Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scriptures: Mark 4:26-29, Matthew 11:2-11
November 30, 2003
On the Friday after Thanksgiving, my nephew (or to be genealogically precise, the man who married my wife’s niece) was the 60th person in line at Wal-Mart at 5:15 in the morning. Unlike some men who wait until 5:15 on Christmas Eve, John wanted to get in early and get out cheap. As to whether early birds catch more worms, he had little comment. But for those of you giving worms for Christmas, if you get there when Wal-Mart opens on the Friday after Thanksgiving, the worms are likely to be fatter and the prices are likely to be lower.
Because there isn’t much time, you know. Given that Thanksgiving was later, the season is shorter. Not all that many days shorter. But every day counts. Which should make children happy, given that they are the impatient ones. As for me, I wouldn’t mind an extra week….could make good use of an extra week….and would pay a decent (if not princely) sum for an extra week. Because in a world filled with doom and gloom preachers who publicly rail against the pressure to get it all done, I am one of those Christmas junkies consumed by a desire to get it all in.
Advent, as I said in my Steeple Notes epistle, is all about waiting. For Christmas to come. For Christ to come. For Christ to come again. Or for all the good things that were supposed to follow Christ’s coming to finally happen. Advent comes to our part of the world when the days are fewer, shorter and colder, providing their own blanket of realism about how long we’ve been waiting and how weary we have gotten in the process.
For some, like Kim Holt, waiting is a personal thing. Doris Hall told me to read her story in last Wednesday’s Free Press. Kim Holt is 43 years old and still looking for Walter Wonderful. She thought she’d found him once. In fact, a friend said: “He’s ready with a ring.” Which he was. But he gave it to the other girl….the one who, unbeknownst to Kim, was carrying his baby. Then, several years and a divorce later, he came back. But not all the way back. Kim dated him for over five years. And during the good times they talked openly of marriage. Except that with each passing year, there were fewer and fewer good times. So they split.
Kim is trying to be flexible. But she has expectations. She wants a man who is honest, comfortably employed and financially responsible. But she also wants a man who attends church, can hold up his end of the conversation, and who will open an occasional door and provide some occasional laughter. And while she is not adverse to intimacy, Kim doesn’t believe that a relationship ought to begin with intimacy. So she waits.
As do others. People wait for all kinds of things. Some wait for winds to shift, tides to rise or fortunes to improve. Others wait for ships to come in, health to come back, opposition to come around or children to come home. And then there are those who take Isaiah seriously enough so as to wait for animals to bed down together, enemies to break bread together, and all the nations to stream up the mountain of the Lord together. But we are far from there. Some even say we are further than we have ever been from there.
For a while, it is easy to wait while expecting the best. But time has its way of wearing us down so that we wind up, instead, expecting the worst. Our figures of speech betray us. We talk about “waiting for the axe to fall”…..or the “sky to fall” (thank you, Chicken Little). Then there is that strangest of all euphemisms that speaks of “waiting for the other shoe to drop.” It’s like the comedian who announced: “I’ve got bad news and terrible news. Which do you want first?”
Enter the Chicago Cubs….and, as a number of you have added this week, the Boston Red Sox. I really thought this was the year when these two teams would end the waiting, answer the longing and utterly confound their following by engaging each other in the World Series. Which, by definition, one of them would have to win. True, it would take seven games. And the seventh game might last 24 innings. But one of them would eventually win.
During the build-up which preceded the playoffs, I heard a pair of sportswriters (one from Chicago and one from Boston) debate which team had waited longest and whose fans had suffered most. The writer from Chicago said that the people of Boston could afford to be patient longer, given the relatively high level of success (although not ultimate success) the Red Sox had enjoyed in recent seasons. But the Boston writer countered by saying: “Sure, we came close. But closer is harder. You folks in Chicago have been on the bottom so many times, you’ve made a strange kind of peace with it….even coming (in your own way) to enjoy it. Besides, you don’t go to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs win. You go to Wrigley Field to sit in the sunshine, drink beer and watch the ivy grow. Winning would only mess with your heads, getting you all confused about what’s really important.”
But I took even greater interest in the rationalizations for the respective plights of the two teams. Red Sox fans believe their team is cursed, and that the curse has been in effect since the year the Sox traded Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. In other words, Bostonians say: “The problem is not with us, but beyond us. Or above us. A curse comes from the outside. Meaning that it can’t be overcome, but has to be exorcised….as in cut out.” Which explains why Red Sox fans stick pins in dolls, burn old uniforms and perform funny dances at midnight around Fenway Park. Their goal is to defeat the demons….drive out the devil….that sort of thing. It also explains why Red Sox fans (along with Red Sox writers and owners) occasionally pile all their anger on one scapegoat and drive him clean out of town. Ask Bill Buckner, an otherwise gifted and talented first baseman. With a World Series in the bag and the champagne corks all but popping in the clubhouse, Bill Buckner once let an easy ground ball roll through his legs. And, from that point forward, the glory unraveled…..one sad string after another.
