William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Matthew 26: 51-54; I Corinthians 1: 26-31
Over the course of the last few days, I have managed to reacquaint myself with my hammer, my screw driver, my handy-dandy pliers, my trusty wire cutters, and a couple of step ladders of varying heights and stabilities. I needed those tools because there were a few things around the house that needed to be hung, secured or adjusted in preparation for the visits that many of you will make to the parsonage this afternoon.
Notice that I did not equate the use of these tools with the "fixing" of anything around the parsonage in preparation for your visits this afternoon. That's because I seldom "fix" things. Tim Allen's popular sitcom was written neither for me, nor about me. Where home repairs are concerned, I am colossally unhandy. I can do any job that requires a strong back and steady legs. Wall washing and garden spading are my forte. I am less adept at any job that requires the connection of a keen mind with nimble fingers. As fingers go, my ten have never worked in close harmony with one another.
When I helped build a church in Costa Rica, I noticed that our crew was divided into two classifications of workers. There were people who walked around with pencils behind their ears, and there were people who walked around with work gloves on their fingers. In the course of two hot, sweaty weeks, my ear never felt a pencil. But my fingers were seldom, if ever, ungloved. My job was cement.... mixing it.... by hand.... all day. I was good at it. Largely, because I had the back for it.
Male pride being what it is, it is hard to admit my unhandiness to you. Most men would like to have their friends believe they can fix anything. I am no exception. Except that, I can't. Never could. This is why I have this marvelous idea for a repair shop, run the way the Catholic Church used to run the confessional. Upon entering a big, dark building that looks like a church, I select a small booth, bisected by a privacy screen so that nobody can see who I am. Meanwhile, somebody like Mitch Middleton sits (in priestly garb) on the other side of the screen. I tell him that my toaster is dead and that I am confessing to the sin of being unable to fix it. Then I slip Mitch a $20 bill which he promptly deposits in his clerical apron. Once my penance is paid, Mitch absolves me of my stupidity by saying something like: "That's okay, a man of your stature and calling surely has more important things to do." And for the same twenty bucks, he also fixes my toaster.
All of this is a prelude to telling you that there is one skill I have recently mastered. I have learned how to operate a chain saw. My first lesson involved some old railroad ties in my planter boxes in Farmington Hills. Real railroad ties. Monster ties. Black ties, soaked in creosote. Not those wimpy ties sold by landscapers today. At any rate, they were rotting and needed replacing. Everybody said so. Kris said so. But it was my friend Al Green who showed me how to cut up the old ties into manageable pieces with his chain saw. After a couple quick lessons, I made toothpicks out of those babies. I also covered myself, beyond recognition, with alternating layers of sawdust and creosote.
Having mastered railroad ties, I decided to fell a forest, or at least 8 large trees from a forest that fell on my Elk Rapids property during a mini-tornado. This time it took a full day. But, when day was done, my personal enjoyment was every bit equal to the results achieved.
I like chain saws. While not quite ready for movies featuring massacres committed thereby, I nonetheless enjoy what such a chain saw can do and how I feel while using one. I like the noise, the surge, and the raw power of it all. I like the speed with which things can be cut up and through. A man with a chain saw is a man on the way to accomplishing something. A man with a chain saw is a man on his way to making a mark. A man with a chain saw is a man not to be messed with. So much of my life is spent working gingerly, carefully and subtlety, so as to achieve my goals without offending my constituency. Obstacles in the ministry often have to be met by nibbling away at the edges or by coming at them via the back door. By contrast, a chain saw seems remarkably direct. O, if I could only get one for Christmas. I could:
· Slash through bureaucratic red tape
· Whack away at institutional underbrush
· Cut the legs out from under my opposition
· Clear paths, open logjams, trim dead wood
· Level mountains, exalt valleys, make rough places plain, crooked places straight, and prepare a proper highway for our God.
Lest you wonder about my sudden switch from contemporary to biblical imagery, let me be so bold as to suggest that, for several hundred years before the birth of Jesus, the Jews were also looking for a chain saw for Christmas.... in the person of a Messiah who would cut a mighty swath through the obstacles, the opposition, and the oppressors of the day. Jews, throughout much of their history, did not have it easy. Therefore, one popular image pictured a Messiah who would be as hard on the opposition as the opposition had been hard on them.
That is why biblical messianic prophecy (in passages we never quite get around to quoting in Advent) is rich with images of an avenging Messiah who will "dash in pieces, princes and nations," and break those who oppose God's will "with a rod of iron."
This is power language, for which the chain saw is not an inappropriate image. What's more, even the gospels are not entirely sure that they want to let such language go. Here and there, little pieces of narrative slip through, indicating that some gospel writers were not completely comfortable with the weakness of Jesus. It has often been suggested that both Matthew and John are concerned to depict Jesus as someone who could have operated in chain-saw-like-fashion, had he chosen to. A few moments ago, we heard Matthew's account of the arrest in the garden of Gethsemane. You remember how it goes. Someone comes to Jesus' defense, brandishes a sword, and slices off the ear of a soldier. Jesus tells the man to re-sheath his weapon, adding that those who take up swords will just as surely perish by them. Then Matthew (alone) has Jesus say: "Don't you think that (if I wanted to) I could put out the call, and twelve legions of angels would immediately appear to kick the living bejeebers out of these who have come to arrest me?" Although I have taken some liberties with the translation, I have also taken the time to read seven commentaries on that specific verse. Each of them suggests that it probably reflects a view in the early church that couldn't bear to see Jesus crucified because of weakness in the face of opposition.
Jesus, of course, did not get 12 legions of angels in the garden that night. And the Jews did not get a chain saw for Christmas. They got a baby instead. Which was why this whole business about stables and cradles (lovely as it was) had to offend more than a few of them.
