“Lenten Sermon Series 3: Submission”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Text: Proverbs 16:7-20
I have a favourite television show, and although the pulpit is not a place to extol the virtues of what I like to watch on television, there is a reason for me telling you about it this morning. My favourite television show is on BBC Canada, and is called Top Gear. It is a program about, you guessed it, cars. About how they go around tracks quickly, how they get destroyed, how they go to strange places where people do strange things to them and with them. It is humorous, it is charming, it is fascinating. I am vindicated in my choice, because our Music Director feels the same way.
It is a fabulous show. Every week they get a very famous person to get into a tiny car and drive around a race track as quickly as they can. It is the same car, doesn't matter who the driver is, and then there is a board charting how all of them have done every week. Everyone, from Dame Helen Mirren to the Mayor of London, has gone around that particular track.
But on one day there was a particularly meaningful moment. You see, the show had received a letter from a blind man asking if he could race around the track. He had been a soldier in the British Army stationed in Iraq, and an accident blinded him. He said that his greatest joy and his greatest wish was to drive again, although he knew he could never do it on public roads. So, he said to Top Gear that if he had someone helping him, he could beat the slowest of the sighted drivers.
The gauntlet was thrown and the blind man got in the car. Sitting next to him was the host of the show, Jeremy Clarkson. The two of them went around the race track as quickly as possible. Clarkson was crying out to him, “Brake” “Accelerate” “Turn left hard” “Turn right hard” “Turn left slowly” “Turn right slowly” and together they made their way around this winding race track, finally coming to the end safely.
To everyone's amazement, the blind man drove faster than the slowest sighted person! He concluded that it was because of the guide that he had been able to achieve this. Jeremy Clarkson, the guide said that it was the most frightening thing in his whole life, but they embraced and there was a tear in the eye of the host. The blind man had done it!
Similarly in 2001, a very famous blind climber, Erik Wiehenmayer was able to climb Mount Everest. Although 90 per cent of the people who try to go up Mount Everest never make it to the summit, he did. A bell was placed on the man who went in front of him as one of his fellow climbers, and he listened to the bell and he followed it. He was shouted instructions to watch for the pitfalls. By following the guide ahead of him he was able to make it to the summit of Everest.
On this weekend of the Paralympics I couldn't think of anything more inspirational than these two people. When interviewed at the conclusion of reaching the summit of Everest, Weihenmayer was asked how he was able to do it and he said, “There are two things that are necessary to reach the summit: The first is to trust the one who is going ahead of you, and the second is to submit your will to their word.” A hard thing to do, but so rewarding!
I thought about the blind man driving around the track and the blind man reaching the top of Everest, and I surmised that in many ways our walk with God and our faith, our belief, is very similar to their experience. Not one of us here has ever seen God, and yet we would claim to respond to the prompting and leading of God in our lives, even though we are not visually able to grasp where the Kingdom of God is or how the Kingdom of God moves. We believe there is God's kingdom at work on earth as it is in heaven. And so it seems to me that as people of faith the two things that are needed most by the unsighted - trust and submission - are necessary in our walk with God as well.
There are some people who say that such an idea is outdated. It is wrong to believe in submission in our day and our age. Carl Marx for example, described religion as “the opiate of the people,” that there is a way in which religion tries to smooth over or cover over all the problems of the world. It caused humanity to be numb to the real issues, and there are dangers to a submission to an unseen God. There are many who subscribe to that very belief, and who question if one can really and truly submit to the power of the divine and maintain your real freedom.
Martin Luther, the great reformer, addressed that issue head on. According to Gerhard Ebeling, who is the great biographer of Luther, Luther himself believed that human beings were never completely free. For Luther, human beings are always constrained - either by sin or vice or the flesh, by the influence of others, by the powers of idols and culture and that we deceive ourselves if we think that at any time we are free.
For Luther then, it was not a choice of if one could be free, it was the choice of to whom one was bound. Either you are bound to the things of this world and the influences and the powers of this world, or he says, “You are bound to Christ. You are bound to God.” Luther says that there is no such thing as true freedom.
The writer of Proverbs put it in a very similar way. Not only in today's text but indeed throughout the Book of Proverbs, there is a distinction to be made between the path of folly and following the path of wisdom, but you do have to follow a path. The path of folly is the path of the unwise, the fool, of those who subscribe to what is considered always to be the expedient, to vice, to wealth, and to power. But, the wise follow in the path of God.
Therefore, the writer of Proverbs would say to Marx and to those who have doubts that there is a need to submit, but we all are constrained by something. The question for us is: if we are to take submission to God seriously, if that is actually a need and a source in our life, what do we need to do? Well, the writer of Proverbs suggests two things. The first is that who you submit to matters. The Christian writer Richard Foster suggests that we need to submit every single day to the power of God. We need to submit when we get up early in the morning, we need to submit in the life we live, and we need to submit in the evening. We need to commit the whole of the day into God's hands and to ask for God's divine blessing and God's divine guidance.
The writer of Proverbs put it this way in Chapter 16, verse 20: “We should heed the Word and trust in the Lord.” What does he mean by “heed the Word”? He means to submit to and follow what the Word says. But, what was the Word for the writer of Proverbs? If this was a passage that was taken from Solomon, then for Solomon clearly the Word was the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, and clearly it was the Pentateuch, the first five books of The Old Testament, that the writer of Solomon would understand as the Word.
