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A sermon by Tom Hunter WHEN IT TAKES A
WHILE When we get ready to go on a car
trip in our family">
A sermon
by Tom Hunter WHEN IT TAKES A
WHILE When we get ready to go on a car
trip in our family">
A sermon
by Tom Hunter WHEN IT TAKES A
WHILE When we get ready to go on a car
trip in our family">
A sermon
by Tom Hunter WHEN IT TAKES A
WHILE When we get ready to go on a car
trip in our family, my impulse is to set a time, preferably early in the day, and then
drive away as planned, on schedule. I've learned, however, that most often, we will
actually drive away when we're ready because other people in my family have a different
pace and need more time. When one of the people in my
family was 4 and 5 years old and we'd go on walks, I'd notice that he would often stop and
stare at a person walking by or at a car or a bird or a cup on the sidewalk, or at
anything. I learned that if we were going to take walks together, I would have to become
interested in things I most often didn't even notice because he had a different pace and
needed more time. When someone in my extended
family died a number of years ago, all the expected feelings of pain and loss and grief
came flooding in for most of us, and I remember we cried a lot together. Someone else
close to him had intense feelings too but it took her two months to cry the kind of tears
that start the healing, and I learned that some of us have a different pace and need more
time. I understand the wise men and I'm
really glad they are part of the Christmas story. They have a different pace. They need
more time. When Christmas is over and the
presents are opened and enjoyed or returned, when the hubbub has died down and the
constant Christmas carol muzak in the mall is gone, when we're ready to turn our attention
to the new year, the wise men are still coming. They haven't even arrived yet. And if
they're so wise, why are they so late? I'm not sure the wisdom of these
wise men is in their extensive education or their undisputed knowledge of the stars and
astronomy and the heavens or in the fancy gifts they bring. I think their wisdom comes in
the way they have a different pace, the way they need more time. It's a wisdom that comes
riding out of this 2000 year old story, comes riding on those big lazy-looking camels into
these days after Christmas with an important reminder for us, now: a lot of us need more
time. When the lottery and gambling and
infomercials proclaim big pay-offs right now, some of us need time to save, to get out of
debt, steady, over time, taking a while. When healing for some happens right now and
athletes come back from severe injuries to play before it seems humanly possible and we
want the right pill or procedure to help us get better immediately, some of us need time
because healing often has its own schedule and it needs our persistent cooperation day
after day, taking a while, sometimes a long while and sometimes letting us know that
healing is not always getting better; sometimes it's letting go. When being lost and
confused and frustrated and adrift can apparently be solved right now, quick, by this
guru, or that diet, or these how-to schemes, some of us need one day at a time, and a lot
of them, one step at a time, and then another step, over the long haul. In our culture we aspire to
taking less time to do a lot of what needs doing in our lives, to doing everything more
quickly. When you have money, you don't have to wait for anything. Other people do the
waiting, other people take the time for you. We don't want to take a while. There was an
article this week in the NYTimes about long lines of people, mostly mothers, waiting seven
hours and more at a Los Angeles mission to make sure their children would have toys for
Christmas. For most of us, 15 min. waiting in line at Target would send us complaining to
the manager. In a culture that doesn't like waiting or taking time to do things, even
important things, time and how its spent becomes the way we separate economic classes.
Time, too, has its haves and have-nots. And into all that, riding on
those big slow-motion camels, come those three from far away, and we need them. We need
positive, engaging pictures of people taking a while to do something important because I
believe we know, somehow in our heart of hearts, that faith and creativity and wonder and
pain and healing and joy and growing into who we are, all the stuff that makes you and me
truly human and truly holy, take time. We need pictures of people who love the kind of
music that takes 8 months to master and a life-time to understand. We need pictures of
woodworkers who take three years to make sure the desk they've fashioned is just right. We
need pictures of wise people who take a while to get there. Here's how TS Eliot talks about
these three in his poem "The Journey of the
Magi": "A cold coming we had of it, There's nothing romantic and nice
about that journey. This is not the beauty of a nativity scene, not a smiley cuddly baby,
not nostalgia. Nor is it a journey away from it all. This is a journey right into the
middle of it, a journey toward, and it's hard and long and cold. So why take a journey like that?
