Sermon preached February 28, 2016
Texts: I
Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9
Paula
Cole, “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15SIu84TDSQ
This
is a song about disappointment. “Where
is my John Wayne? Where is my prairie
sun? Where have all the cowboys gone?” This morning’s readings are also about
disappointment, though they are challenging texts to work with.
Let’s
do some work with them. In I
Corinthians, Paul is working with some stories from the Hebrew Scriptures, what
we often call “The Old Testament.” Here
the disappointment seems to belong to God.
Some of the Hebrews who were with Moses did not live up to expectations
so they were struck down in the wilderness.
Some engaged in sexual immorality and 23,000 fell in one day. Others were destroyed by serpents.
Yikes. God, it would seem, has a
particularly harsh way of dealing with disappointment, though I think we need
to do a little more thinking here.
Paul’s
point is not that you better watch out because God is going to get you. His point is this. Think about people who were with Moses, with
Moses! They must have had some
incredible experiences of God. Yet even
some of them lost their way. “Take care,
people,” Paul seems to be saying. “So if
you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.” Paul is writing to a group of people who were
often very proud. It was as if nothing
bad would happen to them, they were so spiritually attuned. There would be no challenges, struggles,
disappointments. Paul is trying to tell
them something else. Sometimes things
get hard, but God is with us. One side
comment. I think verse 13 is often used
as a justification for the idea that “God never gives you more than you can
handle.” I don’t think that way of
putting things is helpful. The
particular context here is about falling away from faith. There is nothing that happens that you
cannot, with God, make it through. The
idea that God never gives you more than you can handle is too superficial
sometimes when people are in the midst of tragedy.
In
some ways, Luke is a good corrective to too superficial a treatment of the idea
that God never gives someone more than they can handle, and it provides some
fodder for deeper thinking about tragic events.
Jesus is presented with two tragic events, cruel treatment of Galileans
by Pilate, and the fall of a tower. Some
seemed to be saying to Jesus that such suffering must have occurred because of
how terrible these people were. Jesus
rejects that, rejects the idea that God was punishing people, or even testing
people through such events. Instead,
Jesus invites those who are coming to him with questions to think about their
own lives. Then he tells a story about
disappointment.
The
owner of a fig tree finds no fruit on it and orders his gardener to cut it
down. It has produced no fruit in three
years. This man is disappointed in the
tree. The gardener, on the other hand,
though he may share in the disappointment, urges patience. More can be done – a little digging, a little
manure. Let’s see what may happen.
Disappointment. It is part of our experience of life and it
is a challenging emotion. Experiences
sometimes let us down. Other people
sometimes let us down. We let ourselves
down. We disappoint others. We disappoint God. All of these are dimensions of
disappointment, and in the rest of today’s sermon I want to dance with some of
them just a little, explore them with you.
How as people of faith do we deal with disappointment? My focus will be on our own experiences of being
disappointed, though I will touch on other dimensions as well. Disappointment will happen. The super-spiritual Corinthians were wrong to
think otherwise. How do we deal with it
in ways that help us grow in faith, hope and love? Where is God in the midst of our
disappointments? Those who came to Jesus
were wrong in thinking that disappointment and tragedy were somehow always the
result of people’s own mistakes or sins.
Disappointment happens even to the nicest and best people.
I
have shared with you before a particularly disappointing time in my life. Following my first pastorate in Roseau, MN I
went back to school to earn a Ph.D. I
really hoped to move into teaching. I
love to read. I enjoy writing. There was something very attractive about
academic work to me. My family and I
moved to Dallas, TX. I earned my Ph.D. and
there were no teaching positions. A
friend with whom I graduated – same program, same degree, a man who grew up in
Nigeria, was hired in a tenure-track position at Wake Forest. I ended up being part of a pastoral staff on
the Iron Range working with seven United Methodist Churches, most of them
rather small. I may re-visit some of
this with you in a couple of weeks when I preach on jealousy. For now, let me simply say I was
disappointed.
So
what good is disappointment, if it is good at all? Disappointment is a good mirror emotion, by
that I mean it reflects something important.
Disappointment reflects that we care, that we dream, that we risk. It is good that we care and dream and take
some risks. Disappointment is not really
a good in itself, but it says something good about us – that we continue to
care, that we continue to dream, that we continue to take some risks.
Rabbi
Harold Kushner a few years ago wrote a book about Moses. He called it Overcoming Life’s
Disappointments. As he often is,
Rabbi Kushner was wise about disappointment.
