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Up In The Air Sermon by Brian Russo January 24, 2010, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Exodus 32:11-14 Matthew 8:18-22
The opening to this sermon was originally composed around such a disturbing question that it would have, quite literally, consumed you with the fear of G_d. But, after a conversation with my most dear and wisest of friends – myself -- I have decided to progress in a slightly different direction. My girlfriend doesn’t like George Clooney. Nope, she really doesn’t. Now to be fair, she naturally appreciates all that he has done for world affairs, especially for the aid he has been promoting for the efforts in Haiti. But still… there’s just something about him that rubs her the wrong way. And if you asked her at coffee-hour why this was, I’m confident that she wouldn’t be able to give you all that convincing of an answer. Oh, of course I’m sure she’d be able to rattle off some non-sense about not liking the way his head always bends downward like some sort of bashful flamingo when he talks, or about how his self-assured, or rather self-arrogant demeanor just wreaks of a societal status that is more than likely undeserved. However preposterous her reasons, the reality is, she simply does not like the man. But, I like the man – yes, I like that George Clooney. I mean, come on, the guy played Fred Friendly in a film that he directed about the great Edward R. Murrow! Not only that, but he’s also played a quirky, assertive solider in Three Kings, a whistle-blower in Michael Clayton, and that sleek, calculating, Robinhood-esque gambling mastermind in the Ocean’s 11-13 series. Yes, I quite like that guy. Now, perhaps some of you are presently wondering if I’ve officially lost my mind. That this now 40-day long beard has somehow adversely affected the coherence of my cerebellum; that my facial hair has somehow concealed the internal mechanism of my common sense from the external realization that I am at this moment in a pulpit, yes a pulpit, and not some random booth in some dingy speak-easy where such conversations about actors and their “work” are accepted and commonplace. But I assure you, I have not lost my mind, and to own the truth, I really do like that George Clooney. For even though Pamela DiDonato has remarked that Up in the Air, Clooney’s latest work, is nothing short of depressing, I truly think that he and his fictional character have penned an astounding metaphor for us this morning. If you haven’t seen the movie yet (don’t worry, I won’t spoil it for you), it’s set up like this. Every now and then, in between unfolding events and relationship-targeted dialogue, Clooney offers a monologue as he assumes the role of a conference speaker. In these speeches, Clooney, or rather, his character, Ryan Bingham, asks his audience to close their eyes and to reflect on how much their lives weigh. He asks for them to consider wearing a backpack. A backpack that is at first empty, but then progressively filled with all of the things of life, both big and small, from clothes, jewelry and TVs, to cars, homes, and jobs, and ultimately to friends and family. Do you feel how heavy the straps have become, he asks? And then, in a slightly-less-than-optimistic fashion, he declares that these are the things that weigh us down, the very things that keep us from moving; and to make no mistake about it, moving is living. Huh? Wait a minute, Brian. I thought you said that this character “penned an astounding metaphor for us this morning?” That’s right, I did. Think about it. Better, think about how we do this to G_d; how we, almost every waking day, weigh G_d down. Huh again? How do we do this? Well for starters, we call G_d, “Him,” even though we are ALL supposedly grafted in the image of G_d. And really, to be honest, I would find it hard to believe that I am at all closer to G_d’s image… lanky, obscenely hairy, unkempt... than that which has been graced in the elegance our dear Cynthia [Jarvis]. So by doing this, day in and day out, that is assigning a gender to G_d, we limit the unlimited G_d into one segregated anthropomorphic category, fooling ourselves into the assumption that differences in biological makeup actually advance one’s place up the hierarchal ladder toward the imago Dei. We therefore literally contain G_d, and put G_d into a box, weighing G_d down to the point that the Eternal Revelation is reduced to a mere premonition of our own mortality. In the infamous words of Vizzini from the movie, The Princess Bride: what we have done is simply “inconceivable!” And my friends, this is just the First thing that we have put into the G_d backpack! Can you just imagine then how heavy the straps will become when we throw in the doctrinally triune mixture of Divine Benevolence, Omniscience, and Omnipotence? And in light of the recent tragedy, which unfathomably seems to be getting worse by each passing day (with aftershocks and countless narratives of impeded assistance for aid), can we at all sincerely declare that G_d is in fact juggling all three of these qualities at once? Can we? Surely, by now, you have heard this question of “theodicy” discussed to great length, but if you may, please humor just once more. If G_d is fully good, and yet supremely powerful, then how can we explain the events that have literally unearthed an entire nation of already deeply unfortunate people? How can we at all theologically rationalize the shape of things that has come to Haiti? How can we even dare, like some already have, to make a case that there was a Divine Plan in the erasing of 111,000(+) lives? How? Well, sadly, it’s because we ourselves have laid the groundwork for this disturbing rationale, prescribing to G_d, human appellations based upon the wishful perfection of our own image. My friends, we have carelessly stuffed our own mortal language into the immortal theological backpack. We have so fashioned G_d into the archetype of a SuperMan, that when things go terribly wrong, G_d in someway must be held accountable. How else can you try to balance the scale of Divine Benevolence, Omniscience and Omnipotence? If G_d is all three at once, then clearly G_d is at least partly responsible for the blame when tragedy strikes. Truly, how heavy then have the straps become? But, my friends, we are like ants, ants trying to understand a conversation in a room full of a million Daniel Farraday’s. It’s simply beyond us. No matter how close our belief may take us, G_d’s orbit is but a fleeting mystery. Trust me, I’ve searched, there really isn’t a bottle buried in some ancient sand with a Turbaned-figure trapped inside just waiting to grant us our three prayers; nor is there a magical old man zapping us all with lightning bolts from sky, or rather, tremors from the Earth. No, G_d, in both miracle and tragedy, is simply incomprehensible to all of us; and yet that is exactly the necessary separation, that which makes G_d, G_d, and us but mere mortals. If we could just easily grasp it, we would no longer be human, but rather G_d G_dself. But since our finitude makes this is impossible, we must then allow for G_d, and G_d alone, to be up in the air, unconstrained by the parameters of human language, beyond the limits of the theological dogmas that we have ascribed, and answerable, not to us, but only to the Divine force that always Was and always Is. If that’s too heavy, or too verbose to follow, just think about our texts this morning. Remember, in our Exodus text, we see G_d doing something that most of our theologies wont recognize or account for, namely that G_d can change! Exodus spells it out for us, as clear as day that G_d is not as rigid and stone-like as our language-laden creeds have led us to believe. Rather, Exodus shows us that G_d is capable of evolving! And before you think that this might be just some “Old” Testament lesson, let us now pay closer attention to our “New” Testament lesson. When approached by a scribe saying, “Teacher, I will follow you where you go,” Jesus cryptically responds, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” It’s as if Jesus/G_d, is nowhere and everywhere at once. That if you were to go looking in just one place, like you would with any other species, it would simply be much too narrow a search grid, for in fact, there is no grid when it comes to G_d! Just like the infinitely expanding Universe, G_d and the Son of Man are beyond the limits of physical space. Isn’t this after all what the coming Resurrection is all about? That Jesus defied the limits of our physicality, forever altering the course of humanity, rising above the rest of history as the anomaly of anomalies. My friends, it is but a simple undeniable truth that we are the ones who are limited. Even narcissists come to realize this at some point. But just because we are grounded, let us not also ground the limitless, immortal G_d with human conceptions, rationalizations, and language. Rather, let us leave G_d up in the eternal air, to be nowhere and everywhere, while we individually search amongst the rubble of our finite existence for traces of a Divine footprint. Amen |