The Wide-Angle Lens

What do we pay attention to in our lives? Does that really matter? Oh, my, yes! Just as what we focus on affects a photo, what we pay attention to affects our attitudes! Isaiah told us that nearly 2,500 years ago. Are we listening to his wisdom?

I grew up with cameras. My father was a professional photographer; and so, while my childhood friends were talking about bicycles and roller skates, my own vocabulary included “film speed,” “f-stop,” and “darkroom.” I knew how develop photographs while I was still in grade school, and I could use an industrial photographic drier long before I could drive a car. Photography has changed a lot, though, since my dad was in business. These days, cameras are digital, photos are stored on a computer, and negatives don’t even exist. In fact, the kind of film that I used to use isn’t even made any more! But some things haven’t changed at all. Taking a good photograph still involves more than standing in front of a tourist attraction and holding up a selfie stick! In fact, some of the best photographs aren’t of ourselves at all, but of the world around us. And although capturing images of what’s around us no longer means holding up a light meter and fiddling with camera settings, it still involves some choices.

One choice that we still have to make is what to use as the focus of the photo. Are we going to focus on something very small, something very large, or something in between? Usually our photos are those in-between shots – a photo of the gathered family in front of the Christmas tree, for example. From time to time, we decide to take a picture of something very small. Some years ago, I took a photo of a tiny grasshopper who had settled on the windshield of my car. It was a very lucky shot; you can see the ridges on the hind legs of the little guy! But every now and then, we want to capture a whole vista. Those are the photos that have the potential to take our breath away! Who doesn’t stand in awe of a picture of the moon rising over the ocean; or of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains? It’s tough to get that kind of photograph with a pocket-sized digital camera or a cell phone. To really capture the vastness of a landscape, you still need a camera that has a wide-angle lens. That kind of lens captures a wide field of view, the kind of view that we don’t often stop and enjoy. Oh, when we’re on vacation in the Great Smoky Mountains, we might park the car at a pull-off spot and look around in awe. But every day? No, we don’t look through a wide-angle lens every day. But maybe we should, especially on the days when everything seems to be going wrong. On those days, we tend to bury our noses in our problems and ignore what’s all around us. Now, there’s a good reason for that. We concentrate on what’s bothering us because we want to figure out a way to get rid of it! If you’re walking with a blister on your heel, you’re not very likely to be thinking about the beauty of the scenery along the way! But even – maybe especially – in the middle of difficulties, we should be looking through that wide-angle lens every single day!

Looking through a wide-angle lens is, in fact, vital to our spiritual health. Let’s get in a time machine and visit ancient Babylon in the year 586 BCE. The Babylonians have conquered the nation of Israel, burned the city of Jerusalem, carried off everything that was in the Temple, and dragged the people off into exile. The kingdom of King David and King Solomon that has lasted over 400 years suddenly is now no more. The Israelites are desolate! Their nation is gone. Their holy city, Jerusalem, is gone. The temple that had stood in Jerusalem is gone. They are afraid that God is gone, too. And now, they have to endure the sarcasm of the Babylonians who are reminding them over and over that their gods are stronger than the God of Israel! If you want to see what despair looks like, just take a look at Psalm 137.

By the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.

There on the poplar trees we hung our harps.

There our captors asked us for songs; our tormentors demanded songs of joy.

They said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’

How can we sing the songs of the Lord while we are in a foreign land?

Right in the middle of that terrible experience in Babylon, though, an amazing thing happened. One day, somebody lifted his eyes out of the dust and looked through a wide-angle lens. That person started saying things like, “God is still here! God’s temple in Jerusalem may be gone, but God is still here! The heavens are still here. The earth is still here. God will get us out of this mess, even though I don’t know how that will happen!” The text that I read just a few minutes ago come from that time (Isaiah 40:21-31). “Look through your wide-angle lens!” Isaiah is saying. “Stop focusing on your problems and look around! God has everything under control even if we can’t see it.” Isaiah even compares human beings to that little grasshopper who took a rest on my lawn chair. People are tiny things compared to the God who spoke creation into existence. Even the greatest nations in the world like a piece of dry leaf that the wind whisks away. “Why are we so worried?” Isaiah asks. “God is bigger than any problem that we have! Just look through your wide-angle lens if you need a reminder!”

