Life After God
Scripture Readings: Matthew 13:24-30; Romans 8:18-27; Gen 28:10-19a
“As suburban children we floated at night in swimming pools the temperature of blood; pools the color of Earth as seen from outer space. We would skinny-dip, my friends and me. We would float and be naked – pretending to be embryos, pretending to be fetuses – all of us silent save for the hum of the pool filter.
“Afterward we toweled off and drove in cars on roads that carved the mountain on which we lived – through the trees, through the subdivisions, from pool to pool, from basement to basement, up Cypress Bowl, down to Park Royal and over the Lions Gate Bridge – the act of endless motion itself a substitute for any larger form of thought.
“Life was charmed but without politics or religion. It was the life of children of the children of the pioneers – life after God – a life of earthly salvation on the edge of heaven. Perhaps this is the finest thing to which we may aspire, the life of peace, the blurring between dream life and real life – and yet I find myself speaking these words with a sense of doubt.
“I think there was a trade-off somewhere along the line. I think the price we paid for our golden life was an inability to fully believe in love; instead we gained an irony that scorched everything it touched. And I wonder if this irony is the price we paid for the loss of God.
“But then I must remind myself we are living creatures - we have religious impulses – we must - and yet into what cracks do these impulses flow in a world without religion? It is something I think about every day. Sometimes I think it is the only thing I should be thinking about.” (Douglas Coopland)
The weeds are in the wheat field, darn it. Too bad, but such is life isn’t it? The good and bad get mixed together: joy and sorrow, the kind and peace loving get mixed with the unkind and those who would kill. The healthy with the unhealthy, decomposition with Creation, disease and pain come with pleasure and love. Relationship is mixed with loss, life with death. This is a mixed up world.
I want to divide this discussion up into three parts. First, we can look at the weeds and wheat within the Church. Second, we can look at the weeds and wheat inside ourselves, as individuals. And finally, we will think about weeds and wheat in society and the world.
It is probable that Jesus was referring to the weeds and wheat in the spiritual community and it is almost certain that Matthew is referring to the Church. The church has a lot of weeds. Living in community is not easy. There are different ways we can deal with these difficulties. We can try to be diligent and root out the weeds right away. We can try to separate the sinners from the saints. Ethical boundaries and justice are important. On the other hand, Jesus said, “I have come for the lost, not for those who are already saved.” And sooner or later, we all fall in the first group. “Love one another, as I have loved you.” That is what we are called to do. God will take care of the rest soon enough.
Each individual is a mixture of healthy and unhealthy, spirit driven and driven by sin. We each have seeds of wheat and weeds within ourselves. To paraphrase Paul, “I wish I could do what I should do but I don’t. I wish I would not do what I should not do, but I do. From the experience of my own marriage and virtually all the premarital and pastoral counseling I have done, I have learned that all of us get married or into a relationship for both good and bad reasons, for healthy and unhealthy reasons. As individuals, our greatest strength is also often our greatest weakness. We see when Jesus went into the home of Mary and Martha that Martha was a hard worker. The Church would cease to exist if it wasn’t for all the Marthas. As I said last week, the Protestant work ethic is not such a bad ethic. But there are times when being a hard worker can actually get in the way. The wheat and weeds are mixed together in each of us. If we waited until we had resolved all of our own baggage before we committed to relationship, we would not have relationship. God’s grace allows us to go ahead in life, trusting that the power of love and relationship is stronger than our weakness.
Ecclesiastes says that “for every time there is a season.” There are times when we need not worry about the weeds within us. Don’t sweat the small stuff. God tends to create certain circumstances to deal with certain problems. We can’t deal with everything at once. Erik Erikson noticed that there are certain ages within which we tend to deal with certain developmental issues. There are strengths and weaknesses, weeds and wheat that come ready to harvest at certain times.
Erikson says that from birth to one year we learn trust and mistrust. From 1-3 years our issue is autonomy vs. doubt and shame, 6-11 years is industriousness vs. inferiority, from 12-18 years identity cohesion vs. role confusion. From 18-35 many of us deal with the issues of intimacy and isolation. Remember the reading from Douglas Coopland. From 35-55, we deal with generativity and creativity vs. stagnation. When we are age 55 and up we tend to have to face the issues of ego integrity vs. despair. People are living longer today, so there has been more work done on several other stages later in life.
