Openings
a sermon given by the Rev. Roger Paine
on Rally Sunday, September 16, 2007
at The First Parish in Lincoln
To listen to this sermon click here.
“A person’s life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through detours or art, or love,
or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which that person’s heart first opened.”
– Albert Camus
“There is no end of things in the heart.”
– Detective Harry Bosch
READINGS:
1. Our first reading is from the Prologue of a novel entitled Lost Light by Michael Connelly. Mr. Connelly has written a couple of dozen novels that most people think of as“beach reading” – good beach reading, stories set in Los Angeles around a police detective named Harry Bosch; over the past summer both Kay and I became fans. So here is Detective Harry Bosch, talking to us in the Prologue to Lost Light:
There is no end of things in the heart.
Somebody once told me that. She said it came from a poem she believed in. She understood it to mean that if you took something to heart, really brought it inside those red velvet folds, then it would always be there for you. No matter what happened, it would be there waiting. She said this could mean a person, a place, a dream. A mission. Anything sacred. She told me that it is all connected in those secret folds. Always. It will always be there, carrying the same beat as your heart.
I am fifty-two years told and I believe it. At night when I try to sleep but can’t, that is when I know it. It is when all the pathways seem to connect and I see the people I have loved and hated and helped and hurt. I see the hands that reach for me. I hear the beat and understand what I must do. I know my mission and I know there is no turning away or turning back. And it is in those moments that I know there is no end of things in the heart.
And let me add to Harry’s words the line from Camus on the cover of your Order of Service:
“A person’s life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through detours or art, or love, or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which that person’s heart first opened.”
2. Our second reading is a story – an incident in the life of Jesus – that is recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke – each of the first three gospels. Whenever the same story shows up in all three, you know that it was a well-known and oft-told story in the early church. I’ve used Mark’s version as a base for this reading – chapter 3, verses1-6; and have folded in a couple of lines from the versions in Matthew (12:9-14) and Luke (6:6-11) because they help fill the story out:
On the Sabbath, Jesus went into a synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand forth.” Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at the hardness of their hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. But the Pharisees were filled with fury and went out and began to plot with one another how they might kill Jesus.
So Jesus walks into a synagogue on the Sabbath and sees a man with a damaged right hand.
A group of men, members of the synagogue, are watching closely.
Jesus’ reputation as a healer has preceded him, and they wonder if he will heal on the Sabbath.
It’s not easy for us today to appreciate how important the idea of the Sabbath was in those days.
People thought of it as a gift – a day set aside for worship, celebration, and family.
You were commanded to abstain from normal workaday activities.
That was the genius of the Fourth Commandment – to “keep the Sabbath” – you were forbidden to work or to do any chores – forbidden by God –
so after going to synagogue, you could play the rest of the day without feeling guilty.
People back then did argue about where to draw the line –
what activities were okay on the Sabbath and what were not –
and the group watching Jesus that day were hard-liners.
He must have sensed that about them, because he asks them:
how could it be against the law to do good on the Sabbath?
But he gets no response – just a stony silence – and so, Mark tells us,
“he looks around at them in anger, deeply distressed at the hardness of their hearts,”
and tells the man to stretch out his shriveled hand; when he does, his hand is restored.
Jesus never touches him, he doesn’t say a word; he takes no credit for what has just happened.
If he did have healing powers, he was boiling mad when he used them that Sabbath day,
because he is outraged at the Pharisees, at the hardness of their hearts,
and it’s that phrase, along with its opposite, that I invite us to consider this morning.
What hardens your heart? What makes it close?
What words, what sounds or situations? What kind of behavior?
And what makes your heart fall open?
What helps you hear the beat so that, at least for a few moments, you feel connected and complete?
The line from Camus is a beautiful invitation to remember what opens our hearts.
“A person’s life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover,
through detours, or art, or love, or passionate work, those one or two images
in the presence of which that person’s heart first opened.”
He doesn’t say “discover,” he says “rediscover” – we already know which keys fit.
As Detective Harry Bosch says, it could be “a person, a place, a dream. A mission. Anything sacred.”
But in the day-to-day rush, it’s easy to lose touch with those one or two images.
So Camus points us to four openings, four gateways to help us reconnect with our own heart.
His first opening makes me smile: it’s detours.
When I’m on the road and I see a detour sign, I wince.
But have you ever had to take a detour, actual or metaphorical, that you were glad to be on?
You met someone you otherwise would never have met.
You saw a beautiful lake you didn’t even know was there.
Camus is right: a detour can open the heart; some of them can even be life-changing.
In 1954, some folks at the Rockefeller Foundation decided that there were too many boring ministers.
So they launched what they called a “trial-year” program.
The idea was to find outstanding college seniors who had absolutely no interest in the ministry –
seniors who were planning to be lawyers, writers, doctors, teachers – anything but a minister –
and offer these seniors a trial year at any divinity school in the country.
All expenses paid, no strings attached.
At the end of your trial year, you could go back to Plan A – or you could finish divinity school.
The foundation was betting that about half of their trial-year fellows would become ministers –
and so the church would end up with a few wild cards wearing robes.
And that’s about what happened.
The trial-year program was an all-expenses-paid detour.
For some of those college seniors, the detour turned into destiny.
Most of us don’t have a foundation ready to pay us to choose the road not taken,
but the next time one of those orange detour signs points you down an unfamiliar street,
try to relax and enjoy taking the long way around.
You never know what tricks the angels may be up to.
Camus’ second opening is art.
