Private Ryan's Question

I almost always preach the lectionary. I love to see how the text chosen for a specific day matches up with what’s happening in the world. The Hebrew Testament text appointed for today tells, in short order, the story of how the people of Israel “Did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” We don’t know what they did wrong. We only know that God punished them by visiting hard times on them for a score of years.

And then it says, God sent a man named Barak to rescue the people and make everything alright again.

You can’t make things like this up.

I should point out that it happens at a time when there is a woman president . . I mean, Judge in the land of Israel. Her name is Deborah.

At least it’s not Sarah or Hillary.

Well, time alone will tell whether Barack Obama will be our hero or not. So . . . I’m going with the parable of Jesus in the New Testament that’s appointed for today’s reading. Not because it’s an easy one . . .

"For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his servants and entrusted his property to them . . .” Just when the three servants needed the master to give them advice on how to invest the money he has entrusted to them, he disappears. Servants #1 & 2 have great results with what is lent to them. The problem arises with number three. He refuses to put his money in the stock market and is lambasted for it.

Now this is hilarious in the face of the current economic climate, I know. I mean, if it happened today, the first two guys would give the master back his money with at best a 30% loss, and the third fellow who buried the money like a dog bone and returns it intact would be paraded through town a hero.

This may not be so far from the original version as an early scholar, Eusebius insists, rejecting Matthew’s story outright as poppycock, knowing that peasant peoples in Jesus time would see no merit in Matthew’s version at all.

But Matthew’s parable is what we’ve got. So let’s make the best of it. This guy who takes the heat in the parable has been given a bundle of money (15 years wages by one estimation) and this money, which he has in some large sack, perhaps, he decides to bury in his back yard. Maybe he puts a bush over it so it will look natural. Finally the master returns. The first servant comes forward and says, "You gave me the equivalent of 75 years of wages, I doubled it." "Well done good and faithful servant. You were faithful over a little, I will set you over much.”

The second servant comes and shows he also has doubled the investment and once again the master says, “Well done.” Then comes number three. He is proud of himself. He has wasted no money and is glad to be returning every penny given him. He also says something about the master being tough, reaping where he did not sow, but mostly he is just proud to return every penny.

And the master replies, "You wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I was hard. Then you should have at least put my money in the bank so I could have the interest.

"So," he says, "take all this little wretch's money and give it to the other two. To those who have more will be given. And from those who have little, even that will be taken away."

SOME CHRISTIAN TEACHING THIS IS! The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Where is the grace in this story of Jesus’? Well, the truth is, that read in a particular way, grace can be said to permeate the story from the first line:

The master was going away on a journey and he summoned his three servants and he gave them -- not some of what he has -- he gave them EVERYTHING. He divided everything among them, everything of who he is and what he is.

Who then is really at risk here? THE MASTER. The master entrusts everything to his servants. That trust is the most extravagant grace I know -- to make oneself absolutely vulnerable to the whims of another. That is grace.

Note that in Matthew’s version, this is a story Jesus tells toward the end of his life, just before he begins his journey to a place called Calvary to offer his “everything,” what Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg called, “The last full measure of devotion.”

Here is a story of extravagance told by one of the most extravagant people to ever live. He is the one to define waste, not as risking everything, but as being too careful. He who gave it all and said: “Greater love hath no one than that he lay down his life for his friends."

But the third servant in today's parable doesn't get it. He misses the grace completely. He’s given all that money and the only thing he became more acquainted with because of it was the dirt in his own backyard. It didn't stretch him at all; all he has to show for the master's investment in him is a hole in the ground. He might as well be standing over his own grave -- which, in a way, he is.

The parable, as it stands, says this is your life -- it's the supreme gift -- what are you doing with it? Note that we are looking at this in the wake of Veteran’s Day.

The whole thing makes me think of the film, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. In that movie set during World War II the sole surviving son in a family of four boys is rescued at the order of Gen. George C. Marshall. He orders a platoon to find him (somewhere in France) and bring him home to his mother. The film begins so poignantly at the Normandy cemetery above the cliffs of beaches called Omaha and Utah. Private Ryan is there with his family. It’s the 1990s and he is nearing old age. He carries with him a heavy question: "Have I lived a good enough life?" He wonders if he has lived a good enough life to account for the ultimate sacrifice of those who gave their lives to rescue him.

At film’s end Private Ryan, now fully mature bends down over the grave there at Normandy, of the man most responsible for his return home, Capt. John Miller.

He says the following to the stone sentinel, “To be honest with you I wasn’t sure how I’d feel coming back here. Every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge, [that I’d have to earn it.” I have tried to live my life the best I could. I hope that was enough. I hope that at least in your eyes I have earned what all of you have done for me.”

Then his wife walks up, sees the name on the stone. And her husband says to her, “Tell me I have led a good life

“What?” she asks, incredulously.

“Tell me I am a good man,” he says.

Have we lived good lives? Are we good people? Who sacrificed what so we could be here? And what, in fact, is the measure of a good life, anyway? That things always go right for us?

We are living in the day where the biggest most “successful” “big box” churches have as their central message that unless you are healthy and filthy rich by the time your forty God has not smiled on you. You’ve messed up. You haven’t lived a good life.

I think that‘s a lot of malarkey. No, who knows what cards will be dealt us in this life? It’s not the cards you’re dealt, right, but how you choose to play them? And, if we look closely enough at people’s lives we see that sometimes it’s the train wrecks in a person’s life that can lead to real greatness, even happiness.

I mean, what does success or failure really amount to in a crazy world like this?

Success often comes by luck. Sheer good luck. And failure?

"Failure,” said Mother Teresa, “is nothing but the kiss of Jesus." One can spend a lifetime unpacking the meaning of that. Some people do.

