From the Pulpit:

 
Little Gospels Everywhere
   

Here is a confession. When I think back to the days of my childhood when I was sick in bed, what I remember is the treats and indulgences of being tucked up into my parents’ bed in the daytime while everybody else was in school, treated to special foods like cream of tomato soup and hot vanilla milk, being given new coloring books and fresh crayons and being allowed to watch TV shows like The Price is Right and Let’s Make a Deal. Except for a terrible case of chicken pox, I don’t remember the illnesses themselves, but rather the indulgences I so enjoyed.

And so, here I am, back from an indolent week spent at home under the guise of having had a bona fide case of the flu. The doctor did the test. It was real. Trust me. I can give you papers. You didn’t want me here with my 102 degree fever and my germy hands all over the bread of the Eucharist. Actually, I did feel pretty awful, and I missed being here with you, but I know that you were in good hands with Bill Bennett and he was in good hands with you.

And the fact is that actually some pretty excellent parables came to me as I lollygagged around the house. There truly was a pleasure in lying back and waiting to see what wanted to play to me  on one of the various screens to which I had access. And it was fairly constant daytime TV. That’s one proof that I was really sick.

Have you seen the Travelers’ Insurance commercial in which a white terrier type dog is all concerned about his bone? You listen to Ray LaMontaignes’ voice sing plaintively:

Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble,
Trouble’s been doggin’ my soul since the day I was born.

First this pooch hides the bone in the laundry basket, then under a rug, then beneath his master’s chair. The song goes on:

Worry, Oh, worry, worry, worry, worry,
Sometimes I swear it feels like this worry is my only friend.

He digs a hole in the backyard and buries the bone in it only to sit up all night watching it from an upstairs window. In the morning he digs it up, rides with it on the bus downtown to a bank that looks like the Supreme Court, where he places it in a safe deposit box, then lies awake all night again, imagining all the ways it could be unsafe until he brings it home to let it rest in his doggy dish with the Red Travelers’ Insurance umbrella hovering over it while he finally turns loose and plays. The tag line said something about taking the scary away. Well, I wish life were like that. Or, maybe not.

You know, as familiar as it is, our scripture today is not a bon mot. Jesus does not mean the same thing that that lilting a capella ditty of twenty years ago whistled to us,  you know, don’t worry, be happy. Hey, if that is the savior sent by God, well, that’s not the savior I need. And I’m guessing you’d dismiss him as well as insufficient to the things that gnaw at you in the night. The Jesus who is offering to his best beloved the first fruits of his wisdom as they sit gathered at his feet on the hillside immersed in irrational trust of this man  whom they really hadn’t known all that long, this man to whom they have already committed their lives, he is not going to give them a sugar pill. Both he and they know such a band aid cure will not serve them or the world. God would not insult us with such a savior.

The passage we just read doesn’t begin with anything that might be translated into the concern of a particularly adorable and clever dog for his beloved chew bone. No. Jesus begins this teaching by telling us that we cannot be faithful to two masters, wealth and God. It is clear, I hope, which master is to be chosen, but it is so, so terribly hard for us to turn our backs on our concern for wealth, which turns so quickly and effortlessly into our investment into ultimate concern for our wealth.

Wealth sounds so much nicer than greed, doesn’t it? It sounds deceptively like health. How far can it be? I have nothing but respect for fiscal responsibility. It is good stewardship of the gifts that God has given us, and we are responsible for those gifts as we are called to share them with the world. But the word wealth, for me, invites in subtle images of country mansions and sports cars, of the reveling of Scrooge McDuck with his money bags and treasure chests. Be honest. Have you never thought of how comfy it would be to truly have money bags and treasure chests? Well, I have. I’ve won the lottery a dozen times in my imagination, and each time I’ve given the church the lion’s share, I’ve also redecorated my living room and given each of our children extravagant presents.
I have not yet bought that ticket. I’m not likely to reupholster my sofa any time soon, and that’s OK.

Jesus begins this teaching by talking about the masters we serve. This is a worthy meditation for the week as we hold before ourselves what it is we worry about. What do we allow to nibble at us like ducks? What are the hobgoblins that seem so imposing in the wee hours of morning but that seem to vanish when we face real problems.

I indulged myself in another parable this week as I felt oh, so sorry for myself with my icky old flu. I watched Toy Story 3, which ought to be prescribed as at least a palliative for just about anything that ails you. I hope you all are familiar with Woody and Buzz Lightyear. They are the beloved toys of Andy, but in this film Andy is seventeen years old and is going off to college, and his mom insists that before he goes he must do something with his old toys. He means to send them up to the attic, but they accidentally get thrown away and end up in the day care center from hell.

The cast of characters include Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, Rex the dinosaur, Barbie, the slinky dog, the martian triplets, piggy bank, Jessie the cowgirl and Bullseye the horse. It is early in the movie, before they are being put up, when Woody calls them all to attention and reminds them, as they worry, worry, worry, worry about what is going to happen to them, that their responsibility is to be there for Andy. Along the way, as they fall prey to Lotso Hugging Bear, whose evil is the result of his own suffering and pain, they descend into their fears, to react out of their baser instincts and to form destructive alliances out of their despair and descent into ultimate fear.

We all face fears. Jesus knows the deepest fears of our hearts, and he knows that those fears are not unfounded. He came not to a healthy world, but to an injured and diseased one. We live in a most troubled time, and the stakes are high. We are watching minute by minute the unraveling of relatively stable if not just and equitable political structures in the Middle East. We truly do not know what is going to unfold or how it will impact the rest of the world. The good people of Christ Church, New Zealand,  went to work on a sunny day last week and now look upon a city that is unstable and in ruins with the bodies of hundreds buried beneath the rubble of buildings, not the least of which is their cathedral.

The question our gospel asks us this week is not whether we are capable of whistling in the dark, denying that there is anything that might go bump in the night, but rather which master do we serve? Whose vision of the world do we invest ourselves in? There is Lotso, the strawberry scented bear who is consumed with resentment, the embodiment of the belief that  everything that can go wrong will go wrong, and we will be the fool for having not hedged our bets, or do we remain faithful to Andy,  the one who from the beginning loved us for who we are, flawed and quirky and slightly broken. Do we serve our wealth, which is nearly always a sense of not having enough and inspires us to lead a life of hoarding, or do we serve our God of love, in whom we live and move and have our being, and in whose kingdom generosity is the rule?

At the end of Toy Story 3 Woody and Buzz and the rest of the toys are faithful to Andy, who, before he takes off for college, lovingly takes the box of his beloved toys to the home of a sweet little toddler named Bonnie, and introduces them to her and entrusts them to her, and takes time to play with her, running like a child all over the front lawn, and to relinquish them to her and to the future, to set them free to be who they are entitled to be, free to give of themselves with delight and abandon and utter love. Oh, my gosh. There are little gospels everywhere.

Amen.