00:00:00:00 - 00:00:09:01
Unknown
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
00:00:09:04 - 00:00:18:10
Unknown
I'm so happy to be here with you today. Even if you're not, because your favorite preacher is on sabbatical.
00:00:18:12 - 00:00:38:25
Unknown
Before our pastor Rob left. He told me a lot about Saint Luke's. He told me how you began and how you grew and how you came through Covid. And he really caught my attention when he told me how committed you are to being real before God and one another, bypassing all the fake ways people have invented not to do that.
00:00:38:26 - 00:01:02:21
Unknown
So my kind of place, I used to work at a church in Atlanta called All Saints, and we knew we weren't. We were all sorts. And that's the way we liked it. Because how do you learn how many ways God can love people, if not through the diversity of the beloved? So that's what I want to talk about this morning.
00:01:02:23 - 00:01:37:02
Unknown
is the second thing that he and I talked about, which is how important it is to know what makes your heart sing and never to let that fall into the abyss under your to do list. So that's my topic. Do you know what makes your heart sing at my house right now? It's this crazy new gray kitten who chases a laser light around the kitchen floor like it's a fish under water for someone else is hammering the last nail into the wheelchair ramp that someone is sitting right there waiting to try out for the first time.
00:01:37:03 - 00:02:02:25
Unknown
Yes, I combed your website for someone else's crossing the finish line of a half marathon with people you'll feel bonded to forever, though you don't even know their names. This singing heart phenomenon, it differs so much from person to person that it's hard to predict. But I found that the process of talking to people about it is easy to predict.
00:02:02:29 - 00:02:33:19
Unknown
When I asked someone what makes their heart sing, the first thing most of them do is look at me like I just asked them to spell their names backwards in Greek letters. What makes my heart sing? Can I get back to you on that? Others seem to know the answer right away. You can see it on their faces, but you can also tell they don't think it's good enough, especially if they're Christians with permanent entries on their to do list that say things like go the extra mile.
00:02:33:22 - 00:03:04:27
Unknown
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Pray without ceasing. They want their heart singing thing to be a half marathon thing or a wheelchair thing, and not a kitten thing. Somewhere along the way, taking their cues from over achieving religion or culture or parents or friends, they've decided that a singing heart is less valuable to God than a fainting heart, fainting from service to a higher good.
00:03:05:02 - 00:03:26:04
Unknown
Ask him what they're working on and they'll jump right in. Are, you know, just trying to keep my head above water with a job and the kids and the housework, or I'm going back for my college degree after 20 years away. Can you believe it? Or I just joined Planet Fitness. It's time to get serious. These really are higher goods, and I'm not picking on them.
00:03:26:04 - 00:03:56:10
Unknown
I'm just wondering why it's so hard to say. Not working on anything right now. Just leaving room for a little more joy. Or I'm working on trusting God to be God without my supervision. I think that was easier before radios and newspapers and the internet. Way back sometime you didn't know anything terrible was happening in the next town over, unless you saw the smoke going up or somebody thundered in on horseback to tell you what was happening.
00:03:56:14 - 00:04:38:08
Unknown
Now all you have to do is just tap that screen on your smartphone and the whole world comes pouring through that little window. Last week I tried to Google Hit Man, a new movie that's getting great reviews. But before I even got to the key, I learned about the latest in the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the emergency food shortages in eight African nations, the 2 million Venezuelans who are living right now in Colombia, early season wildfires that have erupted in Arizona and New Mexico, and the 28 people trapped upside down in a ride at an amusement park in Oregon.
00:04:38:10 - 00:05:08:17
Unknown
I even discovered there's something called the center for Disaster Philanthropy, which is how I feel most of the time, or at least the center of disaster anxiety, because the internet has given me a taste of God's omniscience without a crumb of God's omnipotence to go with it. You know what I mean? It's a lot to handle. Jesus offers an antidote in this morning's reading from the sermon on the Mount.
00:05:08:17 - 00:05:35:14
Unknown
But before I go there, a word on that sermon itself. Back when I taught world religions to college students, it was always easier to teach other people's religions than it was to teach my own. I had 2.5 hours per major world tradition. And the hardest part for me, Christian, was when it came time to choose a foundational text that captured the heart of Christian teaching.
00:05:35:17 - 00:06:10:11
Unknown
I know what you're thinking. The Bible. Right? But which book? From which testament? In which translation? If anyone had to read the Bible straight through to get to the heart of Christian teaching, I think almost everyone would take somebody else's word for it. I think that's why so many of the textbooks I used for my class chose one of the historical, we believe, creeds of the church instead Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, compact statements of faith that originated in the first centuries of the Christian Church.
