24th
Sermon – Easter 08 “A God of Promise”
Ben Franklin is given credit with saying “Fish and houseguests stink after three days.” I am going to reserve comment on that subject, but we gather this morning, because three days was as long as the grave could hold Jesus. He had promised that he would be raised on the third day, and he we are. The promise has been kept. Christ is risen indeed, Alleluia!
This morning, I want us to know that we are here to worship “A God of Promise.”
“The Peach-Seed Monkey” from To a Dancing God by philospher, psychologist Sam Keen
Once upon a time when there were still Indians, Gypsies, bears, and bad men in the woods of Tennessee where I played and, more important still, there was no death, a promise was made to me. One endless summer afternoon my father sat in the eternal shade of a peach tree, carving on a seed he had picked up. With increasing excitement and covetousness I watched while, using a skill common to all omnipotent creators, he fashioned a small monkey out of the seed. All my vagrant wishes and desires disciplined themselves and came to focus on that peach-seed monkey. If only I could have it, I would possess a treasure which could not be matched in the whole cosmopolitan town of Maryville! What status, what identity, I would achieve by owning such a curio! Finally I marshaled my nerve and asked if I might have the monkey when it was finished (on the sixth day of creation). My father replied, “This one is for your mother, but I will carve you one someday.”
Days passes, and then weeks and, finally, years, and the someday on which I was to receive the monkey did not arrive. In truth, I forgot all about the peach-seed monkey. Life in the ambience of my father was exciting, secure, and colorful. He did all those things for his children a father can do, not the least of which was delighting in their existence. One of the lasting tokens I retained of the measure of his dignity and courage was the manner in which, with emphysema sapping his energy and eroding his future, he continued to wonder, to struggle, and to grow.
In the pure air and dry heat of an Arizona afternoon on the summer before the death of God, my father and I sat under a juniper tree. I listened and wrestled with the task of taking the measure of his success and failure in life. There came a moment of silence that cried out for testimony. Suddenly I remembered the peach-seed monkey, and I heard the right words coming from myself to fill the silence: “In all that is important you have never failed me. With one exception, you kept the promises you made to me—you never carved me that peach-seed monkey.”
Not long after that conversation I received a small package in the mail. In it was a peach-seed monkey and a note which said: “Here is the monkey I promised you. You will notice that I broke one leg and had to repair it with glue. I am sorry that I didn’t have time to carve a perfect one.”
Two weeks later my father died. He died only at the end of his life.[1]
Now we could argue for the rest of the day over Sam Keen’s strong opinions on manhood, God or ecology, but in telling the modern-day parable of the peach-seed monkey, he goes far in meeting his goal: “For me, a peach-seed monkey has become a symbol of all the promises which were made to me, and the energy and care which nourished me and created me as a human being.”[2]
Our lives – who we are, how we got here and who we are becoming – are reflections of those promises that have been made to us, and – I would add – the promises we make to others. The promises of parents, grandparents and neighbors; the oaths of teachers, police officers and nurses; the pledge and prayers of a church; the vows of a spouse… Life is about is about the promises each of us makes and keeps.
And, promises are all around us: just Friday I was with some out-of-town guests at the New York Autoshow and we walked from car to shiny car over the plush carpet and heard the spokesmodels each tell us how next year’s models were new and improved, better than anything that had come before. We are surrounded by promises, for example: this is the season of promising politicians, I have personally promised daily for the last two weeks to catch-up with doing the laundry. You should see the promises I receive in unsolicited emails each day.
Promises are attractive because we need something to trust in, to hope for, to depend on. The most attractive promises start with our needs, our desires, our dissatisfaction and offer an alternative. Of course, promises are ultimately only good if they are kept.
This Easter, I want you to take away the simple truth that our God is a God of Promise. On this day, when we gather amid fragrant flowers and our loved ones, in a sanctuary filled with great history and deep prayer, as we listen to and sing songs both traditional and new, we need to remember that it all points to the greatest promise of all.
Consider the story, we’ve heard it and told it many times before; our ancestors in the faith have shared it for generations; and our entire faith has been built on it:
A child is born. A king. Not in the palace, but in the back parking lot of a cheap motel. Ok, so I’m embellishing… and this is a story that needs no embellishment. Jesus, the Son of God, God’s own self, in human form, with all its pleasures and temptations and sore muscles and hunger. Jesus, living among real people, working people… it’s not embellishing to say “the salt of the earth,” that’s his phrase. He’s surrounded by a ragtag group of followers and people are bringing their loved ones and neighbors to him so he can heal and cast out the spirits that possess them. And Jesus does these things, people are healed and recover their sight. And Jesus teaches. He challenges those who follow him to take up their crosses, to sell their possessions, to love one another and love their enemies and love God. He challenges the religious authorities to end their hypocrisy and the political system by his very commitment to the oppressed and his proclamations about a new kingdom. And this is enough for them to execute him. One Friday, they hang Jesus on a cross between two criminals and he dies.
But God’s promise persists. The story does not end with the cross, or the tomb in which Jesus’ body is laid. Mary Magdelene goes to the tomb on Sunday morning and finds it empty. She suspects someone has stolen Jesus’ body and goes to tell Peter and John, who set off in a footrace to see for themselves. John outruns Peter, but Peter is the first to enter the tomb. He does not grasp the scene, but John does and believes. Mary is left to mourn, her tears don’t stop when she sees two angels, in fact the tears must have blurred her vision because when she sees Jesus face-to-face she initially mistakes him for the gardener. And then he calls her by name and she recognizes him. Jesus sends her to tell the others and she goes.
This is the good news we are celebrating this morning. This is God keeping God’s promise that life conquers death, that we are loved, and that we worship a God of life and creation. Here is God offering a promise that extends way beyond that Sunday two thousand years ago, it’s a promise that extends to today and for eternity. It’s a promise that offers an alternative to our fears, our dissatisfaction and our guilt. God says “yes” even when all we hear around us is “no.”
We cannot pretend to live in the simple world of our childhood – as Sam Keen described it, “a time when there were still Indians, Gypsies, bears, and bad men in the woods of Tennessee where I played and, more important still, there was no death”– instead we must own up to our responsibility for the promises we keep and break, and we must live with the consequences of promises made to us, whether kept or broken.
“For God so love the world that God gave God’s only Son, that whosever believes in him shall not perish, but have life everlasting”
God’s promise is that death is no longer the last word, God’s promise is one that God has kept at great expense to himself. God’s promise is that regardless of all else, we are loved and we can love again; we are part of God’s good creation, and that God is continuing to transform us and our world into a new creation God’s love, God’s action in our lives, God’s invitation to relationship is the result of God’s promise made and kept, given flesh and breath in the person of Jesus. And Jesus is not found among the dead, but among the living… even among us, as we accept the new life he offers. Death is defeated, so we are free to live.
As Elisabeth Kubler-Ross has so beautifully written:
When we have done all the work we were sent to do,
we are allowed to shed our bodies,
which imprisons our soul like a cocoon encloses the butterfly
and when the time is right we can let go of it.
Then we will be free of pain, free of fears and free of worries—
free as a beautiful butterfly returning home to God….
Or as we are now invited to sing:
“In the bulb there is a flower, in the seed an apple tree;
In cocoons a hidden promise, butterflies will soon be free”
As we sing, I invite any who wish to join the church to join me in the front.
[1] Sam Keen, To a Dancing God, p.99.
[2] Ibid., p. 100.
