LIVING THIS SIDE OF THE CROSS: PART X
Francisco Stork is the author of a book entitled, Marcelo in the Real World. In it we meet Marcelo Sandoval, a 17-year-old boy who’s looking forward to his senior year of high school. Living with something akin to Asperger’s syndrome, Marcelo has spent his entire life learning how to do things that many people take for granted: how to read facial expressions, how to interpret sarcasm, and how to imagine how another person might be feeling. He’s good with animals, he feels most comfortable adhering to a predictable schedule, and – like many on the autism spectrum – he nurtures a special interest. Marcelo’s special interest…is God.
Marcelo pursues his interest by praying, studying, worshipping, and meeting with a spiritual mentor by the name of Rabbi Heschel. His father, however, worries that Marcelo is not being prepared for “the real world.” The real world is competitive; it has rules by which success is measured. Thus, Marcelo’s father makes a deal with him. If Marcelo will spend the summer working at his father’s law firm – and successfully follow the rules of the real world – he can choose where he will spend his senior year of high school. If he doesn’t, he will have to attend the local high school, a place in which he has encountered problems in the past.
Marcelo takes the deal. At his father’s office he is quickly assigned to the mailroom under the supervision of Jasmine, a no-nonsense young woman who is also an aspiring jazz musician. She’s not happy about having the boss’s son foisted upon her, but she trains Marcelo in the ways of the mailroom just the same. Before long another partner’s son, a lawyer named Wendell, asks Marcelo to work with him on a special project. It involves the firm’s defense of a manufacturer accused of knowingly making unsafe windshields for automobiles.
While working on the project, Marcelo comes across a photo of a young girl in a box in the mailroom labeled “trash.” The girl’s face was badly disfigured in a car accident when the windshield she hit did not shatter as it should have. Once Marcelo takes the photo out of the envelope, he cannot turn away. The girl’s eyes look into his eyes, and he seems to sense her begging him for help.
This plunges Marcelo into turmoil. He wonders if he is overreacting the way he has seen other autistic kids overreact to things that others did not find nearly so troubling. Obviously, people at the law firm had seen the photo and were not affected by it. Even his father had seen it and had remained unmoved.
Marcelo is in uncharted waters here, for there is no schedule he can devise to solve this problem, and there is no rule book to tell him what to do. Still, he senses that he must fight for the girl in the picture. When he turns to Jasmine for help, she urges him to listen carefully, in every choice he makes, for what the next note should be. “But how do I know the next note is the right one?” he asks. She replies, “The right note sounds right, and the wrong note sounds wrong.”
Even his spiritual advisor, Rabbi Heschel, makes an argument for improvisation. She reminds Marcelo that discerning God’s will is messy business. “What else can we do,” she asks, “but trust that God is at the source of what we feel and hope, and that he is at the end of what we want to do? Faith,” she adds, “is following the music, even when we don’t hear it.” Faith is following the music…even when we don’t hear it. Keep that thought in mind as we move on.
This is the tenth in a series of sermons entitled, Living This Side of the Cross. The thesis of the series is pretty much summed up in verses 14 and 15 in the 4th chapter of the book of Ephesians. There the Apostle Paul writes, “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro, and blown about by every wind of doctrine. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head…into Christ Jesus, our Lord.” In other words, this is a sermon series on growing up in Christ.
We talked about how the church is meant to represent the kingdom of God on earth. We said that the kingdom is here, but not fully here. Thus, could it be that the church we have is exactly what God intended when he created the church? Could it be that the church we have provides the very conditions necessary for growing up in Christ? While we live in a throw-away society these days, perhaps there are some things we should not throw away. After all, the providence of God means that wherever we have gotten to – whatever we have done – that is precisely where the road to heaven begins.
We talked about living a worthy life. A worthy life – a life that is truly growing up in Christ – is a life formed in community. Christian maturity develops as we form friendships with the friends of God…not just the friends we prefer. You see, God chooses to act and intervene in the world through us. We see God acting in the world today when we witness the heartfelt convictions of those who serve him.
We encountered what we called Paul’s roadmap through the cosmos. He tells us who we are and where we are going as Christians. We are blessed by God, chosen in Christ, destined for adoption, bestowed grace, lavished forgiveness, made to know the will of God through Christ, and gathered up to God in the end. We are precious children of God – created in the image of God – and destined for eternal life. Do not let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
We noted how Paul refers to us as saints. Paul deliberately chooses a word that identifies us not by what we do for God, but rather, by what God does for us. He is retraining our imaginations to understand ourselves not in terms of how we feel about ourselves, and certainly not in terms of how others feel about us, but rather, he is retraining our imaginations to understand how God feels about us. In God’s eyes, we are saints. In God’s eyes…we are holy.
