Sermons

"The Wages of Fear"

Lections:  I Sam. 15.17-24

                 Js. 1.17-20

                 Mk. 7.14-23

Lent is the church's time set aside to take stock of our spiritual health.  We are called to spend an extended time in personal reflection to consider whether we are coming somewhere near the mark of our target to follow Jesus' ways or missing by a margin wide enough to leave us squirming.

Whether others know of our sin is not really the point; we do and that is quite enough to make things rough for us this time of year.  It is no wonder that so many of us want to rush to Easter.  Let's get to some hope - something more positive.  But along with Carl Jung, I believe that unless we shed some light on the shadow side of ourselves then it will ultimately get the best of us and surface in ways to make our lives fit for the smallness of its vision.

This is rather the point of C.S. Lewis' entertaining allegory, The Great Divorce.  In his brief work, Lewis fleshes out the little "fears" that arise from within the shadow of the principal fear that we don't quite measure up to who we should be.  When the bus trip to Heaven reveals to the travelers from the "grey city" that life in Heaven is only appealing if they are suited to it (they clearly are not), many choose to return to the "grey city" and the limited vision that life affords there.

The travelers are uncomfortable in Lewis' beautiful but inhospitable Heaven.  The grass hurts their feet, the gorgeous leaves on the ground weigh a ton; worst of all things are valued in Heaven differently than in the "grey city."

One of the travelers' who most stands out to me is the woman who is a "diva" of some note in the "grey city."  She is appalled to find that the Heavenly Choirmaster does not ask her to be the principal soloist in the Heavenly Choir.  Her pride causes her to angrily return to the "grey city" rather than accept her place in the Heavenly Choir.  She chooses to miss out on the blessings that living in Heaven would afford because her vision of herself is too narrow to live there.

Wait a minute, too narrow; isn't her problem that she has too broad a vision of herself?  She has an over inflated perception of who she is - pride, arrogance, haughtiness; aren't these evils that surface in those who think too highly of themselves?

It may appear so when we are under the influence of the "grey city" but Lewis tells us, perspective is everything.  Pride keeps her out of the Heavenly Choir, out of Heaven and fit to live only in the "grey city."  From the "grey city" she can not see how she gets in her own way; she cannot see that there is life beyond the city limits because the small life there is the only life she has known.  She returns to the "grey city" because she doesn't know that pride is a burden not a grace.

Pride is a great deluder, as Lewis knows; it tells us that we are better than others because it matters to us that we are better than others.  Why else should we head back to the "grey city" pronto when someone suggests perhaps we are not?  We are afraid that they are right.

Pride is a "face" of fear - the fear that we do not measure up to our hopes.  We dream of something beyond where our fear will let us go.  Fear keeps our self-perception smaller than our actual possibilities.  Whether we actually are better or not by some objective criteria really is not important, we doubt ourselves even before others doubt us.  Their doubt simply confirms our own.  We react to the confirmation of our doubt by throwing up hard to scale walls of denial, fantasy, and self-delusion.  All for the simple reason that we are afraid that whoever we are; it is not enough.  "Pride may go before the fall" but fear has us plummeting.

This is perhaps why the Scriptures are so hard on the prideful.  Pride can never coexist with an awareness of oneself as I AM.  Where there is pride, there is self-doubt and the nagging fear that I AM NOT.

Pride is as great a deluder when we are on a quest for the adulation of others as when we erect walls to keep out what we don't want to hear from them.  As we learn from our story of Saul this morning.

Saul was the King of the all the tribes of Israel.  Now this is no small station in life, particularly from the perspective of a Jew, so we are surprised at what Samuel hints that motivates Saul:  "Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel?"  Or to put another way, you didn't need to win the favor of the people in order to make yourself feel important; you're already important.  The Lord sent you on a mission but your insecurity about yourself had you listening to the wrong voices, so you made the wrong choices.  Saul admits in the passage, yeah, I blew it.  I listened to the people because I was fearful; I wanted them to be impressed with me.  I obeyed their voices rather than the Lord's.  I have sinned.  Samuel says, yes you have and there will be consequences; it will cost you your throne.

Pride comes before the fall for those who live in the "grey city" far from the awareness that they are fit as they are for the place where I AM lives.  Left to their own doubts and devices their choices find them never able to live the life for which they are made because fear reduces their hopes to little.

Faced with this life, they make their peace inside the walls of the "grey city" either through self-delusion or by seeking from others assurances that can bring no more than false security.

No wonder Mark has Jesus tell those gathered around him that which defiles comes from inside rather than outside our skins.  More specifically, he says evil comes from the hearts of men; hearts are the incubators of evil, including pride.  But wait preacher, God's Spirit is supposed to reside there?  Does Jesus say that God is both good and evil?

It has been argued so, but I don't think so.  But where God is absent, all manner of unholy things will take root.  God is absent from the heart, or might as well be, for those that think it or wish it so.

I know this first hand.  The heart can be a heart of darkness.  I have had periods in my life when I closed myself off from much that was holy.  I wasn't necessarily a bad person, my behavior wouldn't run me afoul of society's rules or anything; I just did not send any beacons to the Spirit that I cared to make myself available to its influence.  With the result, I was like the girl in the musical "A Chorus Line:" I felt nothing!  When you darken your heart to the "signs and wonders" that await your invitation to bowl you over - don't be surprised when you don't feel or experience any of your latent power for remarkable, mystical drama.

We get what we ask for.  If we don't seek, we won't find.  I had the adult son of a friend a few years ago stand amazed as I played tour guide through some of the events of my spiritual journey to ministry.  He listened intently, honestly intrigued, yet in the end vacantly because he had no frame of reference for what I was telling him.  Once I finished sharing my story, he just said, somewhat sadly, "I have never had anything like that happen to me.  I wonder why you have and I haven't."  If you don't seek, you won't find out the truth about yourself.

You are I AM.  The rank things of the darkened heart, e.g. pride are unnecessary burdens for you and anger which often follows pride quickly to expose our wounds is slow to arise.  You can not live peaceably in the "grey city" because the voice to which you listen beckons you to some other, more beautiful place to which you are better suited.

But what of those who do not seek, do not find and instead make peace with their demons sufficiently to settle down in the "grey city?  What more does Lewis say about them?

The "grey city" of Lewis' story doesn't seem so very different than our modern cities; the travelers who take the bus trip to Heaven don't seem a whole lot different than folks we know.  What I haven't told you yet, the twist to Lewis' story is that the "grey city" is hell and the travelers are its ghostly inhabitants.

It is all a dream, of course, a fantasy actually but I am left to wonder if Lewis' point does not hold.  The wages paid for the fearful life is hell and the walking dead of "grey cities" can not see to hope for more.  How well does life imitate art?  How much does the lesson of the story look like a lesson for our lives?  Why does Lewis' hell look so much like just another of our "grey cities," its inhabitants, folks we recognize?"  Questions to ponder in the middle of Lent for those who may be unsure of where they live and who they are.

This is how I see it with hope not too far ahead to brighten all of our days.   Amen.  Next week, prejudice - the impolite "face" of society living in fear.