That isn’t a bad thing for us to remember today, either, as we are sometimes overwhelmed by problems: medical care, climate change, and the upcoming presidential election. Even the church has its problems! We are split into hundreds of denominations, most of whom don’t even talk to one another, let alone work together. We don’t agree on how to understand the Bible, and because of that, we don’t agree on what to do about social problems that cry out for our attention. In some places, Christians are even persecuted for their faith. You can’t even carry a Bible in North Korea! Our local churches have their share of problems, too. You know some of the ones that we face here at Nashville! Our income hasn’t been enough to cover our expenses for… oh, a couple of years, now. Our congregation is getting older and less able to participate in church and mission activities. Worship attendance isn’t what it once was. The pews that were once crammed with worshipers on Sunday morning are now not crammed any more.

Now, I don’t have a solution to any of these problems, and I don’t know anyone who does. But I do have a suggestion. Why don’t we take a look though a wide-angle lens? While we can’t ignore what’s wrong, we can’t forget that many things are right! I invite you to focus on the fact that God is way bigger than we are, and that God has promised to remain faithful to us. God has given this congregation many strengths, the kinds of strengths that allow us to run and not to grow weary. We all have gifts, talents, and resources to do the ministry to which God is calling us. If we lift our eyes out of the dust, we might even see opportunities that God has put right in front of our noses so that God can guide us into the future! Yes, we need to look through that wide-angle lens every now and then, especially when we start saying “Woe is me!” It’s always a good thing to remember what Isaiah said so long ago: “Why do you think that God doesn’t care about us anymore? Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? God is everlasting. God never gets tired. God understands everything! God gives us strength even when we don’t think we can go on another step. In fact, God gives us so much strength that one day we will fly like eagles” as God’s Spirit carries us aloft and bears us along on the wind!

Harvey

A lesson from a goldfish? You must be kidding! Not at all. Read on...

His name was Harvey; and he was a goldfish. Although Harvey was a very small goldfish, he made a tremendous impact on the little boy who owned him. That boy’s name was Howard Friend. He’s all grown up now, a Presbyterian pastor who writes books. I’m going to tell you about Harvey in Howard’s own words. (from Recovering the Sacred Center by Howard Friend, 1998, Judson Press, p. 5-6)

For my sixth birthday I received from my grandmother a goldfish I named Harvey. After school I would pull a dining room chair up to the bay window where we put Harvey’s bowl and carefully pinch in just the right amount of food. As I watched him swim in the shimmering afternoon sun, something caught my eye. Harvey always swam around his bowl in the same direction, in the same path, at the same speed – an inch inside the rim of the bowl, an inch below the surface of the water, round and round like the hands of a clock. If I stirred the water with my finger, or pinched in the food along a different trail, he would change direction – but only for a minute. Then back he would go to his predictable, boring pattern. When Harvey’s bowl turned cloudy, Grandma announced, “It’s time to change his water. We’ll fetch him out with that little net we brought from the pet store and put him in the spaghetti pot while we clean his bowl.” I had a better idea. “Let’s put Harvey in the bathtub while we clean his bowl,” I suggested. Harvey could swim from one end of the tub to the other, back and forth, along the bottom and across the top. “He’ll have a terrific time!” I said. Grandma carried Harvey’s bowl up the stairs to the bathroom, eased it over the edge of the tub, gently lowered it to the surface of the water, and poured Harvey in. “C’mon, Harvey,” I said out loud. He just lay there at first, a little stunned, I guess. Then he perked up. He was ready, I was sure, to begin some real exploring. But to my disappointment and amazement, Harvey began to swim in a circle about ten inches across and an inch below the surface of the water, like the hands of a clock – just like in his bowl!