Often at once stage or another, our weeds get tangled in with the wheat and we get stuck in less than full development. We may continue to struggle with some issues later in life. But just dealing with each stage at the moment is hard enough. One member, after a sermon I gave on the courage and faith to change said, “That was a good sermon. But sometimes I feel a choice to stay, a choice of commitment, the effort to just stay with those we love, despite our collective problems is the thing we are called to do.” I agree, life is a balance between growing up and staying connected, between hanging in there even though there are some obvious weeds growing, and knowing when it is time to harvest, to separate the wheat from the chaff. The balance is not easy.
Today I want to share with you a poem written by Bob Kubik, entitled
Have I Reached the Cane Stage?
I watch the Neighbor caning down the drive and I say, “not me.”
It hurts when I walk, but I think, “not yet.”
I hear on the phone of several family situations;
Three more relatives have reached the cane stage!
We watched my dad biting shelled wheat in his hand,
Then announce that the crop is in the “dough stage”.
When it rains for days and days, the weatherman says
The river has reached “flood stage”.
I go to alumni meetings and canes appear everywhere;
But I’m not ready for their conclusions.
One even boarded a wheel chair
Leaving a walker behind.
My eyes have implanted lenses;
My ears have programmable aids;
My hair is replaced with a wig.
But frankly, do my legs need a stick?
How will I know when I’ve reached the Cane Stage?
There may be advantages of which I don’t know.
But it won’t be a matter of time, pride or shame
When I take a cane, but a matter of PAIN!
This is a beautiful and touching poem, and I thank Bob for letting me use it. I think that even though we may be at different stages and different ages, there are things we can all relate to in this poem. Primarily, Bob introduces us to the subject of loss, and loss is something we will experience throughout life. How do we accept it? What does it mean? Is there hope on the other side of the loss, on the other side of the pain of loss? Paul says in Romans this morning that the Whole Creation is in bondage to decay. “Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons (and daughters), the redemption of our bodies.
“It won’t be a matter of time, pride or shame; when I take a cane, but a matter of Pain!” At first glance, perhaps at first writing, the pain sounds like the pain of falling. When we fall and get hurt, this is the time to pick up a cane.
I love the defiance in that statement. “I don’t want to be eagerly waiting for the redemption of my body.” Jerry Rice was the greatest receiver ever to play football. I think Jerry Rice and I are the same age. Today on talk radio you can hear many say that he should retire, and not disgrace his reputation. But I think he just wants to play football as long as possible. And if it was easy for him to stop, he probably wouldn’t have all the records he has. Lance Armstrong is riding in his last Tour de France. It would have been easy to give up cycling with cancer, but he said “to hell with quitting.” But now he has decided to move on to something else. Cancer taught him there is a lot in life that is more important than cycling. And I would suspect he will be pretty tough at whatever he takes on next. I was on the track team in college. I loved the tough attitude demonstrated by wheel chair racers. Their strong arms spinning themselves around the track. And everyday I am inspired by courageous people everywhere, who continue to strive against odds to make ends meet.
There are those who think religious faith is a crutch for people who can’t walk through life on their own. There is a lot of truth in that. Religious faith is more than a crutch, but it is a crutch too. Would it be so bad if all of this faith business was an illusion in the scientific sense, if human life and community was given a stairway to heaven in the spiritual sense?
“We ourselves groan inwardly,” says, Paul. Often when we are depressed or overwhelmed, we cannot find words to express our pain, and we groan. We just groan, for that is all we can do. Certainly Paul is talking about physical, bodily pain, but he is also talking about spiritual pain. At times, all our soul can do is groan.
