Saturday, October 20, 2007

30 Something There Is...

Audio unavailable - We apologize for the inconvenience. Sermon text follows:

"Something There Is.......!"

Please complete this sentence with me......Something there is
that.........(doesn't love a wall.) Who wrote it? Robert Frost:
"MENDING WALL"
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast,
The work of hunters is another thing;
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And one a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go,
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more.
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Today, God has asked us to give some thought to boundaries.
Do good fences made good neighbors? Do bad fences make bad
neighbors? I think so.
When I was a child living in our farm home, I experienced the
arrival of our neighbor to the West who was pretty riled up because the
fence between his property and ours was compromised at one point, and
he wanted my father to fix it. I took it that our cows had wandered onto
his property and eaten things he did not want them to eat. Knowing our
cows as well as I did, that would not have surprised me! The bad fence
was just about to make bad neighbors, but my father solved the problem
by agreeing to fix the fence which mending would benefit both
parties. So the atmosphere went from boiling point to cautious civility.
A good fence made a "good" neighbor - at least restored one to civility.
But everything conspires to tear down that civility - to tear down
that wall - in Robert Frosts's case: hunters, frozen ground swell, etc.
Every spring they will have to mend the wall. Quoting from what I read
on the internet from sparknotes, "The image at the heart of "Mending
Wall" is arresting: two men meeting on terms of civility and
neighborliness to build a barrier between them. They do so out of
tradition, out of habit. Yet the very earth conspires against them
and makes their task Sisyphean. Sisyphus, you may recall, is the
figure in Greek mythology condemned perpetually to push a boulder
up a hill, only to have the boulder rolled down again. These men
push boulders back on top of the wall; yet just as inevitably, whether
at the hand of hunters or sprites, or the frost and thaw of nature's
invisible hand, the boulders tumble down again. Still the neighbors
persist. The poem, thus seems to meditate conventionally on three
grand themes - barrier-building,...the doomed nature of this
enterprise, and our persistence in this activity regardless"
Jesus, we know, specialized in breaking down barriers. In today's
Gospel, He is crossed the boundary from his place of origin, Galilee, and
entered into that shadowy place known as Samaria - where lived those
Jews who had committed the unpardonable sin of intermarrying with the
Roman occupiers of the land. The rabbis taught that no self respecting
Jew would ever go there. But Jesus went there. His concern for his fellow
human beings was greater than his concern about the rules of his religion.
There he fellowships with another marginalized group - lepers.
He heals all of them despite the strict prohibition by his religion against
contact with these "unclean" persons. What "religion" said "in the name of
God, was not godly at all.
What have we done with the name, "God"? The races of men
with their religious factions have torn the word to pieces. They have killed
for it and died for it, and it bears their fingermarks and their blood.
Strange that the religions of the world would be building walls of
separation, instead of breaking down the barriers between them. Jesus,
in our Gospel story praised the Samaritan - who returned to thank Him
for His healing. To Jesus, it was more than interesting that the leper who
returned to him to thank him for the healing was a "foreigner."
The truth was, that for Jesus there were no "foreigners" only fellow
human beings - on the same planet together.
That reminds me of the dean of a college that was asked by the
parents of one of the students to talk with their son who had joined a really
"out there" religious group, forsaking his midwest religious upbringing. When
asked why he joined the new group, he said, "Well, it all started on the
first Sunday I visited them. When I walked into their church, I saw
black people, white people, people of every shade of the rainbow
and as I got to know them I realized that they were like a microcosm
of the world - rich poor, black white, gay straight, well educated
and poorly educated, and when I walked in there I could feel the
love. My church had always preached this sort of loving fellowship
to me, but I never seen it until I walked into that group. I said to
myself, 'This is the church I've always heard about but have never
seen until now.'"
Toward the goal of seeing everyone as our brothers and sisters,
we in our time have a distinct advantage - having looked back at the little
space-ship Earth from outer space. On that space ship - all are one - or
should be.
And should we be attacked from without, we would become one
in a hurry. (Let's not give anyone any ideas!).
But it is time for us to have some ideas as to how we can join
Jesus in breaking down barriers and building up fellowship with all
individuals and groups.
Jesus had broken down a barrier by mingling with the lepers.
And it's not surprising that nine didn't come back to thank him - it's surprising
that one did - after all, if you think about it, Jesus had told all ten of them
to go to the temple and show their healed selves to the priest so they
could be certified as "clean."
What I think is that the one leper, came back to give thanks to a
new "temple" named Jesus, seeing in him the way that all men - all persons
should be - letting the things that unite us outweigh the things that divide
us. Hopefully he began to model the same behavior.
Consider the incident where Jesus modeled acceptance where
others modeled condemnation. No one was condemned with any more
vehemence than were tax collectors. If the Romans had collected the
taxes themselves it might no have been so bad, but they appointed certain
Jews to collect taxes from their fellow Jews. What these tax collectors
did was to collect more taxes that Rome demanded and kept the money
themselves. Everybody knew it, but they could do nothing about it. Rome
looked the other way.
Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector - richer than anybody, shorter
than everybody. But he was curious about this Jesus - and climbed into a
tree where he could really get a look at him. Jesus saw him there, called
him down and announced he was going to Zacchaeus' house for lunch.
There we are in the crowd - overlooked by Jesus - and he reached out to
a notorious sinner whom we know to be beneath us - WAY beneath us.
How could Jesus dare to embrace the bad tax collector as much as he
has embraced us? Jesus dared because he knew that Zacchaeus was a
lost soul who could be found.
Zacchaeus was a man so far down there was no way for him to
get up by himself. He had defrauded so many, had committed such deep
sins against his own people, how on earth could he be saved? But he was
a seeker - he sought redemption. He climbed the tree looking for it, and
where the rest of us could have cheerfully hung him from the tree, Jesus
called him down saying "Let's do lunch!" And during the course of the
meal at his home, Zacchaeus puts his money where his heart now is.
Zacchaeus is transformed from a taker to a give - as it turned out a most
generous, gracious giver.
This story and the poem of the neighbors mending a wall each tell
us that we have an assignment. If we are going to stay close to Jesus,
share bread and wine at his table, fellowship with him on a regular basis,
then we'd better be willing to be close to sinners - those in the church and
those outside the church - and there are plenty to go around! If we want
to be close to him, we'll have to be willing to share him with the lost.
By such sharing, such scandalous grace, salvation comes to my
house and yours.
SOMETHING THERE IS.............THAT DOESN'T LOVE
A WALL!

Sermon Notes(Not edited nor proofed)The Rev. Dr. Garth R. Thompson Pastor, M.B. Community ChurchA sermon is a simple truth told by someone whobelieves it to people he knows and loves (Phillips Brooks)October 14, 2007 10:30 a, m. Luke 17:11-19
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

No comments: