Comments for Jim

Sunday, October 24, 1999

Rev. James A. Todhunter
" At Home with God "
Psalm 90: 1-6, 13-17
I Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46

I believe our Christian faith is grounded in the unshakable conviction that each of us is created in the image of God. You and I were born with everything we need to live life lovingly, joyfully and fruitfully. We are created good and lovable because that is God’s intention. We are born expansive in our generosity and inclusive in our appreciation. And furthermore, we never ever lose those capacities.

So what happens? When we look at the suffering in our own lives and the misery of the world about us, we may want to confess that things are not working out the way God intended for us, or the way we want.

According to Anthony de Mello, who was a Christian pastoral counselor who taught many years in India, the problem is attachments. He says this is how it works:

Attachment - how is an attachment formed? First comes the contact with something that gives you pleasure: a car, an attractively advertised modern appliance, a word of praise, a person’s company. Then comes the desire to hold on to it, to repeat the gratifying sensation that this thing or person caused you. Finally comes the conviction that you will not be happy without this person or thing, for you have equated the pleasure it brings you with happiness. You now have a full-blown attachment; and with it comes an inevitable exclusion of other things, an insensitivity to anything that isn’t part of your attachment. Each time you leave the object of your attachment, you leave your heart there, so you cannot invest it in the next place you go. The symphony of life moves on but you keep looking back, clinging to a few bars of the melody, blocking your ears to the rest of the music, thereby producing disharmony and conflict between what life is offering you and what you are clinging to. Then comes the tension and anxiety which are the very death of love and joyful freedom that love brings. For love and freedom are only found when one enjoys each note as it arises, then allows it to go, so as to be fully receptive to the notes that follow.

The problem with attachments is that they block the wellsprings of our natural and created goodness and compassion and sensitivity. They make our hearts hard. They lock us into perceptions that block our access to the energy and diversity of life. They become obsessions that bring suffering and equip us to hurt others. And they separate us from the joy and wonder of the journey of life.

Life really is a journey. It is a journey that requires us to be open and flexible. Yet our tendency to form attachments is like camping down in one spot forever. Or it is like trying to drag the baggage of the past along with us. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright relates this story:

A ministerial colleague of mine in the A.M.E. Zion church was bringing his daughter home to Chicago after four years of college at Hampton University. When he took her to Hampton, all it took was a couple of suitcases, a footlocker, and two garment bags. But after four years at Hampton, three on campus and one in her own off-campus apartment, she had accumulated so much stuff that when it was time for her to come home, he had to drive down to Hampton, rent a trailer, and load it up with four years of accumulation to bring back to Chicago.

His car had made that trip down and back on several occasions with no problems – Thanksgiving time, Christmas break, summer break – climbing up through those mountains on Highway 70 in Maryland and Pennsylvania, making a journey up the Allegheny Valley through Breezewood, onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike, into Ohio, Indiana. That was nothing when all he had in his car were his passengers and a couple of suitcases. But he discovered that with that trailer hitched on, they had a serious problem in terms of being able to get home.

When they started up those same mountains that they had climbed so many times before, they found that the trailer, loaded down with four years of accumulated stuff, was too much for the little car’s engine. My friend said at first he started telling his daughter that story about the little engine that said, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can." He said, "Well, that worked in the storybook," but it didn’t work with his Honda Civic. The trailer caused them to go slower and slower, and then a storm arose at about the same time that the hill became real steep, and the trailer brought them to a dead stop. He was on the verge of burning out his engine when a state trooper pulled up and told them what to do. The trooper said, "Well, the only way you’re going to make it is to unhitch the trailer."

His daughter began protesting immediately on account of her many belongings, and even my friend began thinking of all the money he had invested in that four years of accumulation, and he began protesting. But the trooper said, "You only have two choices: stay here in the storm…or unhitch your trailer and go on…"

Psalm 90 begins with these powerful words: "Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations." Whenever we say who God is, we are also saying, at the same time, who God isn’t. God is our dwelling place in all generations. God is our refuge and strength. Home is where the heart is, and we are called to be at home with God. And in a radical way, this means that all other appealing places to park along the way, all other places of apparent refuge risk becoming attachments, attachments that we cling to that both harden our hearts, and bring us pain and suffering.

Belief is a form of attachment. I expect most of us come to church out of our ongoing search for belief in God. But yet our beliefs are a set of attachments. I may label some people as loving friends and others as hateful enemies. But in either case once I lock into a set of assumptions, I am no longer seeing, no longer learning. In the same way, once we lock ourselves into a set of beliefs about God, we cease to be open to what God is doing and where God is leading. Our beliefs rest on some definition of God. Adequately define God, and then we will decide whether to believe in God or not. In the Gospel lesson Jesus asks the Pharisees who the Messiah is, and they want to pin the definition down to the "Son of David." Jesus rejects this. Moses asks the burning bush for God’s name, for a name is a definition. The name that is given, Yahweh, is actually only suggestive, ineffable. "I will be who I will be," or "I will go where I will go," or "I will do what I will do."

If we attach ourselves to a God we believe uniformly rewards the virtuous and punishes the evil, we will be disappointed. If we attach ourselves to a God who will protect us from random suffering and death, we will be disappointed. If we attach ourselves to a God who keeps track of our long list of good deeds and will reward us accordingly at the end of life, we will be disappointed. If we attach ourselves to a God that loves us and our own, and supports us in our efforts to keep certain other kinds of people out, we will really be disappointed.

So what definition of God can we use that is itself not a limiting attachment? Try this: God is our creator. God loves us. And God is absolutely free. God is not accountable to us. We are the creatures. God is free to do whatever God wants, whenever and wherever God wants. This absolute and total freedom of God is central to who God is and how God loves. If we say that God is love, we must also say in the same breath, love is freedom. And to us in particular, this means freedom from the bondage of attachments. To say that God is our dwelling place in all generations is to say that it is only in God that we experience the unfailing source of love and freedom in life. We find this nowhere else and in no one else.

To experience love as freedom in a valued human relationship is very hard. How can you have love without some kind of attachment? I have questions about that. Isn’t every relationship really an attachment, a mixture of bliss and pain? Is that necessarily bad? Isn’t it through pain that we grow? Is it possible to love and not be in bondage of some kind? But if we dwell long enough on the tremendous suffering that many relationships bring, we may be ready to try a new approach. If we come to tire of that particular kind of misery, we may be ready to try another way. The words of Anthony de Mello may sound hard, even brutal, but there may be a kind of tough love truth there as well. He says:

Maybe now you are ready to say, "I’d rather have my freedom than your love." If you could either have company in prison or walk the earth in freedom all alone, which would you choose? Now say to this person, "I leave you free to be yourself, to think your thoughts, to indulge your taste, follow your inclinations, behave in any way that you decide is to your liking." The moment you say that you will observe one of two things: Either your heart will resist those words and you will be exposed for the clinger and exploiter that you are; so now is the time to examine your false belief that without this person you cannot live or cannot be happy. Or you will pronounce the words sincerely and in that very instant all control, manipulation, exploitation, possessiveness, jealousy will drop. "I leave you free to be yourself…"

And you will notice something else: The person automatically ceases to be especial and important to you. And he/she becomes important the way a sunset or a symphony is lovely in itself, the way a tree is especial in itself and not for the fruit or the shade that it can offer you. Your beloved will then belong not to you but to everyone or to no one like the sunrise and the tree. Test it by saying those words again: "I leave you free to be yourself..." In saying those words you have set yourself free. You are now ready to love.

Let me close by saying that while this might not seem like a stewardship sermon, it really is. For I believe that everything that was just said about the bondage that a relationship with another person can sometimes bring, also applies to our relationship to our wealth. Why not see your wealth not as something to be clutched, but as something to be set free, and freeing yourself in the process? Why not see your wealth as a sunrise or a symphony to be celebrated and shared? Or as a tree that exists to embody beauty and bear fruit for everybody? Why not start thinking now about the words you need to say to set yourself free and start to love? Amen.

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