The Rev. Joanne Sanders
Stanford Memorial Church
November 25, 2007
WHAT IS A GOOD LIFE?
“It is cynicism and fear that freeze life;
it is faith that thaws it out, releases it, and sets it free.”
~Harry Emerson Fosdick
Wherever you have been and with whomever you have been these last few days to pay tribute to the Thanksgiving holiday, it seems to have a way with us, giving us pause to stop in our often relentless and full lives to exercise some purposeful gratitude as opposed to forgetfulness. Thanksgiving is, after all, about remembering. It is easy, on some level to feel good at this time of year. It is also easy to feel bad, especially if we haven’t sufficient reason to feel good.
Speaking of, I found myself remembering a bit of the history of the Thanksgiving holiday this past Wednesday evening. Kathy and I visited family on the east coast and stood at the sight of the Pilgrims Monument in Massachusetts for its annual lighting. What came to mind was something I read recently about Pilgrim descendant friends who go into hiding this time of year. “I really don’t like the Pilgrims” writes one, “for just because they were cheerful in tough times, and thankful, and worked hard, and all of that, everybody thinks we should do the same. It was an ill wind that blew the Mayflower into Plymouth Harbor.”
When these moods hit, and they do or they will; when we are not grateful or thankful or happy on cue; when the calendar and culture tell us to be pleased, happy, thankful, and joyful whether we are or not; when we remember the advice of our mothers to always be nice or sincere or polite…these are moments when we risk forgetting in fact the context for Israel in the text from Deuteronomy this morning that Elaine read for us. Life is good isn’t it? And we deserve it, don’t we? Following on the heels of being delivered out of the wilderness, Moses is warning Israel about the temptations of being settled and well off. When you get settled, says Moses, and you are rich and get complacent, self sufficient, self-congratulatory, remember an earlier time, remember those dangerous times when you and your family didn’t have enough. Remember that what you learned to do was live by God’s promises of
sustenance and well being that you could not store up. But what will you do for us now God?
I don’t think I’m alone this morning when I suggest that we live in a time when as the great theologian and preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick said, “It is cynicism and fear that freeze life.” In other words, we are living in a time of vulnerability, a time of testing of our capacity, and God’s. We are living in a give in, or give up culture as we are bombarded with the realities of the moment from Iraq to Darfur to global warming to Africa to New Orleans amidst the sheer arrogance of leaders that can’t seem to get it right. As I listened to one preacher last Sunday so aptly put it: “we are so tempted to disengage - where we’d much prefer to be watching reruns of Grey’s Anatomy or lay on our crumpled beds reading books on spirituality and simply throw up our hands.”
I think it’s fair to say it is a time of seducing amnesia. Forget who we are, where we are, where we’ve been, and what yet lies ahead. Some religious scholars have come to call it the murmuring tradition. We kvetch and complain. A little moaning there, a little groaning here. We all know about this murmuring tradition because we’re a part of it. We’re charter members, vaguely remembering great things, longing for great things to come, yet right now perhaps pretty annoyed, pretty irritated, pretty unsatisfied. More or less resigned or tempted to be so.
“It is cynicism and fear that freeze life; it is faith that thaws it out, releases it, and sets it free,” concluded Emerson Fosdick.
Let me distill this a bit further. Some warn in times like these against “cheap hope, where hope is not merely the optimistic view that somehow everything will turn out all right in the end if everyone just does as we do. Hope is the more rugged, the more muscular view that even if things don’t turn out all right and aren’t all right, we endure through and beyond the times that disappoint or threaten to destroy us.”
The narratives of Holy Scripture such as Deuteronomy and Matthew are meditations on faithful living in contexts that want to seduce. Their appearance in our lectionary today is profoundly pertinent to our time and place with God. Despite our supply and provisions, are we still anxious? Out of, through or in the wilderness, now what? What is God doing? Where is God? Who is God?
Everyone knows, liberal and conservative, that ours is a time of cheapening and thinning and forgetting and accommodating, and dare I say disengaging, until our power to be freely and faithfully human is too difficult and too demanding. A place like this – Memorial Church – is a place where we reflect on and decide to be differently human.
Remember, even Jesus was addressed by voices that mean us no good. Even we, like Jesus have been out in the wilderness of confusion with few resources. He did know something about anxiety. We, like Jesus, often are seemingly empty-handed but in fact are not empty handed. He had the whole, deep resources of faith, memories that are old and trusted and reliable. He was not out in the wilderness alone, but in the company of many ancient, trusted, faithful voices that told him who he was. Jesus was never robbed of his identity or his vocation. He, along with his disciples and friends, endeavored to build a new humanity of those who know who they are, who are deep for engagement, and who are prepared to be with Jesus in his work.
So what, after all is a good life? What can be learned from these lessons of Deuteronomy, of Matthew? What is the point? Allow me to give you 3 pithy suggestions that I hope will get you through the end of this holiday weekend and perhaps throughout your life, however short or long that may be.
1. Remember to remember. Even the children of Israel had forgotten the facts of their oppression, and worse, forgotten the facts of their liberation. They forgot to remember God who had delivered them out of Egypt in the first place. Remember not only the blessings you’ve received, but remember even the worst moments, losses, sadness, even the worst day of your life. You, we, are still here, able to remember. We get through the trauma, the loss and God is still here, beginning, middle and end. How we got here we may never know, but we are still here. Remember to remember to thank God.
2. A good life is a life of gratitude, a work in progress. People have mistaken all kinds of things before and after Jesus as the end of the world. But we are still here, still able to live and breathe. God has not brought us this far to abandon us in the wilderness of our despair and disappointment. Now comes the bread of life, because this good God still gives. There is no cheap food, cheap grace, cheap hope. It is given to us who hang in with ancient memories that withstand the pressures of thinning, of forgetting, of disengagement. A good life is grateful and will always be a work in progress.
3. Stay engaged. With God, with one another, with the world. In the final analysis, the ultimate command is to serve the great social vision of the gospel, the scandalous gospel, because the vision of God, of a good life, will only become reality when there is enough human engagement. The context in the biblical narratives today is when God’s people are fat, sassy and guaranteed. Moses says engage what you know; don’t test what you do not know. Jesus says don’t worry about missing out; pay attention. Engage the core commands. Love God and neighbor. What Moses understood, what Jesus understood, what we all need to understand is that the vision of God, a truly good life, is not a vision of accumulation so that those who have the most when they die win. Inequities of knowledge, provision and privilege must be curbed by a practice of neighborliness that knows every day that rich and poor, haves and have nots are in it together and must find ways of being together as neighbors in common. A community of peace will come only when the vicious cycles of violent accumulation are broken.
A good life is one that remains engaged with God, with others, and seeks to do the right and generous thing, always and everywhere.
Amen.
Notes and acknowledgements:
Inscribing the Text: Prayers and Sermons; Walter Brueggeman; 2004.
The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What’s So Good About the Good News?; Peter J. Gomes; 2007
Strength for the Journey; Peter J. Gomes; 2003
The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor
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