and over is part of our celebrations this weekend. It is important that we get this part right, as well.
This weekend we remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Part of our remembrances will center on the American flag. There will be flags placed on graves. There will be parades led by the flag. And we will sing, or at least try to sing, a song about that flag, which played an important role in how we as a nation understand under and over.
Our history as Americans began with a conflict focused on under and over. The British crown believed it was over the colonists, while the colonists came to this country to get out from under the British crown. We see this struggle reflected in the language of the Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution.
The argument was centered on the divine right of kings to govern, which James the First claimed for himself as his authority to be over the people. Americans claimed that the right to govern came from the consent of the people, and expressly rejected the divine right of kings over them. And since that beginning, we have struggled as a nation with the tension that comes with the complexity of the authority of the government over the people, while the people have authority over who can be the government.
One of the songs that expresses this complexity is the National Anthem. It is based on a poem written by Francis Scott Key, and set to a triumphant tune which can be a challenge to sing.
The poem itself is four verses long, though we usually only sing the first verse. The rest of the poem makes it clear that the flag waving through the battle is a sign of victory. Yet the victory it signals is less about Americans winning over another country, than it is about God ruling over our hearts. In the mind of Francis Scott Key, the flag is a sign of God’s calling to us. But unlike many of the calls in politics today, it is not a calling to be over other countries, but instead a calling to be under the authority of God.
While it was not true for all the Founding Fathers, it was the truth for many, if not most, of the people who came to settle this country that the true victory in life is found when we are under the grace of Jesus Christ, who is Lord over all.
The Founders did not assume that democracy was the best form of government. Many of the earlier papers in The Federalist take seriously the arguments of those who held that human nature is so unruly that only a fool would allow the masses to rule themselves. This is why the church was to be separate from the government. As Benjamin Franklin said it, "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom." And the source of that virtue and character could only come from those who lived under the grace of Jesus Christ, who is Lord over all.
This sense of living under the grace of Jesus Christ is reflected in the closing of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address: It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Our next hymn is my attempt to take the poem of the National Anthem, and to set it to a more sing-able tune, while also reclaiming its emphasis that we are called to live under the grace of Jesus Christ, who is Lord over all. This is the path forward towards making us truly “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Hymn “O Say, Can You See?”