Harvey’s behavior made quite an impression on Howard. To this day, he remembers how puzzled he was that Harvey refused to take advantage of the opportunity to swim all the way around that big bathtub. Many years later, he realized that Harvey isn’t the only one who behaves like this. Some people do the very same thing! Even when their situation changes, when fresh needs arise and new opportunities appear, they keep swimming in the same old circles, doing the same things over and over again. We look at them and wonder, “Why don’t they change? Can’t they see that they need to do something different?”

Unfortunately, churches tend to follow the very same pattern. They do what is familiar and comfortable, resisting change until it is thrust upon them, and they can escape it no longer. Some of them refuse to embrace change until it is too late, and they are forced to close their doors. Why in the world do they behave like that? I could explain it by telling you that we sometimes can’t see beyond the ends of our noses; or that we can imagine new possibilities, but we’re afraid to act on them; but I’ll bet that you know those things already. And simply being aware that we are in a bad situation doesn’t influence our behavior as much as we would like to believe that it does. (If you have ever tried to argue someone out of a political opinion by using reason, you know very well what I’m talking about!)

So we just keep doing what we’ve always done. We forget that our God is a God of novelty! God does new things all the time! When the Hebrews fleeing slavery in Egypt stood on the bank of the Red Sea, God parted those waters and asked them to step out in faith; because God was going to do something that had never been done before in the history of the world! When the Israelites were in exile in Babylon, none of them expected that when Cyrus of Persia conquered the Babylonians, he would let all those homesick refugees return to their homeland. And when Jesus of Nazareth appeared and claimed to be the Messiah, not very many people believed that this peasant from a Podunk village in Galilee would set them free, not from the Roman Empire, but from sin and death itself! And when God does new things, God invites us to get with the program and join in the new things that God is doing!

As you join in the program of discernment that our congregation is beginning, I invite you to listen for God inviting us to do something new! We will have plenty of time to listen for God’s voice, to discern what God is calling us to do, and to plan how we’re going to proceed into the future. All kinds of possibilities are open to us; and God will accompany us as we discern which of those possibilities we will live into. Let’s learn a lesson from Harvey, shall we? God has given us a very big bathtub. Let’s swim in every bit of it!

The Pause that Refreshes

We all need time to relax physically; and our souls sometimes need rest, too. On this Labor Day Sunday, this sermon reminds us of that.

Exactly 90 years ago, a beverage company was searching for a catchy slogan to increase sales of their product. At that time, the country was still recovering from the ravages of World War I, and the economic outlook was grim. People were working harder but earning less. Public morale was low, and so was hope for the future. Copywriter Archie Lee, who worked at an advertising agency in St. Louis, Missouri, came up with the slogan “the pause that refreshes,” and the rest is history. Even though Black Friday plunged the nation into the Great Depression only months after the ad campaign was launched, sales of the beverage doubled because of its positive, uplifting message. That beverage was Coca-Cola; and “the pause that refreshes” remains their most used and best-known slogan.

Even though “the pause that refreshes” is only an advertising slogan, I’ll bet that its message resonates with everyone in this room. Pausing in the midst of our busy lives so that we can be refreshed is surely something that we all yearn for. After the boss has dumped one more urgent project on our desk… after our child (or our grandchild has called “Mommy, help me!” for the hundredth time that day… when we have four things scheduled for Wednesday afternoon and only have time to do two of them… don’t we all wish that we could just sit down, have a glass of lemonade, and take a nap? Pausing to be refreshed is something that everyone needs, even if we have convinced ourselves that we can’t take time out to do it.

Even a prophet as powerful as Elijah needed to be refreshed every now and then. I’ve never paid a whole lot of attention to this little story of Elijah’s journey to Mount Horeb (I Kings 19:1-8). After all, the stories that frame it are a lot more interesting! The story that precedes it – Elijah’s triumph over the priests of Baal (I Kings 18:16-40) – is exciting; and the story that follows it – the Lord speaking to Elijah in a still, small voice (I Kings 19:9-18) – is certainly thought-provoking. But a story of getting from here to there? Meh.

