"Greatness and Progress"
The humble will be exalted
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Text: Isaiah 26:12-18
I want to begin by talking about a television program - a British comedy titled, Keeping Up Appearances. It's about a rather pretentious Englishwoman who thinks that her status in life is greater than it really is. She seeks to impress everyone around her with the grandeur of her life and her candlelit suppers. Most annoying of all is her penchant to take out photographs of her son, Sheridan, show them to everyone, and tell them all the marvellous things he is doing, right down to his degree in basket weaving. It really is amazing how she inflicts her pride in her son on everyone around her. There is a moment when she sits people down in a hotel, pulls out the photographs of her son and recounts his entire life from the moment he was born. The people forced to endure this are going out of their minds.
Now, I want you to think for a moment about the Mother Mary doing that. What if she presented her boy, Jesus' life for everyone to see? There would be the picture of him being born, and then there would be his banishment to Egypt. There would be all the very good things he had done contrasted with how he surrounded himself with seemingly bad people. There would be moments when you would see him do the extraordinary, the miraculous, the magnificent. And then there would be moments when you would see him abhorred, hated and lied about. Then you would see the final week of his life. Mary would give you a snapshot and say, “Look, here is the day when everyone in the city sang hosannas, praised him, glorified him and said how magnificent he was.” But that week would end on Friday with his death, after being accused of blasphemy and sedition. Poor Mary. Showing those pictures would be a terrible thing to have to do. Hardly, one would think, the image of greatness and progress. This son of hers seems so sad.
Now think of our text from the Book of Isaiah. Apply the same scenario to a nation, one that seemingly should be the greatest nation on earth. It was called by God and chosen from amongst the nations, yet here it is in the time of Isaiah feeling the exact opposite. It's in pain, suffering, hurt, and its enemies are all about it. It's at its weakest.
In majestic language, Isaiah compares the nation's experience to motherhood. He says, “Can you feel the birth pains?” Not only the pain of giving birth, but also the sorrow and the sadness. The fact that (and then there is a little bit of humour,) despite its pain, all the nation really gave birth to was wind; there were no descendents. Then, in one of the lowest moments in the whole of the Old Testament, Isaiah says, “And have we been able to bring any salvation to the earth?”
Just like Mary describing her son's life, Isaiah's description of the life of Israel is one of abject failure, pain, the inability to give birth, sadness, death and demise. Hardly an image of the epitome of greatness or progress. But could it just be that we misread the signs? Could it be that we don't read the whole story? Or could it be that our definitions of what constitutes progress and greatness are flawed, so we cannot see Jesus as he really was or Israel as it really existed?
You see, so often things are not as they appear. What we see on the outside is not, in fact, what is truly happening on the inside. What seems to be a moment in which pain births only wind is in fact something much more significant: the birth of something great. But often we do not see things correctly.
I read a story about a woman in Terre Haute, Indiana. She had a problem: a skunk was in her basement. And so, like anyone would, she called the police. She asked, “Do you help people in their time of need?”
The police officer said, “Yes.”
“Well, I have a need,” the woman said. “I have a skunk in my basement and I'd like you to get it out for me.”
The officer thought about it and suggested, “Why don't you put a line of breadcrumbs up your basement steps, out the door and into the back garden?”
The woman said, “That's a marvellous idea. Thank you, that's brilliant. I'll do just that.”
So she put the breadcrumbs down from the basement, up the steps and out the door into the back garden. The next day she phoned the officer and said, “I have something to report to you.”
The officer replied, “I'm delighted! How marvellous that we've been able to help you.”
“Well, not exactly,” the woman said. “Now I have two skunks in my basement.”
You see, you can follow the breadcrumbs two ways. What seems like a wise thing in reality is anything but. So it is with our perceptions on Palm Sunday, the life of Jesus and the nation of Israel.
Maybe it is time for us to reverse the breadcrumbs and redefine what we mean by greatness in order to appreciate Jesus and Israel for what they really are. In the epic novel, Moby Dick, author Herman Melville quotes Ishmael as saying: “All men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition: all mortal greatness is but a disease.” Humanity's flawed understanding of greatness is a prominent theme in Moby Dick. Today especially, we have a definition of greatness that is predicated on a mortal, sometimes warped, idea of ourselves.
For example, last week at a breakfast meeting I was talking to a young man from our church. He said, “There seems to be an insatiable desire in the world today for people to be led; to look for a great and a strong leader who can make sense of the world. “
Indeed, in a recent CNN interview about the upcoming United States presidential election, a writer from the L.A. Times said, “What we really need is a hero. What we need is someone great, someone we can all get behind and follow. Someone who will lead us to the Promised Land.” But we should be cautious.
Political commentator, Oswald Spangler, wrote: “There are moments when the individual feels himself to be identical to destiny- a centre of the world - and his own personality seems to him almost as a covering in which the history of the future is about to clothe itself.”
