Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Exodus 20:1-6
Only in Detroit would anyone understand the logic of linking the lowly octopus and the lovely Karen Newman in the same sentence. The common denominator, of course, being our beloved Red Wings and their annual post-Easter pursuit of the Stanley Cup. People throw octopi on the ice during the games, while Karen Newman sings the National Anthem before the games. The octopus has eight legs (tentacles) which once symbolized the eight wins it took to claim Lord Stanley’s trophy. But times have changed. Now it takes 16 wins, thereby requiring (I suppose) two octopi.
Nobody throws Karen Newman onto the ice, although she was once lowered from the rafters on a trapeze-like swing (with the house lights off and the spotlights on) before taking her position….center ice….to sing about the “rockets’ red glare.” But she’s a fixture….nearly as important as Stevie Yzerman.
Still, she almost didn’t make it this year. Because just six weeks and two days ago, Karen Newman gave birth to twins. “So much for glamour,” she said. “And so much for sleep. They’ve turned my life upside down and my focus inside out.” Which was followed by this. “It’s not about me anymore. It’s no longer just about me.” Which, I suppose, is one way of saying that while Karen Newman is still “center ice,” she is no longer center stage. Her presence no longer dominates the room. Her needs no longer arrange the day.
It takes a while to learn this, I suppose. When you are a child, you live in a very small world. Many days, it would seem that you are the only one in it. We’ve all watched it. Mother’s busy. Father’s busy. Talking to each other. Talking with friends. Talking on the phone. Kid interrupts with an announcement or a request which, 89.6 percent of the time, is trivial. And no matter how many times the child is told “hold your horses”….“later on”….“in a minute”….there is no backing down on the part of the child. At that moment, everything is about them and they expect the rest of the world to understand that and arrange itself accordingly.
It changes a bit when kids become teenagers. They still think the spotlight is on them. But they are not always certain they like it. If they think their hair doesn’t look right….their skin doesn’t look right….their shape doesn’t look right….their clothing doesn’t look right….just try telling them not to worry or obsess over it (that nobody is going to notice and, even if they do, nobody is going to care). Because they are certain that absolutely everybody is going to notice, and be so critical in their “noticing” that (from that day forward) the next several months of their life will be ruined….absolutely ruined.
I remember feeling that, even as I applied gobs of coffee-colored zit cream stuff to hide the blemishes on my face before school, church, wherever. And if my mother had said, “That goop looks worse than the zits you’re trying to cover,” I wouldn’t have believed her. And if she had said, “Nobody cares what you look like,” I would have wondered what planet she lived on. And if she pointed out that it was more than a little arrogant and self-centered of me to assume that the whole world would stop what it was doing so as to be attuned to my face, I would have wondered how anybody who loved me could be so insensitive to my predicament.
Not too many moons ago, I encountered a troubled young bridesmaid in the narthex. She was too old to be a junior bridesmaid, but too young (really) for the big title. She was alternately pouting and throwing hissy fits before her cousin’s wedding because she didn’t like the dress….didn’t look good in the dress….looked fat in the dress….and “who in their right mind would pick such a stupid dress in the first place.” First one person, then another, tried to calm her, comfort her, assuage her, placate her….even to the point of offering last-minute surgery with needle and thread to please her….all the while trying to keep her out of the bride’s line of vision, so as not to magnify the upset and shove everybody over the edge.
None of which was working. In fact, I got the decided impression that she was getting some perverse kind of pleasure out of the attention she was getting….what with everybody doing this, that and the other thing to make it right, and make her stop.
Finally, I asked her what the matter was (even though I knew full well what the matter was). So she repeated her lament. In response to which I said something like this:
Look, I know you don’t like the dress….don’t feel good in the dress….wouldn’t have picked the dress for yourself in a million years….and figure that everybody (upon seeing you in it) is going to feel similarly about it. To me, your dress looks fine. But what do I know? I’m not everybody. But neither are you. This isn’t my day. But it isn’t yours, either. This is not about you. This is about your cousin. Some day it will be about you. Then, hopefully, you will have the perfect dress. But for now, I think you need to suck it up and go out there in the one you’re wearing.
And she did. Sure, it was a risky approach. But what did I have to lose? Nothing else was working. And give the kid a ton of credit for recognizing the truth when she heard it….that there are times when it’s not about you, I mean.
Frankly, this surfaces at weddings all the time….with people of all ages. I run into people who aren’t going to come if somebody else comes. Balanced by the people who are not going to come unless somebody else comes (“What do you mean, don’t bring my three year old?”). Even brides and grooms get weird on occasion. Every time I hear “It’s our day and we can do whatever we want,” the hairs on the back of my neck stand up (even though I retain my outwardly-calm and almost-always-charming demeanor). I want to tell them that while love may be personal and private, weddings are public expressions of that love. Which means that brides and grooms have to be sensitive to the various “publics” involved….either that, or tie their knots privately in my office on Thursdays at noon.
