SERMON
at
Christ Church, Watertown, Connecticut
Lent III
March 7, 2010
by
The Rev. Stanley C. Kemmerer, AHC

You know, I wonder: I wonder what goes through the minds of pewsitters who hear lessons like we’ve just heard. Because, mostly, they don’t sound like good news.

In the Gospel, we find Jesus responding to the disciples’ complaint Pontius Pilate had desecrated their temple offerings by mingling them with the blood of those he had executed, by telling them if they didn’t repent they would die like those Pilate had executed, or like those the tower at Siloam fell on. Lesson: Look for sympathy and get threatened.

He continues with the Parable of the Fig Tree, whose owner, after it had failed to produce for three years, wanted it cut down. “Why should it be taking up the ground?”

In the Epistle we are treated to a recitation of how their ancestors, delivered from their captivity “failed to please God and their corpses littered the desert.” Through a series of examples the point is made displeasing God is a capital crime.

Only in the Lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures does the tone lighten, but the comforts still are dependent on repentance.

I’m keenly aware of how strong the association is, in many, if not most, people’s minds of the Church with judgment. I’m aware of the common knee jerk reaction to seeing a clerical collar being, “Uh, oh. Better ‘watch it’ now…” The Church, to its discredit, has, for much of its history, irresponsibly and unfaithfully used literal interpretations of Scriptures like these to impose its authority and seek to control those seeking to be faithful people.

Moreover, I have great difficulty believing in or following the kind of nasty, punitive God presented, if taken at face value. How dare a deity who created his creatures frail, turn around and beat them up because they act out of the very frailty He created! You can tell me, “Well, He gave you free will. You used it to stray. Now you get the consequences.” I’ll buy consequences. What I have trouble with is the “cruel and unusual punishment” part; the punishment is disproportionate to the crime!

Am I saying I don’t believe The Bible? No. I’m saying it has to be understood as what it is: The best we have. The witness of writers who lacked the advantages of two thousand and more years of discovery and revelation, to apply to human experience. It’s our starting point. And Jesus needed to use the categories particular to the age in which he lived to make his points.

These points take on a much more positive character if we view these Scriptures as metaphor. Lack of discipline. Straying from known, proven paths to success have consequences. Often severe ones. Like death. Or, put another way, failure to live as fully as one might.

A few years after I joined Challenger, Gray & Christmas the annual convention of the trade group whose members are, most commonly, its customer contacts was held in my sales territory. The company always has a booth in the exhibit hall. Those sales executives geographically nearest the convention city staff the booth. The days are long. The Tower of Siloam was to fall on me in Boston’s Hynes Convention Center!

God, in the form of JEC, the company’s President and Founder, was there. That’s an understatement. He was everywhere there! I couldn’t escape him. Each sentence began with, “Why didn’t?” “Why hasn’t?” Every two minutes he would call, “There’s one!” “Go talk to him!” This wasn’t a matter of just standing behind an information table and answering the questions of those who stopped by. It was a matter of intercepting harried attendees with a few minutes between sessions, stepping into aisles like a carnival barker and buttonholing them so they’d pay attention to our booth rather than just pass by.

I absolutely hate that kind of behavior. I am extremely reactive when it’s used on me. I remember others trying to calm JEC down. Even his wife told him he should apologize. She could have saved her breath. He was single minded that booth and all his employees had a job to do and he was going to see to it that they did it..

I remember telling Mrs. Challenger and others who were interceding for me it was all right, that I needed to follow what Jim was calling for. That the pressure was making me, though it was unpleasant, more skilled at doing what was called for in that environment. I had experienced Jim by then as someone who demanded a great deal and was outspoken that he would demand a lot, but cared immensely for his people, was always there for us.

Similarly, I notice how often the players on the UConn women’s basketball team describe their coach that way. Tina Charles who has just set new records on that team came to UConn immature, easily led, a kid. She doesn’t leave that way. She’s asked how she handled all the times her coach benched her, denied her playing time, pushed her and pushed her, and pushed her. She gives all the credit for her success to Geno Auriemma. She talks about how he knew what she needed and demanded she give it. How he punished her when she gave less than he knew she was capable of giving. Then she adds, “But he believed in me. He supported me.”

In game after game I watch the second half more intensely than the first. More often than not that’s when UConn spreads out the lead. Why? Because no team is better conditioned than they. It shows in the second half, as the opponent becomes increasingly exhausted by UConn’s intensity. UConn isn’t feeling it; they’re so used to going that long at that pace. In fact, their coach says they look forward to the games because they’re so much easier than practice!

Everybody hates Dis, military boot camp Drill Instructors. Ask them why all that abuse and their answer is simple. “I’m trying to save their lives in combat.” After these same recruits have seen combat they will say they’re alive because of their Dis.

But it’s really more than the grinding through under relentless taskmasters. The Good News is in the result. That’s why one puts up with it. That’s why I can say thank you to Jim Challenger, the UConn women can say thank you to Geno Auriemma and recruits, their families and loved ones and their nation can say thank you to drill instructors. It’s the exhilaration that comes from being all one can be. That’s where the “life” lies.

That’s why we come to the water all you who are thirsty
though (we) have no money, (how we are able to) come
(Why we are able to) Buy corn without money, and eat
and, at no cost, wine and milk
Why we listen to Him
so that our souls may live and our hearts soar.

These passages take on an entirely different character viewed as the message of a life force we struggle to get our limited minds around warning us succumbing to spiritual flabbiness of the easy fix and immediate pleasure brings a kind of death. That life force’s goal for us is more: That we will welcome the sometimes rigorous correction that enables us to have life and it more abundantly.