Have you ever stood in front of a painting, or read a poem, or sat listening to a piece of music,
and been so moved by it that tears came to your eyes?
When Brahms’ German Requiem was performed for the first time, the entire audience was in tears.
But it doesn’t have to be something so grand:
it could be a popular tune, or a nursery rhyme, or a painting unknown to others,
something that moves you,
because “in those moments, you know there is no end of things in the heart.”
It also doesn’t matter how young or old you are.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston invited third, fourth, and fifth graders
from two different schools to come look at paintings and talk about them –
the kids visited the museum regularly for three years.
Then they were tested in six areas of critical thinking.
They all tested better than their peers who did not go to the museum:
they were more curious, more interested in the meaning of things,
and their thinking was more flexible. (New York Times, 3/10/07, p. A18)
Art is a powerful opening.
Art is also made possible by a powerful opening.
In the summer of 1793, William Wordsworth traveled to a beautiful river valley in Wales
to see the ruins of an abandoned abbey, and as he stood on a hillside overlooking the valley,
looking down at the ruins and the river, he felt his heart open as never before.
For the next five years, he went back in his mind’s eye to that image again and again.
It was the green beauty of the valley and the majestic stone ruins,
and it was knowing that ruins are never empty – they are actually full of presence,
the souls of those who once lived there.
And their souls continue to have a particular affinity and attachment to what was their home.
When Wordsworth went back, five years after his first visit, and stood on that same hillside again,
the lines of one of his greatest poems, “Tintern Abbey,” just came pouring out of him.
It was not only seeing it again, it was five years’ worth of seeing it in his mind’s eye.
Love is the third of Camus’ openings.
The Greeks have three words for love:
eros – romantic love; philia – friendship; and agape – unconditional, selfless love.
They are all openings, and today, perhaps more than ever in human history, we need all three:
our romantic loves, our close friendships, and the grace note of unconditional love –
a person who loves us no matter what.
So today, tell the people you love that you love them – say the words.
If that’s all you do for the rest of this Sabbath day, it will be enough!
The last opening that Camus names for us is “passionate work,”
and it’s useful to think about what it means to feel that way about your work.
Bach, Mozart, Monet – they were passionate about their work.
You can hear it, feel it, in the music; see it in the paintings.
An Olympic gymnast has had to be passionate, for years, to be that good.
On a more down-to-earth level, I think most ministers are passionate about our work.
Because our work is more than a job – it’s our calling.
It’s why we’re here on the planet.
At some point in life, we got really clear about that.
Last Sunday afternoon, a former student minister of ours, Steve Wilson,
was ordained at the Unitarian-Universalist church in Rutland, Vermont,
and after Steve was given his robe and a handmade stole,
he told the congregation that there were only two things he ever wanted to be:
the quarterback of the New England Patriots, or a minister.
Well, the Patriots’ quarterback will have his hands full in the weeks to come,
and the coach could have used a minister last Sunday to keep him on the straight and narrow,
but it’s when you feel called to do the work you do – and there are many callings –
that it becomes passionate work – something you give your heart to.
Now, here’s the tricky part about all of this.
Every opening is also a trap.
Coach Belichick’s mistake last Sunday is actually a good example of this.
[For those of you who just got back from a trip to Mars, Bill Belichick broke the rules last Sunday
by videotaping the other team’s signal calling, which has resulted in a severe punishment.]
When an opening like passionate work becomes an obsession, it turns into a trap.
The Pharisees watching Jesus there in the synagogue had turned the law into a trap.
Every one of the world’s religions is a beautiful opening,
but you study the world’s religions without ever making one of them your own,
your study is a trap.
And if you do make one of them your own but then think your chosen faith is the only true way,
your faith becomes a trap.
Now, if people didn’t feel passionately about what they do, nothing much would ever happen.
So the trick is to bring passion to what you do – and hold on to your peripheral vision.
That’s what made it possible for Jesus to say, “There’s no law against doing good on the Sabbath.”
There are many good openings.
And the most important thing I have to say this morning is that we are also each other’s opening.
Not long after the Civil War ended in this country,
Robert E. Lee, the Confederate commander, went to church in Richmond, Virginia.
On that morning, a black man made his way to the communion rail where he knelt to take communion.
The congregation was shocked – in that time and place, this simply was not done.
No one moved.
An uncomfortable silence settled over everyone in the sanctuary,
and no one came forward to join the black man.
The priest, standing at the communion rail, was unable to decide how to proceed.
And then Robert E. Lee rose to his feet, came forward, and knelt right beside the black man,
to participate with him in the key sacrament of his faith.
Slowly, other members of the congregation began to make their way toward the communion rail
to kneel together with a former slave and their former military commander.
On that long-ago Sunday morning, there were two openings.
One made possible by the black man, who had the courage to go to the communion rail.
And one made possible by a white man, who had the courage to join him there.
As St. Francis once said, “Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.”
Amen.
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Notes:
Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” a poem I love, is another example of how a powerful opening – in the poem, it’s nature – can also be a trap. “Tintern Abbey” is a paean to the beauty of the natural world, and its most famous line is, “Nature never did betray the heart that loved her...” But seven after Wordsworth wrote that line, his brother, John, a sea captain, was shipwrecked and drowned during a terrible storm. After his brother’s death, in a new poem, Wordsworth wrote: “Little we see in Nature that is ours.”
My source for the story about Robert E. Lee is an article published in the San Francisco Chronicle by Jaime O’Neill, a retired professor of history, 4/29/07, p. E2.