Sermon

May 29, 2005

A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on May 29, 2005, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

A Florida friend tells me that they issued the following warning due to heavy rainfall in that state: “The Florida Department of Fish and Wildlife is advising hikers, hunters, fishers and golfers to take extra precautions and to keep alert for alligators…They advise people to wear noise producing devices such as little bells on their clothing to alert but not startle the alligators unexpectedly. They also advise the carrying of pepper spray in case of an encounter with an alligator. It is also a good idea to watch for fresh signs of alligator activity. People should recognize the difference between small young alligator and large adult alligator droppings. Young alligator droppings are smaller and contain fish bones and possibly bird feathers. Adult alligator droppings have little bells in them and smell like pepper spray.”

Seriously, life’s most profound warnings are also sometimes the most obvious. In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus finishes the Sermon on the Mount with a warning in the form of a parable from the world of home construction in the dessert. Everybody in central Palestine knows that the easiest place to build a house is in a wadi, a flat sandy gully that is enticingly dry most of the year. The hard place to build a house is on a mountain crag. But if you want a house that will withstand the weather, you’ll take the extra trouble to build your house on the rock because the house in the sandy wadi will be washed away when the storms come. It is an obvious warning when it comes to building a house in the desert; not so obvious when it comes to building a life. And that’s what Jesus is really talking about. Taking the extra trouble to build a life based on radical love, results in a richer life.

Years ago when I had an EFM class in New Hampshire composed mostly of retirees from Connecticut, one of the class members told about an event in her life that reminded us all of how difficult it is to build a life based on radical love. She said she’d been a suburban mom in the civil rights era. Being young and naïve she didn’t think much about the racism that pervaded her little New England town. On a hot summer morning she collected her children and their friends—some of whom were black—out of their stifling back yard and headed for the town pool. There she was told that the black kids couldn’t enter. She remembers that she had a lot of options—she could, for example, have kept the group together and set up the sprinkler in the back yard. But the kids were whiney and she was really hot, so she drove the black kids back home and took the whites to the pool. She was in her late seventies when she told this story—and forty years later she was still trying to justify and explain away this decision that she knew was wrong. The moral of the story, I think, is that Jesus was right. It takes a lot more effort to build our lives on radical love, but when the going gets rough we’ll be happier with our decisions if we have loved each other the way God loves us—sacrificially, indiscriminately and joyfully.

In the rainy seasons of life, the world is full of alligators. It is full of bigots who run municipal pools, full of people who tell jokes that demean and belittle the people of God, full of politicians who promote fear and hatred of foreigners. The world is full of easy choices and harder ones: the temptation to keep the peace and not raise an issue about slurs involving race or sexual orientation or the temptation to vote for repression because it looks safer, for example.

God is forgiving, of course. Our reading from Romans reminds us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” God’s all-inclusive love encompasses all of us—even though we have all made some choices we are ashamed of. As an outside observer, I feel worse that my student from New England was never able to forgive herself for her bad choice than that she made such a rotten choice in the first place. I am certain that God forgave her long ago. But for my student and for all of us who face hard choices, Jesus’ warning is also extraordinarily good advice. Life is simply richer and happier if we watch out for alligators, build the houses of our lives on solid ground and try day by day to live our lives loving the way God loves us.

I pray that we will all find the grace to forgive ourselves when we fail, the way God forgives us. But I pray even more that we will recognize our lives as opportunities to learn each day to love a little better. That is what we have been placed on this earth to do. I recall a conversation among some young adults in which one of them admitted that she was a Christian. In the spirit of acceptance one of her friends said, “That’s cool, Whatever works for you.” To which the Christian replied, “Well it’s not so cool. The fact is that it doesn’t always work for me, but I think it is working ON me.” Stone by stone let us build our houses the hard way—on the rock. AMEN