A closer look, though, shows us the value of this little story. Elijah’s whole attitude changed right in the middle of his trip! When he arrived at an oasis after only a day’s journey, Elijah was ready to give up on life. “I can’t do this anymore!” he told God. “Why can’t I just die?” and then he fell sound asleep. But he didn’t die in his sleep. Instead, God sent an angel with a loaf of fresh-baked bread hot off the coals and a pitcher of cold, clear water. “Eat!” said the angel, “You’ll never make it if you don’t take care of yourself.” If you’ve ever enjoyed a glass of ice-cold lemonade and an ice cream cone after pulling weeds out of the garden on a hot summer afternoon, you’ll know how Elijah must have felt! And after he ate something and had a good night’s sleep, Elijah was able to continue on his journey. Even Elijah needed “the pause that refreshes.” One commentary on this text wryly remarked that we should never underestimate the value of a nap and a snack!

Now I’m not going to preach this morning on why we should all take more time to physically rest in our busy lives. We all know that we need to rest more than we do! You know that; and I know that! No, what I want to emphasize this morning is that we need to rest spiritually as well as physically. We need a pause to refresh our souls just as much as we need to pause to refresh our bodies. Maybe you’ve never imagined that our souls get weary. They certainly do, though. For example, our souls get tired when we lose the self-esteem that we deserve as children of God. Time and time again, I hear people tell me, “I don’t think that I’m worthy of God’s love!” Maybe that’s because we have a long tradition of hellfire-and-damnation preachers that tell us if we don’t shape us, we’re toast! We hear over and over what sinners we are; and we start to believe that God couldn’t possibly love us! We forget that sin really is just making mistakes. We sin because we don’t know everything, because we can’t know everything, and because even our best intentions sometimes lead to terrible results! God knows that. And God loves us anyway, whether or not we think that we’re worthy of that love!

Our souls get tired, too, when we work hard for God for the wrong reason. When we don’t think that we’re worthy of God’s love, we start trying to earn that love by doing all kinds of things that we know will please God. We participate in mission projects; we donate money to the church and to all kinds of charitable causes; and we try to be patient and loving to every single person. Those are all very good things to do, but when we are doing them to earn God’s love, whatever we do is never enough! We wonder day in and day out, “Am I doing enough to make God happy?” No wonder our souls need to be refreshed! And the truth is that God is already happy with us! Like children who make their parents happy just by trying, God is happy with us when we sincerely try to do what God wants. And it’s enough.

And certainly our souls become weary when we compare ourselves to the spiritual giants of our faith! Has anybody here ever looked at Mother Teresa and thought, “Wow. I could never do that.” And as you think that, you feel like a second-rate Christian. I’m guessing that everybody in this room has felt like that at one time or another! But God gives each of us different gifts, and each of us has different opportunities to use those gifts. Very few of us have the ability, the inclination, or a calling from God to uproot everything and begin to minister to needy people in a far-off land. Besides, how do you know that you aren’t ministering to needy people right now? Do you make time for a friend who needs a listening ear? Have you made a casserole for someone who needs a little bit of help? Do you carry a blessing bag in your car so that you can give it to someone begging on a street corner? Then you’re doing exactly what Mother Teresa did! You’re just doing it in a different way and in a different place.

Pausing to refresh your soul isn’t so much about stopping what you’re doing physically, but truly believing that you are beloved by God just the way that you are; and that nothing you do – or don’t do – will make God love you any less! That’s God’s grace; and it invites you to relax! Poet Denise Levertov beautifully describes the pause that refreshes our souls:

As swimmers dare to lie face to the sky, and water bears them;

As hawks rest upon air and air sustains them;

So would I learn to attain freefall, and float into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,

knowing that no effort earns that all-surrounding grace.

Float in God’s grace. Realize that God loves you just as you are; that you don’t need to earn that love, and that you are not – and have never been – a second-rate Christian! Maybe you can’t do that all the time, but try doing it for an hour, a few minutes, even a few moments. Take time for the pause that refreshes! God wants you to do it, not only on this Labor Day, but every single day of your life!