We discovered that God bestows grace to sinners like us. Yet the grace of God is a lot like water to a swimmer. It seems as though there is no possible way it could support us. So like the swimmer, we have to lean forward, lift up our legs, and let ourselves go. To coin a phrase, we need to learn to let go…and let God.
We learned that the church is the gift of Christ to the world. Yet there is more to the church than meets the eye. The church is not just bricks and mortar. The church is not just a collection of faithful people. The church is the body of Christ in the world. And it is through the church – and only through the church – that Christ bestows his peace upon us.
We observed what Jesus Christ came to earth to accomplish. He established the church and gave it a commission. That commission is to make God’s wisdom known to the world. What is God’s wisdom? We see God’s wisdom when we possess inscape. Inscape is the capacity to see the God in everything. Inscape is the ability to put on the eyes of God and see the world as God sees the world.
Last week we noted that we refer to Jesus Christ as being fully human and fully divine. As the church is known as the body of Christ in the world, it follows that the church must also be both human and divine. Thus, while we come to church to encounter the word of God, we also come to church to build kingdom relationships.
Paul has spent the first three chapters of the book of Ephesians giving us a detailed account of who God is and the way God works. Now, with one simple word – the word “therefore” – Paul aims to transition us into a detailed account of who we are and the way we work. He writes, “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” Paul begs us to lead a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called. The question now is, “How do we do that?”
In our culture today, we want simple, clear-cut answers. We want our sit-coms to wrap up a complicated family problem in the course of 30 minutes. We want our dramas to resolve a mysterious murder case in the course of 60 minutes. We want to lose weight without dieting, build muscle mass without exercising, and accumulate wealth without sacrificing our creature comforts. And we spend billions of dollars on books that promise to tell us how. Why, we’re a little like Dorothy going off to see the wonderful Wizard of Oz. How do we get there? Follow the yellow brick road.
Then we come across situations in life that don’t seem to have pat answers…like Marcelo in the story I told you earlier. There was no clear path on how he should decide. There was no rule book to tell him what to do. He had to figure out for himself what it was that he should do. He had to learn to follow the music, even when he could not hear it. Perhaps there are times when we need to learn to do the same.
The church is a good place to learn how to follow the music, even when we cannot hear it. The church is a good place to learn right from wrong in the eyes of God. There are two kinds of language that are commonly used in the church...what we call kerygmatic and what we call didactic. Kerygmatic language has to do with preaching. It’s the word of God we hear from the pulpit. Didactic language has to do with teaching. It’s the word of God we hear in Sunday school.
Sometimes, however, the gospel message that seemed so clear in the sanctuary on Sunday morning seems inapplicable when we enter the workplace on Monday morning. Sometimes the Bible lesson that seemed so clear in the classroom on Sunday morning seems inapplicable when we deal with our families on Monday morning. Since there does not seem to be a guidebook to lead us through all the issues we have in life, perhaps what we need is the gift of discernment.
Gerhard von Rad was one of the most brilliant Old Testament scholars of the 20th century. He called such a gift of discernment, “paraclesis.” The word paraclesis comes from the word Paraclete, which is the Greek word translated, “Holy Spirit.” In a book called Old Testament Theology, von Rad wrote, “Paraclesis is the language used with men and women who already have received the word of preached salvation, and have been instructed in the teaching of the law, but who are in need of comfort or encouragement or discernment in the mudded details of dailiness.” In other words, paraclesis is the language of the Holy Spirit – a language of relationship and intimacy – a way of speaking and listening that gets the words of Jesus Christ inside of us so that they become us. That’s how you learn to follow the music, even when you cannot hear it. That’s how you learn to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called. We try to become one with Jesus Christ.
I think it’s a little bit like marriage. Someone recently said to me, “Do you know what the three rings of marriage are? There’s the engagement ring, the wedding ring, and the suffering.” Now, in all honesty, the first few years of marriage are indeed the hardest. I heard a comedian address that recently. He said, “When my wife and I first got married, she was always nagging me about something. For example, I’d always leave my underwear on the bedroom floor. I knew that if there were five on the floor, there were two in the drawer. One day, she confronted me about it. She said, ‘Is that your underwear on the floor?’ He replied, ‘I think so. But if it’s not, I’ve got a few questions of my own!’”
After years and years of marriage, those kinds of issues just seem to go away. You learn how to get along; you learn how to give and take; you learn how to grow together. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years and years and years of love, hard work, and sacrifice. That’s how the two become one in marriage. Maybe that’s how a person becomes one with Christ as well. Amen.
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