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To
Fly or Not to Fly Second
Reading: Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25 “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who has promised is faithful.” Hebrews 10:23 This morning’s Gospel reading foretells the end of the oppressive Herodian Roman regime over the people of Israel. Jesus stood in the midst of a society occupied by another people and proclaimed that it would all soon come tumbling down and the people would be free. They would fly, whereas before, their wings had been clipped. More than a millennium earlier, the people of Israel were led from the oppressive rule of the Pharaohs, through the Red Sea, to the uncertainties and perils of the desert. There they spent forty years traveling and seeking the Promised Land. Land promised by God, land which would be the home of freedom and growth. Forty years is a symbolic figure. It could have been ten or it could have been five hundred. It was a time of fear and uncertainty. The people didn’t know where they were going, they didn’t know how to get there and they didn’t know what they would find when they finally did arrive. They just knew God had told them to follow Moses and they were bound and determined to do that; well, at first. After a time they wavered. At one point they stopped and confronted Moses. They were ready to give up and “go home.” Of course home meant a return to the controlled life offered by those who ruled Egypt. It meant a life of structure within which life was harsh. And yet the people were ready to return to Egypt. The risks and unpredictable life in the desert were proving too much for them. They could not even be sure where their next meal was coming from. They recalled with nostalgic yearning the leeks and olives and fat meats of their former life. They were ready to go home. And not just for three meals a day. Whether they knew it or not they longed for the security of not making decisions, not being in charge of their own lives. Freedom was not attractive. Sometimes old patterns--though unhealthy and undesirable--are very seductive, because they seduce with their promise of familiarity and safety. They appear to be lots better than being out there in the desert, not knowing what is coming, going through big change, taking a chance on new life, growth and faith. For example, I have known many folks in parishes over the years who chose to swim around in the stagnant waters of guilt or grief because it was home to them. I can even use myself as an example. My wife Sunny died almost a year-and-a-half ago. At some point since then someone asked me how my grief and I were coming along. I said that I still had some anger and a great deal of sadness, but, when that person suggested that I work hard to get rid of these negative feelings, I said, “No! That’s all I’ve got left of her.” I was hanging on to a loss. It reminds me of a story that I heard from a friend recently. She lived with her husband and children in rural Tennessee. They lived in a house that was 150 years old, a house in which her husband had grown up, and his father before him and his father before him. My friend had come to love that house, her home, almost as if she had been part of her husband’s family. One day their home burned to the ground. Nobody was injured, fortunately, but the house was gone. She grieved for a long time. Every day she sifted through the ashes for lost possessions. She and her husband worked with the insurance company, while they arranged to have the ashes bulldozed into a large ditch once the insurance people were clear on their plans for a new structure, which would rise where the old one had stood. One weekend she was out of town and called home only to learn that the bulldozer had been and gone; the ashes were no more. This was not unexpected, so she was very surprised to find herself almost as upset as at the time of the fire. It took her a long time to realize that what had happened was that ever since their home had burned, she had kept at bay the true depth of her grief by living in the ashes, by going to them each day, as sad as that was, by sifting and loving the ashes. Like my friend, I in my grief was swimming around in sad waters and feeling at home, feeling comfortable that there would be no surprises, feeling that I had endured this for the past year and more and so I would be safe just going on with it. And it was what I wanted to do; it was what I needed to do. We each grieve in our own distinctive way. But getting comfortable with that which is less than the fullness of life, is giving up. We often collude with ourselves to stay in Egypt, to stay in sadness and allow our wings to be kept clipped, because it is safe, predictable and familiar. It is seductive indeed. For some it is endless grief. For others it is compromise with love or work, a compromise that keeps us safe, but gives up on values that are at the very core of our humanity. It is what one songwriter has called, “the freedom of my chains;” the relinquishing of responsibility and hope. But in fact, it is the Promised Land, via the desert, to which God calls us. God calls us out of Egypt. Once we have broken free from a past that is without true life, we are in a totally different place. Just agreeing to leave Egypt and entering the desert is tantamount to reaching the Promised Land. For Egypt is the Law, but the desert is Grace. In Egypt we live lives structured to keep us from taking wing, to keep us from becoming that for which God has purposely given us potential. Egypt requires only submission, but in the desert we must take responsibility for our own lives, and at the same time trust God to be true to His word. It is when we venture forward in trust, though we cannot see what lies ahead, that we are living in Grace and have left the Law behind. The desert is where we follow God though we cannot see Him, where we experience freedom of heart and spirit. The desert is where we have the faith to risk, living freely through the conviction that God delivers on His promises. We will all experience desert times. Times when we have found the courage to take wing but we are not sure where we will end up and we are not totally confident of our ability to fly. Mary Chapin Carpenter gives us our closing thought: God gives us what it takes to make it through the desert:
all that we have to do is trust enough to begin the journey. Amen. 1 From “Why Walk When You Can Fly,” by Mary Chapin Carpenter, Copyright 1994 GETAREALJOB Music. Copyright 2003 Calvary Episcopal Church Hebrews
10:11-14, 19-25 Gospel:
Mark
13: 1-8 |
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