And this year, with the hated Yankees all but dead in the water, Red Sox manager Grady Little left a visibly-tiring Pedro Martinez on the mound to face two batters too many. Which is how it came to pass that Pedro got pounded, the Sox got pummeled, and Grady Little got fired. Never mind that Grady Little produced the best team in recent Sox history. The curse got him and the exorcists finished him off. I mean, he had to go.
Cubs fans, by contrast, do not see themselves as cursed, so much as stupid. “Why must we wait forever for success which never comes our way? Because we don’t deserve it, that’s why. We botch it and blow it. We fumble and bumble it. We smell it, only to screw it up. Not just our players, but our fans.”
Take this year. One game to win to get to the World Series. Three opportunities to win it. Our best two pitchers….maybe the league’s best two pitchers….ready and rested. Game six, all but in the bag. One down in the opposition’s eighth. An opponent lifts a high, floating foul fly down the left field line. It drifts closer and closer to the stands. But there is still room for Moises Alou to catch it. Two outs, all but certain. Eighth inning, all but over. Victory over the Marlins, all but assured. And Moises Alou is named after the guy who defied even greater odds in the eighth inning of the battle between the children of Israel and the armies of Egypt. But as Moises reaches for the ball, so does Steve Bartman (a loyal Cub fan sitting along the left field foul line). Steve leans over the railing, not catching it….but not letting Moises catch it either. Ball falls. Cubs fall. Hope falls….flatter than a pancake. And the wait goes on.
Well, sooner or later, it gets to you. Which is when frustration sets in. Followed by doubt. To which John the Baptist could attest. One day he is down at the river, immersing up a storm. Suddenly this 30-year-old adult male Galilean shows up. Immediately, John knows who he is. In fact, John is so sure of who he is that he suggests a little role reversal. “Jesus,” he says, “maybe you should be the baptizer, and me the baptizee. I know who you are. I know why you’ve come. I’m not even worthy to lace up your loafers. I’ve been roaming the river district, telling people to repent because the kingdom is at hand. And here….today….in person….the kingdom shows up.”
Now, not all that many months removed from the river district, John (who is cooling his heels in Herod’s prison) sends some of his people….yes, John has people….to see Jesus. And John’s question is this: “Are you the one, or should we keep looking?”
So what’s the problem? It’s a results problem, don’t you see? Insofar as John can see, there aren’t any. Or there aren’t enough. So he thinks to himself: “Maybe I was wrong.” And while John may have been the first to think it, he certainly wasn’t the last. It’s an honest question. If the kingdom is here….and if Jesus is its reigning monarch….shouldn’t it go better than it does?
Last Wednesday morning, we got into the question of predestination at my crack-of-dawn, isn’t-it-amazing-that-50-guys-show-up-at-6:30-a.m.-study group. And since our token Presbyterian wasn’t there to defend the Doctrine of Predestination (did God know in advance he wasn’t going to show?), the rest of us….good Wesleyans that we are….decided there is a lot of room for both human freedom and human error in the equation. And while God may want certain things to happen, both human freedom and human error can screw up God’s plans royally. Which was when I suggested that the older I get, and the longer I hang around places like this, the more evidence I see that there is a plan….that there is movement toward the plan….and that God does seem to be in the business of steering us in the general direction of the plan. Not what you’d call tight steering. In fact, there seems to be an inordinate amount of “play” in the wheel. But history is not careening haphazardly, nor are things out of control utterly.
At least, that was a conclusion that sat well with the rest of the group. Then the old clock on the wall said 7:30. And at 7:30 we pray. And at 7:31 we all fold up our chairs and stack them in the corner. Which was when Scott Wilkinson….who is ever thoughtful when it comes to matters and mysteries of the Spirit….came up to me and said: “Bill, as concerns this business of divine steering, do you ever find yourself wishing that God did it more often and more forcibly? I mean, couldn’t God respect our free will and still apply a heavier hand to the wheel of history?”
And I had to tell Scott I didn’t know the answer to that. But I also told him that I often felt that way. And still do. Were you to make me “God for a day,” I’d find some way to push my agenda a little harder than God seems to.
