The 1st United Methodist Church of Napa

¹⁴ It shall be said, “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my

people’s way.” ¹⁵ For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is

Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in

spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite…. ¹⁹ Peace, peace,

to the far and the near, says the LORD; and I will heal them. ²⁰ But the wicked are like the

tossing sea that cannot keep still; its waters toss up mire and mud. ²¹ There is no peace, says my

³⁰The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. ³¹He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. ³²And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. ³³Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. ³⁴As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

I've been spending a lot of contemplative time, lately, simply staring into the eyes of my two newest granddaughters. Gazing into a baby's eyes as she, in turn, looks in wonder and curiosity at her new world, can be a deeply spiritual experience. I highly recommend it to any of you! Celebrating the whirling dervish that is our almost-three-year-old, Samantha, is one thing; but watching her younger sister, Emma and her cousin, Lauren (who are still only a few months old), is like embracing little Sabbath-moments in the midst of an otherwise hectic day.

Not for the first time, during these moments, I've found myself asking: What happens between infancy and adulthood? I'm not talking about the process, itself, of children growing up physically, emotionally and spiritually into maturity. I'm wondering about that process through which the rest of us change in our attitude toward children as they become young adults. How can we gurgle, coo, and make ridiculous noises at an infant and say things like, "What a beautiful baby!" and yet in just a few short years wish that that child were out of our sight and somebody else's problem? How can a baby from a community not our own be made a fuss over, even praised for his beauty, and yet in just a few short years be perceived as a gang-member, a potential terrorist, and barred from the company of our daughter's? What happens to babies that cause our attitudes to change so drastically?

The babies, of course, or their development have nothing to do with it. We're in the realm now of human brokenness and the kinds of prejudices that all too many of us have. How do we deal with our prejudices? We do have them. "Moving at the speed of life, we are bound to collide with each other," says a line from the trailer of that Oscar-winning movie, Crash.^³ And yet we Christians have become convinced that Jesus has created a new society, in fact a new way of being human – a way in which alienation has been turned into reconciliation, hostility into peace, hatred into love.^⁴ We hear words like this, maybe even affirm them every Sunday morning, but as we gaze out over our world this morning we can't help but wonder if attitudes have really changed over the years. People still nurture deep prejudices over the color of peoples' skin, the manner in which they dress, the way that they talk, the religious beliefs they hold and even over the countries of their origin.

The evidence is overwhelming: we live in a hostile world filled with broken and disparate relationships. For over a week now we've heard from the national media about the breakdown of human relationships in the pathos and tragedies from Africa to the Middle East. All the while jockeying for positions and promotions and climbing the social and economic ladders preoccupy the life in our own country that create a kind of hostility and disunity all its own. The Scottish poet, Bobbie Burns, said it (without the use of inclusive language, but still chillingly) when he said:

"Many and sharp the num'rous ills
Inwoven with our frame!
More pointed still we make ourselves,
Regret, remorse, and shame!
And man, whose heav'n-erected face
The smiles of love adorn, –
Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!^⁵

So it's no wonder that we have so many experts and instruments trying to create community and continuity. Our longing for community is close to approaching panic, and yet true community always seems to be just beyond our reach. People go to bars and pubs, to rock concerts and street fairs, to beaches and resorts, hoping to find some measure of affinity with their neighbor…only to realize that others are as alienated and lonely as they are.

The enduring search for our roots is also often an indication of brokenness – especially during the time of separation between one generation and the next. As the children of earlier immigrants broke loose from their heritage, so now their children are trying to find roots of their own. In a curious paradox "the grandson tries to remember what the father tried to forget."^⁶

Arthur Miller's timeless play, "The Death of a Salesman," goes a long way toward unmasking the malaise that too many of us feel. Willie Loman, the leading character, is a shoe salesman who's lost his enthusiasm for work. Selling shoes has become a curse from which he struggles to escape by way of bumbling sex escapades in the midst of delusions of grandeur. The play implies that life is drudgery; work is not only unfulfilling, it's a beast of burden. In the end Willie Loman commits suicide and at his graveside one of his sons says, "Poor Willie, he didn't know who he was."^⁷

Willie took his life because nobody told him who he was. Unaware of his own worth, without any self-esteem, he came to believe that he was simply worthless. It's ironic, but all around us are signs of our need for something or someone to tell us who we are. Mirrors, cameras, voice recordings, videotape… church photo directories, are all signs of our need to affirm our existence – to ourselves and to others. But none of it seems to soothe our anxious need to feel good about who we are, and not even psychiatry, psychology, sociology, anthropology or (all too often) even religion – in spite of all their wonderful contributions – can convince us, finally, of who and whose we are.

So what often causes such enmity between people, religions, cultures and countries, can be traced back to the way those groups, or the individuals within them, feel about themselves. The love that we have for ourselves is often in direct proportion to how we feel and act toward others. By knowing this rabbi named Jesus, experiencing his love, his healing, and the way that he interacted with people, you and I can learn how to live in loving relationships with those around us. That's the good news! And some people, at least some, will come to the 1^st United Methodist Church of Napa to satisfy the hungers of their heart.