Nobody gets everything he or she
yearns for: I look at the world and see three sorts of people: those who dream
boldly even as they realize that a lot of their dreams will not come true;
those who dream more modestly, and fear that even their modest dreams may not
be realized; and those who are afraid to dream at all, lest they be
disappointed. I would wish for more
people who dreamed boldly and trusted their powers of resilience to see them
through inevitable disappointments. (3-4)
Kushner
is wise, but I think he misses one possibility for working with
disappointment. There are times when we
should look at our expectations, and manage them. Sometimes we set ourselves up for needless
disappointment. In his book Kushner
identifies five elements of a complete life: family, friends, faith, work, and
the satisfaction of making a difference (136).
He then goes on to say: It is
probably unrealistic to expect perfection, not from Moses, not from Einstein,
not from ourselves. It is probably too
much to expect ourselves or anyone to be equally competent in all five
dimensions of the complete life. But as
a friend of mine likes to say, “You can have it all, just not all at the same
time.” (152) There is a new thought
here.
Sometimes
we need to adjust our expectations a bit.
I think this is particularly true in our most intimate
relationships. Sometimes we come to
expect that our partner will just know what we want or need, and are disappointed
when they don’t. In the course of a
long-term relationship, not everything will always be wiz, bang, pop. Sometimes they can be, but not always. Sometimes the cowboys are just gone. We live with the tension of dreaming, caring,
hoping, risking, and of having some expectations that are rooted in reality.
I
also think that this dynamic matters to the church. I remember when a woman with whom I was
confirmed was telling me at a class reunion how she left her church because the
pastor really wasn’t sensitive enough after her father died. Now the person may have been really
insensitive and her response appropriate, but it did cause me to think about
her expectations. I appreciate the
Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. When
she holds classes for new members, she speaks last and says: This community will disappoint them. It’s a matter of when, not if. We will let them down or I’ll say something
stupid and hurt their feelings. I think
invite them on this side of their inevitable disappointment to decide if
they’ll stick around after it happens.
If they choose to leave when we don’t meet their expectations, they
won’t get to see how the grace of God can come it and fill the holes left by
our community’s failure, and that’s just too beautiful and real to miss. (Pastrix, 54-55)
Sometimes
we need to manage our expectations, yet we always need to care, to dream, to
take some risks if we are to live fully, if we are to follow Jesus
faithfully. We will be disappointed
along the way. We will disappoint others
along the way. Yet, with God’s grace and
a caring community around us, we can learn and grow. We can understand ourselves better by
understanding our disappointments. We
will often find that on the other side of disappointment, if we don’t allow it
to close us off, to shut us down in discouragement, on the other side of
disappointment, there are wonderful, and beautiful and unexpected things that
happen. Were it not for coming back to
Minnesota and being a pastor on the Iron Range, I would have missed meeting
some remarkable people, two of whom visited here last Sunday morning. My Pd.D. work was personally rewarding, a
wonderful time of growth.
In
2008, I was part of the election process for bishop in The United Methodist
Church. I had been your pastor for only
three years at the time. I did well in
the election, for a time having the most votes, though not enough for
election. Then I stalled, and made the
determination, when the election had come down to two people, that the momentum
was not going my way. I withdrew as a
candidate. That was a challenging
moment, a disappointment. I also know
that I disappointed some of you along the way, not in not getting elected, but
it being part of that election process.
On the other side of that disappointment, we have done some beautiful
and wonderful things together, and I am deeply grateful to you and to God.
This
summer, we will be in that same place again.
I have been endorsed by the Minnesota United Methodist Church as a
candidate for bishop. This time there
are four open positions, and I expect there will be fifteen or so candidates.
There
will be no way to avoid disappointment this summer. If I am not elected, I know I will feel
disappointment. When you put yourself
out there, it is nice to have people say “yes.”
If I am elected, I will be disappointed.
We continue to do beautiful and wonderful things together, moved by
God’s Spirit, and while I know you will continue to do such things if I am
gone, I will miss not being a part of them.
And I really do not want to disappoint you. It is a mirror of how much I care. There are these two dreams fighting it out in
me. I have some gifts to help the church
as a bishop at a critical time for our denomination. It is a dream. I dream of this church continuing to grow in
vitality, in reaching out to others, in welcoming others in, and I am delighted
to be a part of it.
So
I move forward. We move forward. Driving to the Twin Cities this week to
preach at the chapel of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, I was
listening to the recently released CD by Lucinda Williams, “The Ghosts of
Highway 20.” The final song is “Faith
and Grace.” Just a little more faith and grace/Is all that I need. Yes.
So I move
forward. We move forward. We dig a little. We spread a little fertilizer. And God goes with us. With God, with one another, disappointment
need not mire us in discouragement, but can lead to unexpected beauty, wonder,
faith and grace. Amen.
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