Rev. Tara Barber
The Community Church of Sebastopol
March 9, 2003
Mark 15:40-41, John 19:25b-27
From a distance the world looks blue and green,
And the snow capped mountains white.
From a distance the ocean meets the stream and the eagle takes to flight.
From a distance there is harmony and it echoes through the land.
It’s the voice of hope, it’s the voice of love, it’s the voice of every (one).
God is watching us, God is watching us, God is watching us from a distance.
From a distance we all have enough and no one is in need.
There are no guns, no bombs, no diseases, no hungry mouths to feed.
From a distance, you look like my friend, even though we are at war.
From a distance I can’t comprehend what all this war is for.
From a distance there is harmony, and it echoes through the land.
It’s the hope of hopes, it’s the love of loves, it’s the heart of every (one).
This is Julie Gold’s song, sung by Bette Middler and Nanci Griffith in the late 1980’s. It was popular when I was first a youth leader, just out of college. I liked it. I still do. We listened to the song at youth group and talked about God and music, and how God was present in their lives. It was a good conversation.
About a week or two after that youth group meeting, the youth started coming to me and asking me about that song. Some of their friends had told them that it was blasphemous. It was wrong to listen to it, and wrong to talk about it at church. I was bewildered by this response. This song didn’t contain foul language, it didn’t say anything immoral; it was a pretty song, a comforting song. It took awhile to figure out what the problem was. Do you understand the problem? The song refers to God watching us from a distance. And in the eyes of their friends’ churches, it was wrong to believe in a God who is far away and somehow detached from humanity.
Oh. But that’s not how I hear the song, that’s certainly not how I see God. I guess I believe in a both/and God. God who is both present right here right now, and who also is distant enough to see the big picture and take the long view.
We do some weird things as Christians. We drink juice from little cups and eat cubes of bread and call it Jesus’ body and blood. When we talk about this season of Lent, we say things like, we will be walking with Jesus during these days. (and Jesus is dead!) We call the day that Jesus died, Good Friday. And I don’t know about you, but I hope that people have something else to say about my last day alive.
It’s hard to explain these things to my non-church friends. It’s hard to explain them to children. And there are days that I can’t quite even explain them to myself in a way that makes good sense.
And then I remember Mr. Rogers, and books, and my imagination – that even Albert Einstein believed to be more important than knowledge – and I would say, good sense. It takes some imagination to be a Christian. And that’s a good thing. Being a Christian takes both imagination and groundedness. It’s that both/and thing again. To observe the season of Lent, we must be able to imagine walking with Jesus, and live faithfully in the world today. It’s kind of like my favorite kid’s book, “Where the Wild Things Are.” In the book, Max is wearing his wolf suit, and is getting into lots of trouble. After his mother sends him to his room without supper, his room becomes a jungle, and he sails far away to where the wild things are. They make him king, and have a great party, and after awhile it isn’t so fun anymore. It’s about that time when Max can smell his mom’s supper, and decides to leave and come home, where his supper is waiting for him. Max really does go to where the wild things are, and he really does stay in his room at the same time.
The women in the gospel readings this morning really do go to the place where Jesus is killed, even if they only see it from a distance. When Mary knows that her son is dying, she is right there in her heart and soul, even if she is watching from far away. It was the women who were the first to witness Jesus’ presence after he died, so maybe they had a glimpse of God’s long view. Maybe that’s what John’s gospel is trying to tell us. Jesus knows that life will go on without him, and he entrusts his beloved disciple into his own mother’s care.
And maybe Archbishop Oscar Romero had some sense of life going on after his own sudden death, when he wrote these words:
It helps now and then to step back and take the long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us...
This is what we are about:
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the results,
but that is the difference between the Master Builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future that is not our own.
This season of Lent is a season of both/and. It is a time to use our imaginations. To make Jesus’ presence so real that we are inspired by his life and faith. It is a time to imagine the world from a distance, at peace and in harmony. It is a time to believe in God’s welcome, to set the table for all people and celebrate God’s invitation to come again and again to be nourished. Lent is also a time to take a hard look around us and within us. To witness the pain and suffering of humanity. It is a time to take action, to plant and water seeds, to lay foundations, to realize what we can do well, and begin to do it. It is a time to take steps – steps in this world that will bring us all closer to God’s kingdom here on earth.