Sunday January 20th 2008

SERMON BY

THE REV. PAUL MULLEN

AT

SCARBORO UNITED CHURCH, CALGARY

JANUARY 20, 2008

“SEEKING THE WISDOM WE NEED”

Ron Ferguson, a columnist for the Glasgow Herald, (Monday 14th January 2008, “Hell Hath No Fury Like the Modern Citizen’s Temper”) tells of a recent incident at a shopping mall:

“I'm standing beside my car . . . A vehicle comes along driven by a man with a woman in the passenger seat.  Well-dressed, they are probably in their 30s. A child is strapped in to a seat in the back. The car stops beside me, just behind another vehicle with an elderly man at the wheel. He is checking both ways, and sees that another car is moving down the intersection. He waits until it passes. This short pause is too much for the couple in the car behind. The driver winds down his window and issues a volley of foul-mouthed abuse. The woman joins in. The child innocently inhales the toxins. Then the elderly driver moves off, pursued by the raging, finger-jabbing dragons. Welcome to chic 21st-century hell.

We are not at war, though our soldiers are busy in foreign fields. Advances in public health and in the National Health Service mean that, on average, we are living much longer than previous generations. Most of us have disposable income beyond the dreams of the majority of humankind, past and present. We can travel on a holiday to places unreached by medieval princes. Yet we rage, and rage again.

Everybody has their own anger threshold, but the national threshold seems to be getting

lower and lower. Held back by the old lady with the shopping trolley? Barge her. Mad

about slow service at the till when you're in a hurry? Give the harassed wage-slave a volley

of vituperative insults. You'll feel better for this aggressive manifestation of your inner

being. By ‘letting it all hang out’ in glorious Technicolor, you'll have transferred

successfully a good part of your personal frustrations on to the hapless assistant.

There are things worth raging about, such as the fate of millions of children needlessly

dying of hunger and disease in a world that has vast resources. But petulant foot-stamping

alone won't change a thing for these children. The channelling of rage against injustice into

serious moral and political choices: now that would represent emotional growing up of a

transformative kind.”

I want to tell you one more Nasrudin story if you don’t mind, and then maybe we will set him aside for a while. Nasrudin, for those who are not yet familiar with him, was a Sufi mystic, a clown prince if you will, or a buffoon, depending on your point of view. Nasrudin was a poor man who lived in a small town. One day the Incredible Mullah was seen riding his donkey as fast as he could down the main street. Donkeys are not race horses and prefer to walk unless goaded into a jog. Nasrudin was astride his donkey spurring it on to greater and greater speed.

One of his disciples saw him coming and called out as he approached, “Nasrudin, where are you going in such a hurry?”  As he trotted off into the distance Nasrudin called back to him, “I’m trying . . to find . . . my donkey!”

Where will we find the wisdom we need? It seems wisdom has something to do with slowing down, even stopping, getting off the donkey and focussing on what we have right in front of us.

I have always been a bit of a speed demon. I like things to move along quickly. I get frustrated when things seem to bog down. If I had the choice between watching a Formula One Grand Prix race or a chess match it would be no contest.

Having said that you might wonder how I ended up working in the church? The church, after all, moves at a pace somewhere between a snail and a . . . glacier!

Sometimes I wonder myself. Yet the slowness of the church has been trying to teach me something over the years, and I think I am starting to get it. The church is trying to teach me where and how to find my donkey. At first I thought I was just getting old when I started to appreciate the slowness that the church can offer.

Every Sunday is a chance to get off the donkey and sit for a while and contemplate a greater wisdom – a wisdom not necessarily contained in the passionate braying from the pulpit! In the Holy Word, in the prayers, in the hymns and anthems, the music, the quiet and the candles we hear voices of those who have found that missing donkey. Who know that life is not a race to the end but a journey to the centre. A journey with companions, sojourners, a journey of becoming, a journey of belonging, a journey of enabling, a journey of being salt for the earth.

