Change the Script
The Rev. Dr. Daniel P. Matthews
Rector, Trinity Church, Wall Street
New York, New York

(This sermon is also available in audio.)

Take our minds and think through them.
Take my lips and speak through them.
Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for Thee,
through Christ our Lord, Amen

There was a movie that was very popular some years ago, and it had one word in it that became kind of a classic expression of not just that movie, but of the age. I think when I tell you the setting you might remember the movie. An older man was speaking to a young man. He put his hand on the young man's shoulder, leaned close to the young man in a dramatic moment in the film and whispered, "Plastics." You remember the film? Yes, The Graduate, with Dustin Hoffman.

We all have moments like that, when somebody comes up and gives us some advice, a piece of wisdom, something that might make a difference in our life. It's usually intended for good, though sometimes it's not. It doesn't take much time for you and me to stop at this moment at mid-day and say, "I remember when somebody said something to me about my calves being too big or my ears sticking out too far or my hair not being filled with enough body." Oh, you could go on and on, and if we are honest with ourselves, there is seldom a day we look in the mirror at ourselves and don't hear that little voice whisper. Sometimes they are helpful things; sometimes a coach, a teacher, or an aunt, an uncle, a mother, a father have said something to us, and it was very warm and wonderful, and it's made a difference in our lives.

But once we hear those words, they kind of script us in a way, and it is very difficult to get out of that scripting. The times they are good you remember well, and the times they are destructive you remember well. Some of us wind up living our lives trying hard to live out a script that really doesn't fit us, is not really us, does not bespeak our character, our gifts, our competence, our intelligence. It just doesn't work, but we can't let it go, because it was given to us at a time when it seemed for us to be the direction we should take, or the characterization of our lives we should claim and own.

It has happened to me many times, but I would like to tell you about one particular time. I was twenty-eight years old and had just been ordained into the ministry. I was sent to serve two tiny little missions, one in Monteagle, Tennessee and one in a place nearby called Tick Bush. They were not urban city settings, as you can imagine.

In Monteagle there was the Monteagle Sunday School Assembly that took place every summer, attracting people from Memphis and other places. One Sunday, a widowed, older, lovely woman waited after the service until everyone had left, all twenty, twenty-five people, not many folks there. She stood on the front porch--I'll never forget it, feels like it happened yesterday--took both of my hands, squeezed them close to her, looked me in the eyes and said, "Someday you're going to be a great Bishop." I, of course, said, "No, no," thinking all the while, "How did you know?" She scripted me, worse thing you can do to a young ordained person. They will work their whole lives around trying to be what you predicted.

I kept trying. Finally, I ran for Bishop. Thank goodness, I lost. I would have been a terrible Bishop. I now know that, but it took twenty years off my life thinking, "When am I going to be what I am supposed to become?" because this woman in Monteagle knew. She knew.

Not very long ago, maybe two months ago, a letter came in the mail from a Southern diocese where I am known. It said, "I am chairman of the process to elect a new Bishop in Diocese X, and your name is at the top of the list. Would you be willing to leave New York and come run for Bishop in our Diocese?" I just felt her hands saying, "It's now time. It's now time."

It's hard to get rid of those. You have the same thing. Somebody told you what you should be, and it's very hard to get rid of that. It took me twenty years. Thank goodness I am through that, and I now know that those gifts were not the gifts that God gave me. But all of us go around most of our lives filled with these kinds of scripts. We feel less than what we would like to feel like we are, because we have not measured up to that whisper of "plastics" or "bishop" or whatever might have been said to you.

Not only does it come from somebody speaking to you, telling you what they think you ought to be, it comes from the culture itself. We are in a culture that is so full of achieving that most of us every day feel like we haven't done quite enough--we haven't quite measured up; we haven't quite fulfilled what we could do. In an achieving culture, it doesn't necessarily take an old scripting voice from high school; it might just be today that you didn't do enough--you haven't quite accomplished as much as you should, so that deep sense of not quite being what you really should be pervades so much of our self understanding.

