Circles
a sermon given by the Rev. Roger Paine
on Sunday, January 21, 2007
at The First Parish in Lincoln
“Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth – that around every circle another can be drawn...”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I?”
– Hillel, Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14
READING:
1. I have just one reading for this morning – some verses from Matthew which give us three glimpses into the life of Jesus. In the first, a powerful man comes to him for help; in the second, he is criticized for having dinner with undesirable people; and in the third, after his death, a rich man intervenes to claim his body and give it a decent burial. From Matthew 8, 9 and 27:
When [Jesus] entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering.” And Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.” The centurion answered, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed.” Matthew 8:5-8
A few weeks later...
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" Matthew 9:9-11
And on the day he died on the cross...
When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. Matthew 27:57-60
As far as we know, the fatal stabbing of a
fifteen-year-old student
at our high school early Friday morning was not about revenge –
we aren’t sure whether the two boys even knew each other.
The boy accused of doing it said, “I didn’t mean to. It was a mistake.”
Whatever it was, it ended one life, it will change his forever, and it could change ours.
We like to think of our schools and of our community as safe places,
so the raw violence of what happened shakes us hard –
and it could easily shake how open – or closed – we choose to be going forward.
Some parents have already expressed their belief that what happened on Friday
is not the tip of an iceberg, not a precursor of more to come,
and they are hoping that this will not cause us to change the open culture of our high school.
As the Globe noted yesterday, Lincoln and Sudbury “pride themselves on safe schools.”
We also have a stake in welcoming kids from other communities –
I will officiate this summer at the wedding of two people who met fifteen years ago
as students at our high school – one from Lincoln, the other from Boston.
So with what has happened in mind, I have one simple theme for this sermon –
it’s a compelling line from Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth,” he wrote, “that around every circle, another can be drawn.”
“Around every circle, another can be drawn.”
Emerson believed that we are all works in progress
and he uses the image of concentric circles to challenge us:
will you draw a new circle around the one you’re in – or not?
You could be self-satisfied, and that, for Emerson, was the only real sin – to limit yourself.
Because in every human being, there is “a greater possibility,”
something new emerging, asking for room to be, asking our old self to make way,
asking us to draw a new circle.
And what’s true for us as individuals is also true for the communities we live in.
Most of us here live in a very privileged circle – and we’ve worked hard to be here.
The temptation not to draw a new circle is present in all of us –
the number of gated communities across our country grows every year,
and there are gates you can’t see but which are nonetheless real.
We all want to feel safe – and we want our kids to be safe.
When you draw a new circle, whether for yourself or for your community, there is risk involved.
It can be exhilarating – as it is when you leave home and go off to college.
You don’t know just what’s going to happen.
But there is also the temptation to stay put – or even to pull back, to make the circle smaller.
To “circle the wagons.”
Emerson believed that what we do – or fail to do – depends on the strength and agility of our soul.
“If the soul is quick and strong,” he wrote, it will draw a new circle.
A strong and agile soul will want to grow.
Every time we draw a new circle, we expand who we are.
So what happened last Friday is both a tragedy and a test.
How will we respond? What will we do?
Our covenant in this church brings us together “In the love of truth, and in the spirit of Jesus...”
This morning’s reading from Matthew says a lot about the spirit of Jesus.
He included people.
He didn’t shut anybody out, high or low.
One of his disciples, Matthew, was a tax collector.
Everybody hated tax collectors because they worked for the Romans, and many were dishonest.
But when Jesus walked past Matthew’s tax booth one day,
he looked at him and said, “Come on – join us.”
He was always drawing a new circle.
All four gospels tell us that he spent time not only with “tax collectors” but also with “sinners...”
The word “sinners” here is a euphemism for everyone you disapprove of.
He took a lot of heat for the company he kept, but it didn’t seem to faze him.
He made a Samaritan – another outcast group – the hero of one of his parables.
He was also comfortable around people who had power and influence.
And some of them sought him out.
A Roman centurion walked into a crowded square where Jesus was teaching
and asked him to heal his dying servant.
A centurion was the commander of a hundred men in a Roman legion.
He could easily have been the most powerful person in town.
But when Jesus offered to come to his home to try to help his servant,
the centurion said, “I do not deserve to have you come under my roof;
but if you will just speak the word, my servant will be healed.”
Jesus was blown away.
Here was a man who commanded a legion and yet had risked public embarrassment
by coming to Jewish teacher and healer on behalf of his servant.
Jesus said, “I have never found faith like this in all of Israel.”
The servant does get better, but the emphasis is not on the miracle,
but on the risk the centurion took to draw a new circle and ask for help.
When Jesus died on the cross, it was a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea,
a member of the city council in Jerusalem, who went to Pilate, the Roman governor,
and asked for Jesus’ body.
We’re told that Joseph was “a disciple of Jesus.”
He buried him in a garden tomb on his own estate – in a tomb he had intended for himself.
“Around every circle, another can be drawn.”
I confess that I have not used Emerson’s wonderful image in the way he meant it.
He was interested in how we push ourselves intellectually.
I have obviously harnessed his words for more personal and communal reasons.
But the thought is ancestor to the deed,
and Emerson understood how “small beliefs can hem us in,”
how small beliefs limit the way we use, or don’t use, the gifts God gave us.
The terrible events of last Friday are a tragedy and a test.
There are, no doubt, steps we can take to make our schools and our community more safe
without sacrificing our tradition of drawing new circles
and the richness of our associations that comes as a result.
Small beliefs can hem you in.
As Rabbi Hillel wrote,
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I?”
In her latest book, Nora Ephron talks about losing her friend, Judy, who died last year.
“She was the person I told everything to.
She was my best friend, my extra sister, my true mother, sometimes even my daughter,
she was all these things...”
She died of cancer less than a year after it was diagnosed.
Of life without her friend, Ms. Ephron writes:
“I think of her every day, sometimes six or seven times a day. I want to talk to her.
I want to have lunch with her. I want her to give me a book she just read and loved.
She is my phantom limb, and I can’t believe I’m here without her.”
Her words are a poignant and beautiful reminder, to all of us, to spend time with our friends.
Life is more fleeting than we think.
Two sets of parents have lost their sons, who they loved.
Let’s make sure that we don’t lose something more that we love –
about who we all are and what we stand for.
Because if we lose that, it will feel like a phantom limb.
In closing, one last line from Emerson. He wrote:
“The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire
is to do something without knowing how...
in short, to draw a new circle.”
To do so requires a strong and agile soul.
And that, I happen to know, thanks in part to churches like this, we have.
Amen.