Not everything is about you. Kids have to learn it. Wedding participants have to learn it. Athletes….especially athletes….have to learn it (thank you, Jerry Stackhouse). And Christians have to learn it, too. I can’t begin to tell you how many fires I’ve tried to hose down in 37 years of church work because somebody didn’t get enough attention, enough deference, enough limelight, enough love. This is true of staff members as well as congregants. It is also true of yours truly (mea culpa). There is none of us without guilt, here.
As church issues go, I believe that maybe ten percent are about theology (what is believed). Another ten percent are about strategies of implementation (who is served). A third ten percent are about politics and protocol (how things get done). The other seventy percent are about “How much do you love me?” Maybe that’s high. But not by much.
If you’re wondering where all this is coming from, you need go no further back than a couple of Wednesdays when my “crack of dawn” men’s group was discussing the word “idolatry” in Kathleen Norris’ prize-winning glossary entitled Amazing Grace.
The Old Testament is big on idolatry (as in being against it, not for it). The Ten Commandments were given to guard against it. No other gods. No graven images. No bowing down before anything of any kind, fashioned by anybody for any reason. The goal being to keep a proper perspective on things. God in the center. Everything else relating to the center….taking cues from the center….giving deference to the center….paying homage to the center….drawing power from the center.
But, in our time, when we think of idolatry we make a pair of errors. The first error assumes that idols are always coveted objects. I’m talking statues, here….icons, books, pictures. We love that Old Testament story where the Israelites got tired of waiting for a new word from God (don’t we all) and said: “While we’re waiting, why don’t we all take off our gold chains, our gold bracelets, our gold necklaces, along with those gold studs and hoops that we shove into the holes in our ears that we made with an ice pick. Then let’s throw them all into the campfire and see what comes out.” Which, as you will remember, turned out to be a golden calf (“Wow, where’d that come from?”). But what makes that story so likeable is that we can all chortle and say: “Hey, we never did that.”
And the second error we make is to assume that idols, rather than coveted objects, are coveted statuses. Getting rich. Getting power. Getting recognition. Getting elevation (for me and mine, us and ours). “My brother and I want big time jobs in your cabinet, Jesus,” said Jimmy and John. About which we’ve talked before. But what we’ve not noted before is the fact that the other ten were (how does the Bible say it?) “indignant” at the greedy two. Not, scholars say, because James and John asked. But because they asked first.
But could it be (asks Kathleen Norris) that idols are not so much external to us, but intrinsic in us….that we (ourselves) assume idol-like status, by assuming that the world really does revolve around us and, to whatever degree it doesn’t, it should.
To which Jesus says: “Look, that’s all well and good, but don’t fool yourself. You are not likely to find your life until you lose it. No, you’re not likely to find it at all.”
Interesting, isn’t it, that almost all our associations with the word “loss” are negative. None of us wants to be lost….geographically or spiritually. Few of us want to admit we are lost (“If we just drive around a while, I am sure I will recognize one of these streets sooner or later”). Most of us would fight someone who told us to “get lost.” And all of us feel the pain in the Ernie Harwell’s voice when he is forced to report another game in the loss column.
But all of these images pale in comparison with the phrase “He’s losing it”….“She’s losing it”…..“You’re losing it”….“I’m losing it.” That’s pretty much the worst thing you can say about anybody. Or to anybody. But Jesus says: “You know, you probably won’t get anywhere in life until you do….lose it, I mean.”
So what does that mean? Well, one thing it means is that not everything is about you. Moreover, you are going to do better, be happier and maybe even live longer when you get yourself out of the center. Which is hard to do. Because you can’t surrender a self you haven’t found. So some navel-gazing and mirror-peering is both permissible and essential. But it can become an obsession, don’t you see.
One of the more interesting authors I have read in recent years is Dan Wakefield who, after years as a Hollywood screenwriter, has taken to writing spiritual memoirs such as Returning and How Do WeKnow When It’s God? While Wakefield’s books aren’t great, they are good….and brutally honest. After decades of atheism and hard living, Wakefield wandered into a church in Boston’s Back Bay one Christmas Eve. And everything he has written since chronicles his subsequent journey. As testimonies go, his is not a hugely-ascending success story. But it’s an illuminating story….an instructive story….and (for those of us well acquainted with our own personal demons and detours) an inspiring story.
What interests me this morning is his recollection of a salvation moment. It occurred in a soup kitchen in East Harlem. No, he wasn’t eating. He was serving. Money was never that big an object. Although, when he reached the point in his psychoanalysis in midtown Manhattan that he was going three hours a week, he was going through money as fast as he was going through memory.
Which is no knock on analysis. He needed it. He sought it. He benefited from it. But he crossed the line in the advanced stages of it where he became so consumed with probing his life, that one day he walked out of his analyst’s office and realized he no longer had one. A life, I mean. And if you can’t understand that, then I fear you can’t understand the Gospel, either. So where did he find his life? Spooning soup in East Harlem, that’s where he found his life. Where, for the first time in a long time in his life, he realized it wasn’t about him.