Who needs it? If they were so wise, what was compelling enough, inviting enough that they
would set out in the first place? A star, says Matthew, a star. And this is one of those
places in the Bible when I want more than that. There had to be more reason than a star;
don't you think? The Heaven's Gate people had a star too, and so do a lot of others these
days and throughout history, those who follow some version of their own star, and most
often we call them wackos. These three set out on a long journey with only a star to guide
them and we call them wise. Maybe the folks back home thought they were wackos. Maybe it's
the embellishment of faith in these accounts written much later, after Jesus died and rose
again, that looked back with the impulse to make Jesus' birth as important as his
followers experienced his life, and from a literary point of view, these fancy, dignified
people who came a long way would add that kind of importance. We can wonder and analyze all we
want, and still what we get is a star. So maybe the point isn't the star, at least not the
star in itself. Maybe the point is the journey, the response to the star. I have this
notion we miss a lot of stars. We don't see them. Or if we do, we don't respond. The wise
men did. So did Lawrence. He described
himself as a down-in-the-gutter drunk. He'd hold a job for a while, but only a short
while, getting enough money to survive in his little apartment, sober enough to take care
of himself, for a while. Then he'd be fired, and around it would go. A friend kept nagging
him about sobering up, about changing, about how much better his life could be, about how
he needed a dog. Lawrence would just shrug it all off and say he couldn't even take care
of himself, how could he possibly take care of a dog. There were many such refusals, until
one day Lawrence came home to find this little dog in a cage on his doorstep. His friend
had taken action and there was nothing to do but bring the little dog in and feed it.
Little by little, Lawrence noticed that every time he came home, the dog was there to
greet him, happy to see him, delighted to see him. It was always a homecoming party.
Regardless of how he looked or felt, sober, drunk, dirty, grouchy, whatever, there was the
dog welcoming him home in a way Lawrence couldn't remember anybody doing. It took a while
but Lawrence decided one day to find an Alcoholics Anonymous group, and soon he was going
twice a week. When he sent the story I've just told you to an author, he sent a snapshot
with it and in the letter he said look closely at the snapshot. It shows him sitting on a
couch, the dog sitting next to him, and his 5-year sobriety medal is around the dog's
neck. A star? I think so, and Lawrence
eventually saw it and started on his own journey. Wendell Berry says, "The
world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long but only by a
spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which
we arrive at the ground of our feet and learn to be at home." So there's an arrival too, or
maybe a number of arrivals, when you actually get somewhere. It's not all journey. The
wise men did get to the manger, and when they got there, I bet they had some sense of what
Wendell Berry is talking about, some sense of "learning to be at home." It's not
an easy thing these days for a lot of us, not easy to be at home in more than a
romanticized, sanitized way, a Martha Stewart, advertising image way, not easy to be
honestly at home, with each other, with ourselves, with who we really are in all our
struggles, and loneliness and pain and joy and worries about money and about dying and
about whether we're lovable to ourselves, let alone to anyone else or to God. For some of
us, it's a long journey to that kind of home. But keep coming. Dec. 25 on the
calendar may have come and gone. That's okay; some of us need more time than calendars can
ever give us. We may not arrive at the manger until Feb. 4 or April 20 or Aug. 25 or next
year some time. It doesn't matter. Keep coming. You're not late. You're not alone either.
Remember, there were three of them traveling together on those camels. Look around this
place. We're in good company here. There are a lot of us traveling, a lot of us who need
more time, and directions and encouragement. And I bet that when we finally
arrive there, wherever there is, and whenever there is, we'll find a little baby, or at
least something that intimate and that tender, something that speaks to us of the love of
God made flesh to dwell among us. And I bet that in that moment, after coming all that
long way, we'll have some sense, some deep sense, way inside, of being at home. We'll come
in quietly, I think, and we'll kneel down and we'll present our gifts, the gifts we've
brought with us on the journey, this journey that took us a while. And the gifts will be
the gifts of ourselves and the wisdom we've gathered along the way because what more can
we bring? And then we'll linger, we'll hang around, simply because we want to be there a
while longer, at home.
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