It is right here where the crazy idea of faith comes in. Right here is the time to let go of our rational intellect, our desire to fit the world into a package our rational minds can grasp. Let it break free, and find wings to fly, to dream. The poor know how important it is to dream, to have visions. The liberal intellectual left often criticize faith in heaven and hell as “pie in the sky,” as a diversion from our responsibility as stewards of this earth, and justice here and now. And this is often a legitimate criticism. Yet it is when we look at the poor, those who suffer from more of the injustice of this world, we see that the idea of heaven and hell can look pretty good. If part of the liberal faith says that we should honor the wisdom of the poor; if we want to move beyond what Paulo Freire termed the “banking method of education, when the privileged and the rich deposit their perceived wisdom into the poor and marginalized, and instead join into relationship in which both our worlds are transformed, then maybe we ought listen to what the poor have to say about dreaming and heaven. Marx may argue religion is just an opiate. But where can we find the idea from each according to his ability to each according to need? Ahh, in the early church of Acts 2! And isn’t it precisely those who are our heroes, those who have managed in their short time to make a lasting contribution to peace justice and equality in this life who have called us heavenward with their visions? I have a dream, I have been to the mountain top, I have seen the Promised Land.
“The whole Creation waits with eager anticipation for the sons and daughters of God to be revealed.” Jesus begins his parable by saying, “the Kingdom of Heaven is like…” In this sense, the Kingdom of heaven includes this life. Somehow God’s spirit and love encompasses it all…all of us, and yet is still out there beyond us.
Yes, we have to admit with Marx and others, there are even weeds and wheat in religion as a social construct, in God and in heaven. If we lock onto our vision, onto our dream as we would have it be, it can become dangerous. Our very image of ourselves and our God, our dream for ourselves and our God can keep us from reaching it. Chasing our manifest destiny may cause us to draw in the circle of God’s love too narrow, and to hell with the birds and the redwoods, the nations and indigenous people who get in our way.
Jesus is speaking about politics too. We can imagine Jesus speaking about revolution. Certain members of the Pharisees and ruling class are making horrible decisions. Yet it appears that those who are suffering the consequences are powerless to change things. Why doesn’t God intervene now and take the Romans and their puppets off their back? Some would argue that God is on the side of the winners and the rich. And there is some truth in this. Some of our leaders are good, some of the causes they are championing are just. And indeed, they have a hard job. But too often there is injustice mixed up with our just causes. And, Jesus is saying, “There will come a time when justice in served.” Liberation will not be denied. Do not think you have arrived, but do not give up hope.
Jesus is speaking to the powerless about hope, and to those in power about the coming judgement. He may also be speaking to those with self-righteous anger. If we rush to judgement, if we take up our cause sure that God is on our side, this may lead to violence and suffering of many innocent people. Terrorists burn the wheat field to kill the weeds. And as we see too clearly, terrorists are the weeds that implant themselves in the wheat of peace loving people. I remember seeing the twin towers crumble on live TV. I was devastated; all I could do was groan. And then I remember one morning walking into a deli with a TV on, and seeing the bombing of Baghdad at night. I just started to cry.
“We do not know what we ought to pray, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words, and God who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.” Whether it is in the Church, in our own being, or in the world, the difficulty of dealing with the weeds among the wheat can weaken our resolve, our hope. It may be that hope appears no where in sight. But hope that is seen is no hope. God has not forsaken us. Even crying and groaning can be hopeful nourishment from this Christian perspective. For crying and groaning can be our claim that things are not right, and they should be. Through Jesus we see a God who cries and suffers with us, yet will not allow sin, pain, suffering and death to have the last word.
There is still room for heavenly visions, visions for a promised land, for a place where a God of love and grace is resurrected, a place where the poor hear Good News, where a community of misfits is the Body of God, a place where swords are pounded into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, where each person has their own vine and their own fig tree, and no one makes them afraid. There is still a place where there are unpolluted, fresh springs of living water, where justice flows down like the waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. There is still time for heavenly visions, where we meet our loved ones at a great banquet, and return to our sweet home, where there is already a room prepared for us. A place where we soar on wings like eagles; where we run and do not grow weary, where we walk and do not grow faint.
A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
Lord, grant us the courage to change the things that should be changed, the grace to accept the things that cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference.