“Counting
It All Joy”
12.
Living Beyond Expectations
Luke 23:50-56
First Presbyterian
The Reverend Thomas A.
Sweet
September 9, 2007
Communion Meditation
Return to the Sermon Archives Page
We have been engaged here,
through these summer months, in a series of sermons about joy.
Joy, for those who have been other places these summer Sundays, is not,
we have said, a feeling of elation for which we strive.
Joy is the sweet fruit of a deep and confident experience of God’s
presence that comes to us when we open ourselves to participating in the
fullness of life, trusting that even the dark and difficult places will not
overwhelm us or undo us, but will teach us and make us more human.
The more fully and truly human we become, the more that joy finds a home
in us.
Mary Oliver is a poet of joy who
sees our immersion in the world around us as the doorway into joy, each of us
invited to contribute our own unique and particular stanza to the poem of the
world. In her Song of the
Builders, she writes that
Song of the Builders
On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God –
a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside
this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope
it always will be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building
the universe.
But we need to do it, to build the universe, each of us, in our own way as Mechthild of Magdeburg reminds us in her poem called Opening Words:
A fish cannot drown in water,
a bird does not fall in air.
In the fire of its forging,
gold doesn’t vanish:
the fire brightens.
Each creature God made
must live its own true nature;
how could I resist my nature,
that lives for oneness with God?
Oneness
with God is the holy communion for which we all our lives long whether we know
it or not, because oneness with God also leads to oneness with God’s creation
and God’s world. But we can only
experience that holy communion if we are authentically ourselves.
Joy arises in us as we seek and find our own true self…not the self of
convention or tradition or others’ expectations, but the self that emerges
when we listen to the deepest voice within us and allow it to direct our ways.
As
we do that, the question that both invigorates us and haunts is highlighted in
another Mary Oliver poem…
It is the nature of stone
to be satisfied.
It is the nature of water
to want to be somewhere else.
Everywhere we look:
the sweet guttural swill of the water
tumbling.
Everywhere we look:
the stone, basking in the sun,
or offering itself
to the golden lichen.
It is our nature not only to see
that the world is beautiful
but to stand in the dark, under the stars,
or at noon, in the rainfall of light,
frenzied,
wringing our hands,
half-mad, saying over and over:
what does it mean that the world is beautiful –
what does it mean?
The child asks this,
and the determined, laboring adult asks this –
both the carpenter and the scholar ask this,
and the fisherman and the teacher;
both the rich and the poor ask this
(maybe the poor more than the rich)
and the old and the very old, not yet having figured it out,
ask this
desperately
standing beside the golden-coated field rock,
or the tumbling water,
or under the stars –
what does it mean?
what does it mean?
(from her poem, “Gravel”)
We
come closest, I think, and here, in my estimation, is the key to inviting joy
into our lives…we come closest to discerning the meaning of life and our lives
when we live our lives expectantly, but without specific expectations.
When we live our lives expectantly, without particular expectations, we
open ourselves to whatever experiences, events, or circumstances come to us.
We open ourselves to the presence and the power, the wind and the wisdom,
of God’s Spirit. When we live our
lives with specific expectations in mind, not only do we set ourselves up to be
disappointed if those expectations do not come to pass, but, even more, we set
ourselves up to miss so much of what we cannot even ask or think or imagine
about life, about God.
I
think there is no more important lesson I have learned in my adult years than to
live expectantly but without specific expectations.
That is why I am drawn to the little passage of scripture we read
today…when it says that “Joseph of Arimathea was waiting expectantly for
the
Take
worship as an example of what I mean. If
you come to worship expectantly but without specific expectations, trusting that
you will find God’s Spirit here and that whatever takes place will have within
it the seeds of something good for your life in the world, then your morning
will be fertile and rich. If,
however, you come into this time with specific and particular expectations, your
expectations may or may not be met, but, in either case, you will miss by your
focus on your specific expectations what you otherwise might have received had
you simply come expectantly. The
problem with living under the thumb of specific expectations is that God is
bigger than our expectations, for as Mary Oliver says…
…the Lord is everywhere.
He is in the water and the air,
He is in the very walls.
He is around us and in us.
He is the floor on which we kneel.
We make our songs for him
as sweet as we can
for his goodness,
and, lo, he steps into the song
and out of it, having blessed it,
having recognized our intention,
having awakened us, who thought we were awake,
a second time,
having married us to the air and the water,
having lifted us in intensity,
having lowered us in beautiful amiability,
having given us each other,
and the weeds, dogs, cities, boats, dreams
that are the world.
I
love that. We make our songs for
God, the songs that are our lives, and God steps into the song and out of it,
having blessed it, having recognized our intention, having awakened us a second
time, who thought we were awake..
Joy
comes to us when we live beyond our expectations, when we simply live
expectantly, without specific expectations…expecting, we do not always know
how, that there will be light for our darkness, salve for our wounds,
hope for our despair, mercy for our mistakes, bread for our hunger, wine for our
thirst, answers for our questions and questions for our answers.
And, in it all, we shall know that we are all of the time, and no matter
what, kept in the love of God that will not finally fail us.
The choral montage by our choir that follows is our way, at the beginning of our new church season, of celebrating life, our lives, the gift of being alive, and of being alive together in God…and it is our way of encouraging us to give up the tight-fisted control we think we need to keep on our lives…so that we may live beyond particular expectations…and in that way be open to receiving and giving and living from the larger storehouse of God’s grace and generosity that is beyond our wildest imagining.
Amen.
How
Can I Keep from Singing?
Jeffrey Honore
My life flows on in endless song, above earth’s lamentation.
I hear the real though far off hymn that hails a new creation.
No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that Rock I’m clinging.
Since Love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?
Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear that music ringing;
It sounds and echoes in my soul, how can I keep from singing?
No storm…
The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart, a fountain ever springing;
All things are mine since I am his, how can I keep from singing?
No storm…
God’s
Face
Helen Steiner Rice/Noel Geomanne
Each time you look up in the sky or watch the
fluffy clouds drift by,
Or feel the sunshine warm and bright, or watch the dark night turn to
light.
Or hear a bluebird gaily sing, or see the winter turn to spring,
Or stop to pick a daffodil, or gather violets on some hill,
Or touch a leaf or see a tree,
It’s all God whisp’ring, “This is Me.
And I am Faith and I am light, and in Me there shall be no night.”
We
Thank Thee
Ralph Waldo Emerson/Noel Geomanne
For flowers that bloom about our feet; for tender
grass so fresh and sweet;
For song of bird and hum of bee; for all things fair we hear and see;
Our God, Creator, we thank thee!
For each new morning with its light, for rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends, for everything thy goodness
sends,
Our God, Creator, we thank you.
The
23rd Psalm
Bobby McFerrin
The Lord is my Shepherd, I have all I need,
She makes me lie down in green meadows,
Beside the still waters, She will lead.
She restores my soul, She rights my wrongs,
She leads me in a path of good things,
And fills my heart with songs.
Even though I walk, through a dark and dreary land,
There is nothing that can shake me,
She has said, She won’t forsake me, I’m in Her hand.
She sets a table before me, in the presence of my foes,
She anoints my head with oil, And my cup overflows.
Surely, goodness and kindness will follow me,
All the days of my life, And I will live in Her house,
Forever, forever and ever.
Glory be to our Mother, and Daughter, and to the Holy of Holies,
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be,
World, without end. Amen.
©
Copyright 2007 First Presbyterian Church