We read in this morning's gospel lesson how huge numbers of people saw Jesus and his companions, recognized them, and raced after them from all over the countryside.^⁸ What compelled them to do that? It seems that things like compassion, authenticity, and true holiness, draw people as no promotional campaign ever can. A story's told of how the ashram^⁹ in India originated. It began…

…with a man of God, a Sannyasi or wandering monk, who goes from village to village without any belongings. He comes to sit in the village temple or in front of the house of a person who has offered him shelter. He accepts what food is give to him and will perhaps, in the evening, talk with people who gather around him. One day some of these people will ask permission to remain with him for a time, so as to benefit from his spiritual teaching, and they will build him a shelter. They will build huts for themselves around his, and thus will an ashram be born, centered on a man of God. He himself will have done nothing except for having prayed and having guided his disciples in the way of prayer. Such is the essence of an ashram, a center for prayer. A group of disciples meets around a holy man in order to share his prayer life and receive his teaching.^¹⁰

Jesus continues to unite us with each other and with God. We are not alone. We're surrounded by many others who are on the same journey as we are. For better or for worse we can make a difference in each others lives. Willie Loman looked for and found a way out. Jesus offered everybody a way in.

In the midst of the crowd – in the pushing and shoving, the clamor and the dissonance – we can still find a bit of healthy Sabbath time. "The Loudest Noise in the World" is a story that tells of a kingdom that was extremely noisy. It was filled to its very borders with the constant hubbub of blaring horns, pounding machinery and shouting people. One year the young prince, who'd grown up loving the commotion (as most young people do), declared that for his birthday he wanted to hear the loudest noise in the world. So the royal edict went out that at precisely noon on the day of his birth all of the citizens of the kingdom would stop what they were doing, gather in front of the palace, and shout at the top of their lungs for one full minute.

In a far corner of the realm, though, one old woman found the edict very troublesome. While all of the others were shouting, she told her husband, she would just open her mouth and pretend to shout. Well, she told her best friend, her husband told his best friend, they each told members of their own family, and they told their friends until, to make a long story short, at the time for the appointed shout, the kingdom for the first time in anyone's memory fell silent. And the young prince heard, for the first time in his life, the sounds…of birds singing, of the creek rippling by, of wind blowing through the trees. And he wept for joy.

"Come away…and rest awhile," was Jesus' invitation to those who would follow in his footsteps. Such a contemplative time cannot be violated by the crowds of people all around you, because they're not standing around your heart, only around your body. Your heart will remain in the presence of God. If we would be the church in the midst of all of the "noise" and chaos of the world, we've got to look for those kinds of Sabbath moments, here, in this place. We've got to be grounded in time away with God. The poet Adrienne Rich^¹¹ put it this way:

Rich closes her poem with this stanza, questioning the final emptiness of the kind of separation brought about by hostility, over against the possibility of solitude and connectedness in a world as it might be. You and I have a part in making that world possible.

1 Long after the original prophet named Isaiah has died, this portion of the book named after him reflects those turbulent years of crisis in Jerusalem following the people's return from exile in the late 6^th century BCE. It opens with the image of constructing a highway – suggesting that the community will be restored. Those who are described as "humble" and "contrite" here are the marginalized Jews of that time who've experienced exploitation and abuse by the people in power. In the image of Isaiah, this prophet has come to believe that God will offer comfort for those who have nowhere else to turn. Today, most of us have come to accept the fact that if God really is to do such a thing as this, it must come about through us.

2 The importance of Sabbath-time (sacred rest), and the compassionate nature of Jesus, are two themes in this part of Mark's version of the story. It presents a vivid picture of how the crowds continued to converge upon Jesus at almost every point along his journey through Galilee. Remember (if this really is the order in which the events happened), this is right after Jesus learned about the brutal beheading of his cousin, John, and not long after he himself had been scorned and rejected by the people in his own home town of Nazareth. At the very least Jesus must've been exhausted and still grieving. But listen to what he does.

3 See the trailer at http://www.crashfilm.com/, but watch the movie. Its message is of timeless importance to us all.

4 As it's stated in a portion of the lectionary not read this morning:

He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace….So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near (Ephesians 2: 15, 17).

5 Robert Burns, "Man was Made to Mourn" – view the whole dirge at http://www.robertburns.org/works/55.shtml.

9 The word ashram is derived from the Sanskrit word aashraya, which means "protection." It's become a place for finding comfort and solace, and in the tradition of Hinduism, a secluded residence for a religious community and its guru (spiritual teacher).

10 Armand Veilleux, OCSO, "Review of the Proceedings of the Asian Benedictine Conference in Sri Lanka, 1980."

12 Adrienne Rich, "Yom Kippur 1984," in Your Native Land, Your Life (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1986), p. 78.