But before we get too captivated by the image of being salt for the earth, perhaps recalling past sermons or studies that spoke of salt as a spice lending flavour to life, or as a preservative keeping the valuable from spoiling, or as one of nature’s healing substances. Before you get carried away with thoughts like that or about being salty Christians, let me pass on a new learning for me about salt.

Two Sociologists, Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, wrote a book about five years ago called Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels.  The Synoptic Gospels are Matthew, Mark and Luke. Every time I pick it up I have trouble putting it down. It sheds so much light on aspects of the Bible we think we know.

They point out that the typical household in Jesus’ day was more like three one-room buildings facing each other in a “U” shape around a central courtyard. The open part of that “U” would be closed with a wall of sun-dried brick.

When Malina and Rohrbaugh comment on the first verse read today, “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out and trampled underfoot,” here is what they have to say:

5:13: "The earth is an outdoor, earthen oven (Job 28:5; Ps 12:6) found near the house. The ideal householder had a house fronted by a walled courtyard that contained (1) an earthen oven with (2) a double stove, (3) a millstone for grinding, (4) a dung heap, along with (5) chickens and (6) cattle (m. Baba Bathra 3,5).

The earthen oven used the dung as fuel. The dung heap was salted, and salt plates were used as a catalyst to make the dung burn. Salt loses its saltiness when the exhausted plates no longer serve to facilitate burning. Unlike Matthew, Luke specifies that salt without saltiness it is "fit neither for the earth nor the dunghill; men throw it away" (Luke 14: 34- 35).

I have to admit that I am captivated by the idea of salt as a catalyst to help the dung burn. For me it means that Jesus is teaching us four things:  First, we are not the dung. When you think of some people with very low self-esteem, or when any of us get depressed by life and its circumstances, it is incredibly important to realize that we are not the dung. The second thing we learn here is that we are not the fire. We don’t have to produce the fire. It is provided for us, it is there. We don’t have to try to burn all the dung in life by ourselves. Isn’t that a relief? The fire will be there but it does not come from us.

The third thing Jesus wants us to learn has to do with our meaning and purpose in life. He sees us as the catalyst – we enable the dung to burn. You may recall from high school chemistry that sometimes it takes a third chemical to make two other chemicals work together. That’s what a catalyst does. It takes two or more aspects of life that aren’t working together and brings them into a right relationship with each other.

Is this what Jesus is telling us about our purpose in life? As salt for the earth we bring the fire and the dung into a right relationship and what happens? Energy is released and bread happens! Isn’t that exciting? Doesn’t it just make you want to jump into the oven and enable the fire and dung to get together and help the baking happen – not just bread but cookies and muffins and croissants and apple pie and baked alaska and . . . and . . .

Which brings us to the fourth little teaching . . . “But,” says Jesus. And you know the catch is coming. “but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.” Or as Malina and Rohrbough put it, “Salt loses its saltiness when the exhausted plates no longer serve to facilitate burning.”

Put yet another way, don’t burn out. Keep your saltiness. When the fire burns too hot and your saltiness is getting used up too quickly and becomes exhausted, it’s time to slow down and get off your donkey! Relax a bit, meditate, pray, worship, walk, spend some time with the family, take a holiday, go fishing . . . whatever it takes to keep yourself in a right relationship.

Jesus also points out that we become exhausted, we burn out because we don’t keep the commandments we have been given. “Therefore,” he says, “ whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven” – as salt you will lose your saltiness.

The commandments we have been given, the teachings and practices of our faith at their core are about being in a right relationship with God and God’s creation, with others and with our own true nature. God’s wisdom is about keeping a right relationship between all the dung that accumulates in life and the flame of the Holy Spirit to produce the energy we need for ourselves and for those loaves of bread. God’s wisdom is about loving life into fulfillment.

Jesus puts it this way, “but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” The kingdom of heaven being the bread of right relationships. Thanks be to God.   Amen.