00:06:10:13 - 00:06:39:18
Unknown
That left the students ice cold, especially those who thought that the real foundational text of Christianity was John 316. Whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. Or maybe John 14 six, no one comes to the father but by me. Single verses in other words, that banked on believing, believing in Jesus with no salvation to spare for anyone else.
00:06:39:20 - 00:07:17:23
Unknown
One semester, I floated the sermon on the Mount as the foundational text of Christianity, the longest collection of Jesus teachings in any of the four Gospels found only in Matthew, with three whole chapters full of instructions on how to live and not a single word about what you have to believe. Isn't that interesting? I find that interesting. According to the preacher of the sermon on the Mount, the people most likely to end up in heaven are the poor in spirit.
00:07:17:25 - 00:07:43:15
Unknown
Those who are righteous enough to get persecuted for it, and those who both keep and teach the commandments. Summing all that up at the end, Jesus says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father in heaven. The students were not left cold by this sermon.
00:07:43:18 - 00:08:05:26
Unknown
Reading it out loud in class, going round and round so that each of them are heard. One or more of those red letter verses in their own wise voices. That was a strong thing for them with so many questions afterwards, like what's good about being poor in spirit? I thought the point was to be spiritually rich or righteousness sounds suspect to me.
00:08:05:27 - 00:08:30:21
Unknown
What kind? From the left or from the right? Does anyone really love their enemies? Really? My mom said, if you give to everyone who begs from you, you're just keeping them on the street. If someone's trying to kill you, are you still supposed to turn the other cheek? They liked do not judge that. You may not be judged.
00:08:30:24 - 00:09:03:26
Unknown
They couldn't believe Jesus really meant for people to tear out their eyes and cut off their hands if those body parts caused them to sin. Even the literalists in class voted for a metaphor on that one. No one could figure out, do not give what is holy to dogs. That sounds like a commandment. There was heated discussion about whether doors really knocked when you opened on them, but by the end of the sermon, the main question was who can live like that?
00:09:03:28 - 00:09:29:28
Unknown
Why did Jesus say to be perfect? Like God is perfect when only he can do that? So that's when we rewound to the part of Matthew's sermon on the Mount that you heard this morning, which comes right in the middle of 50 something. That's my count, 50 something instructions on what sounds for all the world like an impossible way of life.
00:09:30:00 - 00:10:00:09
Unknown
Do not worry, Jesus says, not about your life or what you need to stay alive, or what troubles tomorrow may bring. If you absolutely have to worry about something you cannot on today, but that's absolutely all you get to. Today's trouble is enough for today. Just leave tomorrow alone. Okay. Test question. Are any of you old enough to remember Bob Marley song Three Little Birds?
00:10:00:11 - 00:10:17:26
Unknown
Oh, I'm getting some nods. It's a really simple song. Three little birds, Marley sings, pitch by his door. Stop one sunny morning singing sweet songs and saying, this is our message to you. Ooh.
00:10:17:28 - 00:10:57:15
Unknown
Don't worry about a thing. Every little group gonna be all right. Singing don't worry about a thing. Cause every little thing gonna be alright. Is that Bob Marley's debut at Saint Luke's? I think maybe. Okay. Half my life ago, I was a newly married hospital chaplain, dragging myself home after a night on call to try and get some sleep.
00:10:57:18 - 00:11:23:03
Unknown
After all the terrible things I had seen that night in the ICU and the neonatal ICU and the E.R. and the room on the fifth floor where the code blue had been called. When my sweet husband heard my key in the lock, he met me at the door and took me by the shoulders and steered me to a chair he'd placed in front of a loudspeaker.
00:11:23:05 - 00:11:36:26
Unknown
Then he lifted the needle on the record player, and he set it down on three little birds. Don't worry about nothing.
00:11:36:28 - 00:12:15:16
Unknown
Everything's gonna be all right. He meant well. But why did I want to smack him? I mean, I wondered the same thing about my primal first reaction to Jesus Birds and Lilies song. Because after a really hard day, whether it's due to my own shortfalls or the terrible things that are happening to people I love, or the trauma of the headlines, I don't want to look at the birds of the air because I can't live on oiled black sunflower seeds like they can.
00:12:15:19 - 00:12:48:05
Unknown
And I don't want to consider the lilies of the field either, because I don't have to worry about Social Security running out before they get to it, or climate change or microplastics in their drinking water. Every little thing is going to be all right, really. That's how I came through the door anyway. But after I let Jesus take me by the shoulders and steer me to the chair he had placed not in front of a loudspeaker, but in front of a field flush with birds and lilies.