As some have suggested, if there were additions made to The Book of Proverbs that were written much later - around 400 BC - then that Word would include the Prophets as well. “Heed the Word.” In other words, heed the Biblical message and the Biblical passage, submit yourselves to what God's Word has to say. But is that enough? No!
The Christian brings another dimension to that, beyond just heeding the Word. Christ put it this way in Mark, Chapter 8: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospels' will save it. If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
For the writers of The New Testament then, it is not just the Word in the written form, it is the Word embodied in Jesus Christ, and that Word is the Word of the Cross. If anyone wants to follow and submit, you need to take on the Cross, you need to follow in the way of the Cross.
There are a lot of people today of the postmodernist mindset who say, “Oh, come on, who in our day and age is going to believe something like that? After all, what happens to our personality if we do that? Does it not become submerged?” In other words, the distinctive quality of our lives would become submerged if we follow the Cross of Christ. Is that not a way of denying our true selves and our true meaning? Is not the word of our culture to be authentic and true to ourselves first, to elevate our personality first? To talk about following the Cross of Christ is to submerge our personality, and what a cost that is!
What about the will? Does it not imply the will itself is going to be subjugated if we follow Christ? I mean, surely we are free creatures and we should be able to decide for ourselves what we want. We don't need to submit to Christ and the Cross anymore. That is outmoded thinking! We don't need that anymore. Our wills would be subjugated and our existence would become submissive if we followed Christ. Who wants to be submissive in an age of pride? Who wants to be submissive in a time of self-assuredness?
People will cry and they will raise their hands and say, “We will not follow Christ! We will not submit to Christ! We will elevate our personality, our will and our existence. We will not be subjugated!” While I understand the desire of people to have a strong sense of self, to have a strong identity, to have a sense of freedom, I go back to what was said at the beginning of the sermon: “Who of us are truly free in our personality, will or existence?”
It might be a nice idea but it is unrealistic. We are all influenced and affected by the powers and the Gods of culture. We are all influenced by what has happened in our past and by those who are around us, who even if they elevate themselves to the highest place of their personality do not in fact submit to something or to someone. I would say to those who object to the notion of submitting to the Cross, “Think again!” There is something in this Cross and there is something in Christ that is transformative and powerful.
This brings me to the second thing, namely that how we submit matters. For inspiration, I turn this day, and I think it is fitting, to the great Saint Patrick. He wrote these words, and I would suggest to you these are words of immense freedom and joy:
I arise today through God's strength to pilot me, God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me, God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me, God's word to speak to me, God's hand to guard me, God's way to lie before, God's host to secure me against smears of devils, against temptations of vices, against inclinations of nature, against everyone who shall wish me ill, far and near, alone and in a crowd. Christ beside me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.
Wonderful words! For there is no question that Saint Patrick saw in submission to Christ - word, eye, ear, voice, being - the most wonderful freedom and joy.
This is because the Cross is not just a symbol of dying; the Cross is a symbol of living. Jesus not only died on the Cross, he said, “Anyone who is to follow me, they must take up the Cross” the Cross of life, the Cross of living. Regardless of what part of life or our existence, the power of Christ's Cross plays a role. It plays a role in our families, in our relationships with the people who are the most intimate with us.
If Christ's Cross is present then we place their wellbeing even above our own. In our neighbours, infuriating as they may be, we know that in their good and their betterment is our betterment and the good of our society. In the Church, even if there are disputes and disagreements, even if they are the most unseemly and the most unpopular, still we submit to those who are around us in the faith for the sake of the Cross. For those who are the destitute and the poor, we see in them the power of the Cross.
Those who elevate their own personalities, wills and existence might have a form of self improvement and reach a higher stage in life, but when you look at others through the eyes of the Cross you see them differently and, in the dispossessed and the poor, you see Christ. In the world around us, in society as a whole, through the eyes of the Cross you see the world differently.
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I receive updates from my friends in Africa about the state of the church in Africa. This past week I received another most frightening note from a friend. It is about what has gone on this past Sunday, last Sunday, in a place called Dogo Nahawa, Nigeria. Last Sunday - I don't know if you know this - but an entire congregation of Christians was hacked to death and their church was burned to the ground. A couple of weeks before, some Muslims had been assassinated in internecine and inter-religious conflict. One of the pastors next to Dogo Nahawa said the following: “At some point, someone along here is going to have to forgive someone. If the hatred builds and the animosity continues, this will never end. At some point, someone needs to seize the Cross and forgive.”
That pastor understood. He knew that submission to the Cross of Christ profoundly alters the way that we live.
It is a marvellous story - on this I conclude - told of Abraham Lincoln. One day, when he set out to buy a slave. He went to the auction and he bought and paid for the slave. The slave girl looked at him and thought, “Oh, here is another white man buying me in order that I might be enslaved and abused.” She went with her new master reluctantly. Abraham Lincoln said to her after he had paid the price for her, “You can go now.”
She said, “What do you mean?”
He said, “You are free.”
She looked at him with incredulity and said, “You mean to tell me that I am free to say whatever I want to say?”
He said, “Yes, you are free to say whatever you want to say.”
She said, “You mean to tell me that I am free to be whatever I want to be?”
He said, “Yes, you can be whatever you want to be.”
She said, “I am free to go wherever I want to go?”
And he said, “Yes, you are free to go wherever you want to go.”
She replied, “In that case, I will go with you.”
Submission, but freedom, a price paid, but freedom to follow and to be in submission to God in Christ is to be free. I hope the world will hear the joy of that this Lent. Amen.