September 14, 2003

Mark 8:27-38

 “Out of Your Mind?”

     I used to visit my cousin in the summertime and we’d lay out in the cool green grass of his backyard and stare up the clouds floating overhead.  We could see all sorts of fantastic things in those clouds.  He’d shout out, “There’s a horse and there’s a train!”  And I’d say, “I see a face and a cowboy hat!”  One day, I saw a chef flipping pancakes!  I remember my aunt lying out there in the grass with us one day as we tried to impress her with all the puffy white shapes we could see - sea serpents and octopuses and buffalos and such.  “You boys are out of your minds” she’d say and she was right.  Imagination took us places beyond the practical reality of the grownup world.  We fought pirates on the back porch and raced the Indy 500 down the dirt lane.

     I don’t do those things much any more and I guess my cousin doesn’t either,  but the other day when I took a break from working on my old boat I laid back into the quiet recess of the hull, into the wonderful fragrance of grease and varnish and mildew and looked up at the blue sky as white clouds drifted over.  For a moment, I was back at my cousins house in the grass again. 

     I don’t see shapes in the clouds as much as I used to.  I live in the real world now, the practical world of schedules and deadlines and the business of running an office, administrating a church, working with personnel and programs.  I have to keep my mind focused to stay on top of things.  But every once in a while, thankfully, my mind loses that focus and something else takes over and shows me things a practical mind cannot comprehend and I am swept away, beyond imagination to inspiration.

     Thursday evening was one of those moments for me.  When that small and yet diverse group of children and adults came forward with handheld candles to begin the interfaith service, I was deeply moved.  As I looked out over the 350 people gathered here - Christian people, Jewish people, Muslim people, black people and white people and native American people and Asian people praying and singing together, affirming one another - I felt like I was in heaven.  Perhaps in that moment, I was.  If you were here, perhaps you felt it, too.

     I can’t help but sense…no, more than that…I can’t help but know at moments like that, that there is more to this story of faith than what we experience here in our little corner of Congregational Protestant Christianity.  As I looked around the chancel last Thursday evening at the nearly twenty clergy seated there I saw the faces not of radically divergent theologies, not of people with whom I have differences, but the faces of my friends, of people I know and trust and respect and love.  And sitting there with them I couldn’t help but appreciate their faith, even though it is so different from my own.  In that moment it was so clear that we are not so different, the clergy, the people, that we are all just children of God, by whatever name. 

     You have to be out of your mind to think like that.  It’s not practical.  If you think like that you have to imagine a world without boundaries, social, political or religious boundaries and our world doesn’t work like that. 

     No, our world doesn’t work…like that.  The fundamentalists take on the liberals.  The Jews take on the Palestinians.  The Arab world takes on the West.  There is injustice, prejudice, hatred, war, terror.  Nine-Eleven events become inevitable. 

     Today’s great minds, the practical, rational thinkers of our time say that political and military and economic power applied in the right places at the right times will control the situation, will force people to behave peacefully.  And when we’re practical about it, we can almost see the logic of that train of thought.  But we’ve been on this train of thought for a long, long time and still our world doesn’t work.  There is no peace.

     Jesus asked his disciples if they knew who he was and Peter’s response may have led him to believe they had perhaps finally let go of their rational minds enough to let their spirits see.  “You are the Messiah!” said Peter.  In Matthew’s version of this story, Peter adds, “(You are) the Son of the living God!”  Perhaps trusting they had at last come to a place a place of deeper listening and understanding, Jesus said something only a heart of faith could have grasped.  He told them about his coming suffering and death and that after three days in the tomb he would rise again.  But he evidently miscalculated their state of mind.  They didn’t understand.  They couldn’t see.  Peter took him aside and rebuked him, “No way, Jesus!  This can’t be true!”  Then Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!  For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but human things.”

     Evil finds its opportunity in the mind that is set not on divine things, but human things.  We put our noses to the grindstone, keep our focus on the practical matters at hand and try to reason our way through.  We believe if we can just set our minds to it we can make it work out.  In a tunnel vision pursuit of our own answers we find little time for divine answers, little time for impractical things like prayer, meditation, worship, the inspirations of the heart, watching clouds.

     A teacher who wasn’t a believer liked to single out the Christians in his class and then belittle them.  One semester he began his class as usual by asking if there were any Christians in the room.  One student put up his hand.  “Tell me,” asked the teacher, “Did God create everything?”  “Yes,” replied the student, “God created everything.”  “Well then,” said the teacher, “if God created everything, then God must have created evil, too.  How can you believe in a loving God if God created evil?”  The student had nothing to say and the teacher was satisfied that once again he had proven that God does not exist.  But then another student put up her hand.  “May I ask you a question, sir?”, she asked.  “Yes”, the teacher replied.  “Does cold exist?”, she asked.  “Of course it does”, he replied.  “Well, sir”, she said, “technically it doesn’t because we only measure heat.  What we consider cold is a measurement of smaller and smaller amounts of heat.  Absolute zero is where there is no heat.  Do you believe darkness exists?”  The professor again said yes.  “Well sir“, she continued, “technically it doesn’t because we can only measure light.  Darkness is the label we use to describe the absence of light.  Do you believe evil exists?  “Yes”, said the teacher, “Evil is everywhere in war and abuse and crime.”  “Well sir“, she concluded, “technically evil doesn’t exist either because it is only the way we measure the absence of God.  It is the label we use to describe the times when people block out God.  God didn’t create evil.”  The professor had nothing to say.

     We can set our minds on the practical matters at hand, and there’s a place for that, but if that is all there is, how can our spirits see, how can we know the divine?  If we block out God, evil finds its opportunity.  We can label that Satan or label it sin.  Our Lord Jesus, ultimately and on the cross, labeled it forgivable. 

     Christ’s saving, boundless love is not at all practical or rational.  Thank God.  May God grant us all such compassion, such capacity for peace. 

     Let me leave you with this inspiration from the Apostle Paul (Philippians 4:7):