Looking again at the parable, what was the nature of the “failure” of the steward? It wasn’t that he’d done anything evil. He’d just been too careful, right? He’d been fearful, of the master, of life itself.

We can all be like that once in a while.

Sometimes failure knocks us down for a while, but in most cases we can get up again – the real danger comes when we are tempted to wallow in it.

I love the example of the jockey who rode Seabiscuit. His name was Red Pollard. He was a bookish man who carried copies of the works of Shakespeare and Emerson with him wherever he went. He was skinny, literally broken by too many hard falls, and abandoned by his family when a teenager. He had begun his life in racing at the age of 17 and spent the first 12 years in his profession broke and homeless. But he couldn’t quit. He loved what he did too much, and besides, he had no idea what else he might be fit for.

In August of 1936 he was heading north with his agent -- a squat man with a disfigured lip named, Yummy -- when a freak car accident left them stranded outside of Detroit, with nothing but twenty cents and a half-pint of cheap whisky between them.

The two men hitchhiked to the Detroit Fair Grounds, where Pollard bumped into Tom Smith, Seabiscuit's trainer. As it happened, Smith was looking for a jockey.

When introduced to the temperamental, often unruly horse, Pollard offered a sugar cube. Seabiscuit touched the jockey's shoulder with his nose in a rare gesture of affection. As Smith saw it, Seabiscuit had chosen his jockey. It might have been the luckiest day of Pollard's life.

In an interview Laura Hillenbrand, author of the marvelous book, Seabiscuit , said, [Red Pollard] lived a terrible life, but he was a guy that didn’t allow that to defeat him. He lived as he chose even though he was not successful throughout his career. He really was not a success, he was mostly a failure. But he did not hunker down under his fear like other people did. He stretched his life out as far as he could get it to go. He did as much as he possibly could. He did things he really wasn’t physically able to do. So that he could be as fully alive as he could possibly be. And in bad economic times like the 1930s that was a tremendous accomplishment. There were a lot of reasons to live a very narrow life.

He didn’t hunker down under his fear. But he could have. Lots of people do.

Again, What is failure and what is success? They aren’t two disparate things. Not all. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin. And knowing that can mean everything. Failure, after all, is nothing but the kiss of Jesus.

Sometimes we fail because there is something bigger we are supposed to be about.

Think of Abraham Lincoln. He was, by any 21st century standard, an abysmal failure. Having served just one initial term in congress he lost his bid for re-election because of a stand he took against the controversial war of his day -- the war with Mexico.

He found himself walking in a political wilderness for fourteen solid years. He was repeatedly passed over for appointments. He turned down the one he was offered, territorial governor of Oregon because he felt it would have been like being in exile. Imagine, having to live in Oregon. . . .Then, in 1856 he was passed over for Vice President.

His fondest ambition was to be elected a United States Senator from Illinois. Being President was a thankless job to many. The best orators of the first half of the 19th century were all U.S. senators. Daniel Webster, Henry Clay. You know, if he had not failed at that, all we would have of Abraham Lincoln would be a few marvelous speeches in the Congressional record.

After losing the Senate seat to Douglas in 1858 he went back to his home in Springfield wondering if his public life was over. He asked for written copies of his debates with Douglas thinking they were his only legacy. But he waited and watched, and found that his failures were merely a foundation for something much larger.

The apostle Paul once said, "Eye has not seen, nor has ear heard, nor has the mind of the human being even conceived what God has planned for those who love God."

It was as if Lincoln was destined for something else -- a higher calling.

What frightens you? Really?

Nelson Mandela is remembered to have quoted Marianne Williamson when he said, Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world . . . We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us. It is in everyone.

The most important thing I’ve ever heard said about fear comes from the Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodrin in her book, When Things Fall Apart.

The next time you encounter fear, consider yourself lucky. This is where the courage comes in. Usually we think that brave people have no fear. When I was first married my husband said I was one of the bravest people he knew. When I asked him why, he said because I was a complete coward but went ahead and did things anyhow.

The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we find that something is not what we thought. That's what we're going to discover again and again and again. Nothing is what we thought. I can say that with complete confidence. Emptiness is not what we thought. . . . Fear. Compassion? -- not what we thought. Love. Courage. These are code words for things we don't know in our minds, but any of us could experience them.
These are words that point to what life really is when we let things fall apart and let ourselves be nailed to the present moment.

Sometimes we don’t ever know where we succeed. Often this is the case.

Seventeen years ago my daughter, Margaret and I whiled away a morning in Cambridge Massachusetts in the old Mt. Auburn Cemetery. Many great people are buried there, among them, Oliver Wendall Holmes, Winslow Homer, Julia Ward Howe, Bernard Malamud, Amy Lowell, Charles Sumner, . . . and John Pierpoint. His stone says he was a poet, preacher, philosopher, philanthropist.

He died thinking himself a failure but not from want of trying. He had tested his hand at school teaching, lawyering business, poetry. He’d failed at being a minister, failed as a politician, even a file clerk (he failed at that because his heart wasn’t in it). But in 1866 he wrote a song that nearly 400 million people on this earth know and sing every year: “Jingle Bells.” Just the simplest song written one winter afternoon for his family and friends about joy in it's purest crystalline form.

What is success and what is failure after all?

We will never know the extent or the full effect of the good we do on this earth. God may bless even the smallest thing we have done or said, for it is God's purposes, not our own, that are critical. In that is freedom, and peace in abundance.

Maybe we are aiming too low. Maybe our failures are just the foundation necessary to do something God has a mind to bless tremendously.

"Eye has not seen, nor has ear heard, nor has the mind of the human being even conceived what God has planned for those who love God."

Amen