Jesus met a lot of people. Most of them were trying to change their script. Remember the man beside the pool? He was trying to get in the pool in time to be healed. He didn't like his script. Remember the woman at the well? Why did she go to the well at twelve noon, the hottest time of the day? Because it was the time when nobody else did. She didn't want anybody to talk about all those husbands she had. She was trying to change her script. Remember the rich, young ruler who came to Jesus and wanted to change his script, but he couldn't do it? Remember Zaccheus? Shimmied up into the sycamore tree? Why was he up there? Trying to change his script, and he did. It is not easy, and yet, and yet that is the journey that you and I find ourselves constantly facing.

Robert Frost, that wonderful New England poet, one time said the following, "The writing of every poem begins with a lump in the throat." Every spiritual awakening begins with a lump in the throat. Peter had had an experience of fishing all night, and, you remember, he came in very discouraged; he didn't catch a thing all night long. Jesus was standing on the shore teaching, and said to Peter, "Let me get in the boat and teach from the boat. These people are pushing me down into the water; let me sit in the boat." So Peter pushed out, lowered the anchor, and Jesus began to teach from the boat. After he finished teaching, he probably saw the lump in Peter's throat, so he said, "Throw the net; throw the net in." Now, here's a man who had been fishing all his life, and some character from a land-locked town called Nazareth comes down and tries to tell him how to fish.

This is one of the little miracles in the New Testament for me. In New York they'd say, "Tell me about it," which means, "Drop dead. I've been there, done that." Can you imagine what it was like for Peter not to laugh at Jesus, not to make fun of Jesus? Not to say, "That's the most absurd thing. You don't know what I've done all night long. Give me a break, come on." Peter literally threw the net in; I think that is just one of the most remarkable moments in Scripture. The way you and I would react is, "Oh, come on." That is what we do about trying to change our script, isn't it? "Tell me about it. I've tried that. I've done that. You don't know how long I've tried to give up that. You don't know how long I've tried to make that change in my . . . you don't have any idea how difficult. . . ."

Throw the net in one more time, because the lump in the throat is the beginning of a possibility for change. You know what the journey of living as a person is? It is constant change. The journey of a Christian is one of continually seeking a deeper relationship with the spiritual journey with God. Every day there ought to be a little change. There ought to be a little lump that gets acted on every day. No, we don't reach some sort of plateau where everything is right and we've got it made. Being involved with God is learning and growing and changing all the time.

Changing the script. That's what it is really all about. Constantly trying to change the script. It's what an AA meeting is about, isn't it? We're all addicted to something--try to get rid of your addiction; try to get rid of your script that tells you how you should be and what you have failed to become. Oh, how difficult that is, and how easy it is to do what Peter didn't do and say, "Tell me about it; I've tried that and tried that and tried that, and it didn't work; fished all night, Jesus." The miracle: He threw it in.

Got a lump in your throat? Most of us do a lot of the time. It's not just the beginning of a poem. It's the beginning of a spiritual awakening for you. Jesus paid attention to the lump in the throat of his friend, Peter, and said, "Throw the net in." Jesus says to me and says to you, "Don't follow that script forever. If there is a lump in the throat, throw the net in one more time."

Thank you, God, for Peter's witness. Thank you, God, that Peter didn't say, as I am apt to say, "Tell me about it; tell me about it."

The man who wrote the hymn, "Amazing Grace," got a lump in his throat on a ship going from Africa to America, bringing Black Africans into slavery in this country. He got a lump in his throat on board the ship, and he paid attention to that lump, and he changed his script. It is always amazing grace when you can pay attention to the lump in your throat and can begin a spiritual awakening and let go of that script. Today, this Lent, do something about that lump; pay attention to the call for a spiritual awakening and discover amazing grace. Amen.

Copyright 2001 The Rev. Dr. Daniel P. Matthews

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