And it's not as if the Jews were totally wrong in their desires. Power is not necessarily a bad thing. I know I'd rather have more of it than less of it. And what little I have, I'd just as soon not give up. What's more, I could make a pretty good list of people I'd like to get more power into the hands of. Had I been alive 2000 years ago, that list would have certainly been headed by Jesus. So had I received word (while stargazing in the Orient) that a baby in some faraway stable was God's anointed Messiah (and that I ought to go see him and bring along a gift of sorts), I might have skipped over gold, frankincense, myrrh, or some dumb drum song, and headed off to Sears of Judea to buy the kid a chain saw. I have always figured that you can't go too far wrong if you can get the right tool into the right hands to accomplish the right ends.
Here you are....sweet Mary's baby. This may not make any sense to you now, but it may come in handy when you grow up.
Power has its uses. When connected to the world of ideas and ideals (writes Bart Giamatti), power can be a marvelous force for public good.
Power is not to be sneezed at in a world where powerlessness is both real and frustrating. A couple of years ago, the power went out of our electrical circuits for six days. For the first couple of days, we had a good time playing pioneer. Then we got testy. By the end of the week, it began to feel like the end of the world. And we knew that power was coming back on. What happens if you lose it and you don't know that? That happens to people every day. People lose power over their life.... their health.... their family.... and their future. They can't make happen what needs to happen. And they can't stop from happening, the things that ought not to happen.
Or what if they hunt and sniff, scratch and claw, and finally get to the place where power is supposed to be, only to find that it isn't? John F. Kennedy was famous for saying that the most surprising thing about the presidency was his discovery of how little he could do in the office, once he actually got elected to it. On a lesser scale, the same thing happens in churches. I have seen people wander through the committee structure of the United Methodist Church, always wondering when they are going to get elected to the committee ''where the important stuff happens."
Power is elusive (meaning slippery, hard to find, and harder still to hang on to). That's what the world says. But power is also illusive (meaning that it's not everything it's cracked up to be, and can't do everything people think it can do). That's what the Bible says.
First, power can be incredibly seductive. That's why Jesus rejected it in the wilderness, saying: "Don't tempt me with it."
Second, power can be incredibly frightening. When you finally get power in your hands, and it comes time to exercise it, it is not unusual to find those same hands turning to jelly. In such moments, were someone to come along and offer to take power out of your hands, would you willingly give it up? Consider the person who is entrusted with the power to make decisions about another individual's medical care. Surgery or no? Heroic measures or no? Feeding tubes.... ventilators.... defibrillators.... code blues.... or no? Tell me how easy it is to exercise that power.
Or consider Pastor-Parish Relations Committees in local churches. Most of the people serving on that committee welcome the chance to be there. In my 29 years of ministry, nobody has ever turned down an invitation to serve on the PPR Committee. That's because the PPR Committee is considered to be a "power committee" whose members are privy to all kinds of "inside stuff." Then comes a tough decision. Shall we employ this one or that one? Shall we re-evaluate this one or that one? Shall we terminate this one or that one? Suddenly, nine stomachs rumble in unison, as each member wonders why in the world he or she ever said "yes" to this job.
Power tempts. Power frightens. And the third part of the equation is that power fails. The ultimate illusion is that power can always deliver the goods. It can't. Not every mountain is movable by force. Parents know that better than anybody else. When your kids are little, you can tell them to do something and they will generally do it. They may whine.... complain.... forget.... procrastinate.... but they generally do it. But one day you tell them to do something and they say: "You can't make me." Which (of course) is wrong.... for the time being. You can make them. And you do make them. But even in that moment of parental triumph, you know that your power to extract compliance is coming to an end. The day will come when you won't be able to make them to do something if they don't really want to do it. You can ground them.... deny them.... curse them.... some even hit them. But if they set their resistance against you, you won't be able to break it.
Fortunately, few homes get to that point. But if and when they do, there is no way that a raw exercise of power will correct the situation. Parents who have never been in that situation can't understand that. They say things like: "If my kids ever said that to me, I'd show them who is the boss." But until you've faced that situation, you don't realize that there are limits to what you can do as "boss".... limits to what you can do with authority.... limits to what you can do with physical strength.... and limits to what you can do with allowances, privileges and car keys. You name the issue. If a kid wants to resist you, that kid is going to resist you.... even if it means not doing what you said "do".... doing what you said "don't".... going where you said "stay away from".... or walking out the door when you said "you're in for the night."
That doesn't mean that parents should be wishy-washy. There is much to be said for firmness. There is much to be said for taking authority. There is much to be said for holding one's ground. But it may not win the day. Or it may win the day in a way that causes the win to feel like a loss. You can't make anybody do anything, really. Which, I suppose, was (and continues to be) God's problem, leading to a search (as the scriptures suggest) for a more excellent way. A few weeks ago, a good friend got me a copy of Terry Anderson's memoirs, "Den of Lions." Anderson, as you will remember, was one of a small contingent of Americans who (as the result of a rather brutal exercise of power) were held hostages in and around Beirut. Their names became legendary: Reed.... Sutherland.... Pollhill.... Weir.... Anderson.... Steen.... Cicipplo.
In time, freedom came to each. And with it, light. And with light, the beginnings of something else. Father Lawrence Jenco, one of the earlier releases, recalled the day of his departure from Lebanon. A young guard approached him, saying: 'Will you forgive me for keeping you six months in isolation?" To which Father Jenco responded: "If you will forgive me for hating you every minute of that time."
Then Jenco added: "After that, there was a peace between us. Call it the Stockholm Syndrome if you want. All I know is that there was love in the end."
My friends, if it does nothing else, Christmas comes (just in the nick of time for some of us) to remind us that there was love in the beginning, too.