00:12:48:12 - 00:13:24:13
Unknown
I realized he wasn't trying to correct me or shut me up. He was trying to save me by sidelining me for just a minute, sitting me down in front of things I had not created and could not control, that were glorious in that moment. Their beauty might be here today and gone tomorrow, but that made them even more beautiful and made it more important to notice them, not because they needed it, but because I did.
00:13:24:15 - 00:13:50:09
Unknown
I needed to remember I wasn't the center of the universe. The world would go on with or without me. I might live longer than a bird or a lily. But if I let my worrying, my anxiety, pour so much acid on my heart that it forgot how to sing, then I wouldn't be good for much. God needs people to see the world's beauty.
00:13:50:12 - 00:13:56:21
Unknown
As much as God needs people to do the world's work.
00:13:56:23 - 00:14:25:01
Unknown
Do any of you read Richard Rodgers daily Meditations in the morning? A few of you. If not, I commend him. It really helps. He wrote one in March that made my heart sing about how he's 81, about how his main form of prayer these days is what he calls gazing. Just sitting down somewhere for a while and looking at what's right in front of him with no judgment, no analysis, no critique.
00:14:25:04 - 00:14:55:15
Unknown
The day before, he said a rather mild day in Albuquerque, he took his dog, Opie, out for a walk, and he ended up on a bench overlooking a paved parking lot. For the next hour and a half, he said, 90 minutes. He just sat there, gazing at the cracked asphalt and the three dumpsters covered with graffiti. He said one of them said, I love you right there in the parking lot.
00:14:55:17 - 00:15:21:19
Unknown
He looked at the shortest fence that had been repaired over and over again, so it had all kinds of gaps in it. He said I looked at it until it was at least a little bit beautiful. That's what kept happening for the whole hour and a half. He said he didn't know whether it was beautiful because he let it be or because God let it be, but he wasn't looking for answers.
00:15:21:21 - 00:16:14:05
Unknown
He said I was just a ruminating mind gazing. And the more he gazed without judgment, without analysis, without worrying, the more beautiful everything became. Look at the birds of the air. Jesus keeps saying, consider the lilies of the field. As much as he cares about the blessedness of the poor and the welfare of the widows and orphans, and the healing of the sick and the raising of the dead, he seems to know that what anxious people most need is to get over ourselves for just a minute, to lose ourselves in the kind of beauty that loosens our grip on all the things we mistakenly think will keep us safe.
00:16:14:07 - 00:16:44:01
Unknown
What am I going to eat? What am I going to wear? What do we drink? Beauty. Gazing. Can't answer any of those questions for us, but it can make them for just a little while seem small in the presence of something so unexpectedly lovely, so generously given that it makes our hearts sing. Silver wings of a bird or a golden throated lily.
00:16:44:04 - 00:17:16:01
Unknown
Or a gray kitten on a kitchen floor. Beauty can hold our gaze for a moment of perfect eternity. Then when it's done taking us apart. Beauty can put us back together again. With a wider gaze and with a surer sense of connection to every single living thing, making us better able to engage the divine work of making more beauty in the world, more justice and more love.
00:17:16:03 - 00:17:50:17
Unknown
Right here at the end, I want to point out that I never noticed this before. That Jesus instructions instructions to look at the birds of the air and to consider the lilies of the field are phrased like commandments, imperatives meant to save our lives. Do, look, do, consider in the sermon on the Mount, there snug up against other imperatives such as do to others as you would have them do to you, or do not store up treasures for yourself on earth.
00:17:50:19 - 00:18:27:09
Unknown
If the teachings about the birds and the lilies do not stick in our minds the way the others do, is it because we're still reluctant to value a singing heart as much as we value a tired one? Yet all these teachings come from the same Savior. If we can do what he says for even a moment, if we can let ourselves be steered to a place where we can sit and gaze for even a little while at a meadow, and ask for parking lot at a gray kitten chasing a laser light.
00:18:27:11 - 00:19:02:23
Unknown
God can make anything beautiful. There's no telling what might happen next. The song that rises up may be so woven into the Divine Song. The Divine Score that we can't even hear it without being healed, and then sent on our ways to make more beauty in this world and to spread the song along. There's only one way to know for sure, and that's to stop worrying long enough to give it a try.
00:19:02:25 - 00:19:08:03
Unknown
Amen.