Annie Dillard tells of the pastor whose pulpit prayer included some wonderful petitions for the betterment of life in this world. Then, before signing off, he included these words: “But thou knowest, O God, that we ask for these same things Sunday after Sunday. So we confess to you our discouragement that so little progress is made.” Said Annie: “His prayer was so painfully honest that I knew I had finally found a preacher who knows God.”
Frankly, I do not know why….if God is truly in charge….that things do not go better or happen faster. But when John raised a similar question to Jesus (“If you’re the one, tell us what we’re missing”), Jesus said: “Look again. Look closer. Pay better attention. Things are happening.” Which, apparently, was good enough for John. And, most days, is good enough for me.
When Jesus tells John’s people what to look for, it’s not big, grandiose stuff. As concerns signs of the kingdom, Jesus points to people who couldn’t see much, seeing more….people who couldn’t climb out of bed in the morning, playing Ring Around the Rosie in the town square…. Previously untouchable lepers kissing their wives and hugging their children…..and the poor, hearing a good sermon for a change. And I suppose if you’re blind, lame, poor or your skin used to be all scales and scabs, that’s big time stuff. But can you build a kingdom on it?
Apparently, Jesus thinks you can. He doesn’t care whether it’s “big time stuff” or not. As concerns the kingdom, it breaks through in little ways. But it breaks through. As if to illustrate his point, he talks about a seed that nobody can see growing. But it’s in there. I mean, it’s already in there. You aren’t going to see it come to maturity all at once. In the version we sang last Sunday: “First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn shall appear.”
No, you may not see it. But neither are you going to be able to stop it. It’s like that dandelion that finds a crack in the asphalt. Or creates a crack in the asphalt. Not only does it have presence, but there is an inevitability to its appearance.
Look, the parable says, you can be sleeping….you can be sighing….you can even be sinning. But the kingdom is growing. The point has less to do with the gradualness of its growing than with the surety of its growing. In the Greek, “automate he ge karpophorei” we read that the seed “bears fruit automatically.” There is not a hint (says Robert Farrar Capon) about crop failure, any more than there is a concern about the machinations of the devil or the knuckle-headedness of humanity. Which means that the kingdom cannot be stopped by the curses of evil outsiders. So there, Red Sox. Neither can the kingdom be stopped by the ineptitude of fumble-fingered insiders. So there, Cubbies. Good things will come. In fact, the world has been designed in such a way so that good things can’t help but come.
Better yet, says Capon, the kingdom story is a local story. The kingdom is planted here. On earth. In earth. Amongst earthlings. To which he adds: “If the gospel is a love story, it is a story of earth wedded rather than earth jilted.” God is marrying history. And humanity. Which is why Jesus is often referred to as “the bridegroom.”
Which should be good news to Kim Holt (the 43 year old who can’t seem to find a man). Although, just one week ago, she met a man at her brother’s hair salon. I mean, who could be safer than someone hanging out at your brother’s hair salon? So when he asked for her phone number, she gave in and gave it to him.
The next night he called her at 11:30 p.m. She told him she was already in bed. “Well,” he said, “I thought I’d just come over and hold you for a little while.”
“I don’t know you,” she said. “You can’t just meet me one day and tell me you want to come over and hold me the next.”
To which he said: “Women don’t usually tell me no.”
To which she said: “So let this be your first time.”
* * * * *
My friends, December is cold. Life is hard. And waiting is lonely. And while God’s kingdom cannot be stopped, the fruits of God’s kingdom are sometimes a little tardy. But the good news is this. The one who inaugurates the kingdom comes to hold us while it matures.
Note: As concerns information about the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs, much of it reflects a lifelong passion for baseball games and pennant races. While I am well aware that the columnist George Will has written about the perils of being a Cubs fan, I did not take time to consult him during the writing of this sermon. I thought it better to let him grieve in private.
As concerns the parable of the seed growing secretly, I am heavily indebted to Robert Farrar Capon and his marvelous trilogy on the parables of Jesus. In this particular case, the parables relating to seeds are contained in The Parables of the Kingdom, from which I quote:
Note that the kingdom is presented as the very thing sown. The kingdom is not the result of sowing something quite different from itself. Rather, the kingdom is present, in all of its power, right from the start. Moreover, by the very force of the imagery of sowing, the seed is clearly to be understood as having been sown in this world….squarely in the midst of every human and earthly condition. This emphasis on the kingdom as a worldly rather than an otherworldly piece of business is also present in the Parable of the Sower, but Jesus’ repetition of it here makes me want to underscore it.
In any case, we have too often given in to the temptation to picture the kingdom of heaven as if it were something that belonged more properly elsewhere than here. Worse yet, we have conceived of “elsewhere” entirely in heavenly rather than earthly terms. But this little story of the seed growing secretly represents scripture’s insistence to the contrary.