In other words, sometimes the desire for greatness takes on a life of its own. When that happens, it can be very dangerous and very seductive. We define greatness as power, authority, influence and wealth, and will do whatever it takes to achieve it.
There is a very popular movement right now based on the book, The Secret. Merchandise is being sold and much money is being made on this idea. Behind The Secret, there is this belief that somehow by envisaging a better world we can actually have everything we desire. If you translate the word “secret” into Greek, we've seen it all before. The word “gnosis” means “a special knowledge.” Secret knowledge. There are people who want you to have that secret knowledge of what constitutes greatness. They say by imagining the life you want, you will be able to rise above any situation and attain it. But that is mortal greatness.
Sigmund Freud said, “It is one of the immortal and infantile wishes, the wish to become great.” We all want it. We all see it. Sometimes we desire it in our leaders. But is it really greatness that we are talking about? In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus' woes to his critics, he defined greatness differently. Jesus said, “The greatest among you will be your servant, for whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
You see, the greatness of Jesus Christ is the greatness that we see on Palm Sunday. It is the greatness of a servant coming to his city. It is the greatness of what Isaiah hoped would be the fulfillment of Israel's destiny. Not that Israel would be powerful, militarily sophisticated and rich just for the sake of being those things, but that the whole world might know the living God. That the nations might worship Yahweh, and that God might be praised. By the world's standards then, this birthing of wind that Isaiah was talking about appeared to be the failure of Israel. It had not wrought salvation on the earth, but that was never its role. It was God's. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, the crowds praised him. By worldly standards, they thought he was great. Five days later he was dead.
Jesus knew what greatness was. The history of the world, someone once wrote, “is the biography of great people.” I would say, “No.” The true history of the world is the story of faithful people. Jesus rode into Jerusalem, as our hymn says, “to die for others.” The Church defines greatness then, not by the standards of the world, not by the standards of humanity, but by the standards of God. The greatest are those who humble themselves before the almighty.
But what of progress? The philosophers have written much about it, this belief that the world is endlessly moving toward some final place. In the writings of Bertram Russell, there is this sense in which humanity is on a road to glory. That we are on our way, and the world will get better and stronger as we progress. Likewise, George Bernard Shaw expressed his belief in constant advancement, saying, “Every step of progress means that a Scripture is torn up.”
In other words, this understanding that human progress must necessitate the end of Scripture, and that for every step and for every advancement and for every development that we have, the sense of God's understanding of progress is ripped up and put to one side. This is the spirit of our age; a spirit that believes the further the advancement of the human, the less the need for God. It believes that God and the history of Scripture are but superstitions, and that we - the mighty, and the great and the progressive humanity - will lead to a new world and a new humanity.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, so much of the poetry, writing, and rhetoric was of this inevitable movement forward. Now, don't misunderstand me. I realize that there is progress in many different things. Human beings have done incredible things, but let us never get to the point of believing that we can be progressive without God. For then we will have lost our soul, and more importantly, our destiny.
The 21st century has perhaps begun to question those understandings of progress. Maybe the environmental crisis that we now face is a wake-up call to humanity saying, “For all your belief in your own definition of progress, you just might be destroying the very environment in which you live.” Or, think of how 9/11 shattered our sense of peace. Think of the lives that have been sacrificed all over the world for the sake of peace. We have this idea that humanity is continually, step-by-step progressing wonderfully to some great utopia, like Hegel's view of the Superman, the superhero. The 21st century is saying, “Hold on a minute. Maybe your definition of progress needs to change.”
When you look at the state of a church, or any institution, what you see on the outside is not always what happens on the inside. You can have great progress. You can have, as we do, this magnificent building and beautiful surroundings. But it is the dedication, commitment and sincerity of our lay leaders that makes a church strong. It's the commitment and faith of its people. The world sees one thing, but the reality is another.
So it is with our lives, and our definitions of greatness and progress. They must not be defined by the world's standards. They must be defined by God. For Jesus, progress did not mean getting greater and greater in the world's eyes. That is only fleeting. When he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, the hosannas quickly evaporated into the ether. Likewise, Israel - even at its most powerful under David and Solomon - was still a nation that needed to maintain its fidelity to a loving and a gracious God.
By the world's standards, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on that Palm Sunday he was pathetic. The world had an idea of greatness and progress that was not God's. Jesus may have looked pathetic, but his greatness was in his sacrificial giving for you, in his love for humanity, in laying down his life for others.
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer so beautifully put it, “Only a suffering God can save.” Only a God who practises, shows and embodies what he taught. I'll remind you again of the words of Jesus: “The greatest among you will be your servant for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” This Palm Sunday we exalt the humble One. We exalt and anticipate the Easter One who went through the Good Friday. We celebrate greatness and progress by God's standards, not by the world's. “Hosanna, great is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.
Morgan Tsvangirai understands that his people need to be set free. They need to be liberated, not only that democracy might prevail, but also so the people themselves might break free from the prison around them. I would say to you that no one could identify with that more than Charles Wesley. Time and time again Charles Wesley's hymns speak of prisoners being set free. They are not just freed from sin and guilt in that classic, forensic sense of the Reformation; they actually have the hold of sin broken and are released to feel the freedom that is received from Jesus Christ.
O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing lists what the dying receive. There is new life and triumph. Those who are lame - and I love the language - “can leap.” Those who are in bondage can feel like they are prisoners who have been set free. The hopeless poor - and there were so many poor, particularly in the inner cities including London in Wesley's time - receive a feeling of belief. And then, in my favourite line from a verse that is not in our hymn book and should be, Wesley writes about the “hellish crew” (I think they are supporters of Manchester United or something like that!) They are the ones who can turn to the Son of God.
You see, Wesley understood that those who are at the bottom, those who are in need, and those who are imprisoned are set free. Who are they set free by? They are set free by Jesus Christ. And how does Jesus Christ set them free? By his cross and Resurrection. This was the centre of Wesley's faith.
This past summer, Marial and I visited the New England Aquarium in Boston. It is a wonderful place, with a great big spiral that goes up many floors, and the fish swim up through it. I was staggered to find that everything swam in the same direction for the most part. I learned that the sharks in those tanks never grow to their full length. According to marine biologists, a shark will grow to the size of its surroundings.
Wesley understood that human beings are like that. As long as we are in prison by the bondage of sin and guilt, as long as we are in bondage to fear, we don't grow; we don't become what God intended us to be. But once the bonds are released, once we know that in Christ we are free, we become what God originally intended. For the people down in the mines, on the city streets, the lame, the sick, the ill and the outcast, they saw the truth in Wesley's hymns that the woman who encountered Jesus felt when she touched his coat; the truth Jairus' daughter experienced when she encountered Christ: the freedom Christ brings!
Not only did Wesley have a sense of the human condition and a heart that reached out to people in need. He also had a profound sense of praise. I think a lot of this came from his mother, Susannah Annesley. She had somewhere in the region of 18 or 19 children. That might make some of you mothers give pause for a moment! John was the 15th child, and Charles the 18th. When she was on her deathbed with her children gathered around her, she said, “Children, as I am about to be released (listen to her language), sing a psalm of praise to God.” And with that, Susannah Annesley died. She understood the freedom of the Resurrection and a sense of the freedom it brings. But what should it produce? Praise! As what should it manifest itself? Rejoicing! This is what Charles had in his soul. And that is why I chose Psalm 150 - that great psalm that uses the word “praise” 10 times, a full and complete number, to finish the Book of Psalms. And what does the psalmist give praise for? He gives praise for God, but also what God does in God's firmament on earth, in the sanctuary and in heaven.
Wesley picked up that theme of praise. He saw in it the presence of Jesus Christ, and he knew that the hymn, the song, was a powerful way for people to reaffirm the life-giving, liberating power of God. Martin Luther rightly said, “Next to theology, I give thanks and honour to music.” He understood with the same passion as Wesley that praise is the response to the power and grace of God. Thoreau was correct: the moment people get together and sing, there is no longer an “I” and a “Thou.” There is no longer a separation: it is one voice that sings to the glory and grace of God. When we sing, we sing with one voice in praise to God. Whoever we are and whatever the condition of life we may be in, it is our declaration of faith and a statement of what we believe to be true.
There is an incredible story told by a man called Samuel Scull. Horrible name! Many years ago, he moved to Arizona. When he got there, he bought a farm, but he didn't realize that the farm was located right in the path of high winds and terrible storms. They arose from the desert, whipping up hot air and bringing down torrential rain and driving sand. One day, a storm hit his farm. In the middle of the night he heard cracking trees, smashing glass, falling fences, and animals making strange sounds. Finally, near dawn, the storm died down. Scull came out of his farmhouse and saw total devastation. He felt as if God had abandoned him; everything was lost and there was no hope. He looked under the rubble and heard something rustling. Out of the rubble came a bald rooster (with which I soon will be able to identify!) All his plumage had been blown off; he was scraggily and he looked horrible. The rooster climbed the fence and faced east. All of a sudden, the sun began to rise over the decimated farm and this rooster got on top of the fence and began to crow. It was the loudest sound that the rooster ever made in his whole life. Scull said, “This is God at work!” When everything around is destroyed, the cockerel still sings to the new day!
Wesley's hymns are just like that. They cause us to understand that whether we experience poverty, sickness and death, or joy, celebration and peace, it doesn't matter. We praise Christ as those who have been set free. There is only one thing we can do whatever the stage of life we are in: That is to praise and thank God. “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise.” May we do that everyday! Amen.