1.
There’s a door, at our
house, in our house, an ordinary door between our busy kitchen and a well-used
laundry room. And five feet up on that
door, just about shoulder level (at least my shoulder level), five feet up is a
scar, something like a lightning bolt, a small but unmistakable scar. It’s a reminder, that scar, of an
embarrassment, one of those awful, angry moments I wish I could take back. You know those moments? The ones you wish you could just take right
back, delete from the family hard drive?
It’s that kind of scar.
This one goes back six
years or so, and I confess that I can’t even recall what was going on or who
was in the house when I lost it. But
something got to me, obviously: something someone said in the heat of an
argument, or something someone did when I just didn’t have an ounce of patience
left. And I felt that rising flush in my
face, I got so mad, so frustrated, I felt so impotent—that I hauled off and threw
a punch—at that rickety door between the kitchen and laundry room. Shoulder level. Crack!
As if the door had anything to do with anything!
Now I don’t think of
myself as a violent person, and certainly not as an abusive one. I hope that much is clear. But every morning I go to clear out the cat’s
litter box, and every Saturday I go to do a load of laundry, every time: I’m
confronted by that scar. That senseless scar
that for six years has reminded me of the wolf that lies within me. The lion that lurks in my knuckles and nails. It turns out that I have the same mix of
darkness and light inside of me that everyone else has. It turns out that I harbor in my soul all the
same shadows, all the same dispositions, the very same impotence as the men I
visit in jail, the addicts that end up on the street, the bullies who menace kids
at school. We’re made of the same stuff. All of us.
Now I’m not thinking of this door-business as some shocking confession. God does a lot of amazing things with my ordinary life, turns my broken dreams into holy communion over and over again. I’m swimming every day in an ocean of grace I didn’t create, and I’m fortunate every day to use the gifts I have to make life a little better for others. But that doesn’t make me different. The truth is I’m every bit as complicated as everyone else out there. There’s a wolf inside of me, and a lion in my hands. The scar on the door, a humbling sort of icon in my kitchen, reminds me of that. Peace is the journey of a lifetime: coming to grips with the wolves inside us and loving them enough to tame them. Peace is the most human endeavor of all: shining love’s light into all those shadows, and bringing the wolves out to live with our lambs and little ones.
So maybe you don’t
have any wolves lurking in your shadows.
Maybe you don’t have any lions skulking in cages within. For the rest of us, though, faith is a daily,
hourly process: accepting our limitations, seeking forgiveness, shining love’s
light into all those shadows, and risking reconciliation and grace. That’s where I want to start this
morning. We are not called, sisters and
brothers, to perfection. We are not called,
disciples of Jesus, to perfection. We
are called to compassion, mindfulness and awareness; called to offer our
brokenness to God in confession and prayer; called even to acknowledge our
violence, the violence that lives in every human heart, so that God might do
something new, something daring, something bold with our lives. Faith is that kind of process.
Fifty years ago, the great Trappist monk Thomas Merton said:
“Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It
demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and
a much more perfect purity of conscience.”
In other words, peace demands our honesty, our vulnerability and our
courage. No easy thing in any life. But this is the narrow road to the kingdom of
God. Honesty, vulnerability and
courage. The narrow road to peace.
2.
Given all that, given
the scar on my kitchen door and the headlines in the morning papers, what
strikes me this morning, in Isaiah’s peace poem—is that single, strange,
vicious verse, hiding here, in an otherwise glorious vision. The passage we’ve read from the Hebrew
Bible. Did you catch that verse? Did it register with you? For me, it’s like that senseless scar on the
door. Every time I do the laundry. That single, strange, vicious verse, hiding here
in the peaceable kingdom. And keeping us
honest. Always human. And always honest.
In so many ways,
Isaiah 11 evokes everything we want to associate with discipleship and
faith. Paints a picture of
transformation, ecological wholeness and surprising peace. Here’s this vision of a generous shoot off
the stock of Jesse. Here’s this promise
of new leadership, righteousness and equity for the meek and the poor. Here’s the language of the mystic suffused
with the passion of the prophet. And
it’s all so familiar to us: “The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the
spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit
of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”
It’s beautiful stuff, stirring and powerful stuff. And this time of year, it turns our hearts to
Jesus and what his coming might mean for us, for the world. Something radically, joyously new. “The earth will be full of the knowledge of
the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
But what strikes me
this morning is that old dark shadow, that single menacing shadow, hiding in
this bright and wondrous light. You
caught it, right? It’s right here—isn’t
it—at the heart of it all, at the midpoint of this peace poem. “He shall strike,” Isaiah declares: this same
shoot, this same generous spirit, this new human being. “He shall strike the earth with the rod of
his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.” Does this fit? Is this new?
What’s up with the striking and the bitter breathing and the
killing? It’s like a drone strike on a
sunny day. It’s like a pipe bomb going
off in a bustling market, just before Shabbat.
“He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,” says the poet,
“and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.”
How it is that here,
at the heart of Isaiah’s shining, shimmering vision of the peaceable kingdom,
here where the wolf is soon to live with the lamb, how is it that here we find
yet another reminder of our own human tendency toward judgment and violence of
the worst sort? How is it that here,
where the leopard is soon to lie down with the kid, where the cow and the bear
are soon to graze, and their young lie down together, how is it that here we
find yet another reminder of our human proclivity toward striking and smiting
and breathing words that injure and wound?
What are we to make of this, of this old dark shadow hiding in the
bright light of Isaiah’s prophetic vision?
I wonder sometimes if
violence is just there, in our DNA, for the long, long evolutionary haul. Is that it?
3.
But then I go to fold
some laundry, and I see my scar. And I
remember the wolf inside of me, and I have to grapple with the truth, the human
truth of who I am and who we are. All of
us. In every one of us, the shadow plays
in the light. The desire to strike out,
to say something that hurts—this desire is like a storm surge against our
stable shores. Our dark urges weave in
and out of our nobler vision. We pray
for peace, but wonder what vengeance would feel like in the end. That’s what it is to be human—that’s the
stuff we’re made of. In a way, Isaiah
keeps us all honest. Reminding us that,
in every one of us, the shadow plays in the light. Dark urges weave in and out of nobler vision.
And thing is: this is
where discipleship begins; this is where faith touches down. In our very human lives. In the complicated space of our spiritual
lives—where we pray for peace, but wonder about vengeance. On the threshold between kitchen and laundry
room—where a single, sudden scar reminds us of the wolf that lies within. Discipleship begins with our accepting the
gift of life, the gift of this life—and our complex mix of motivations and mistakes,
hopes and hurts. We might even say, in a
setting like this, in this reformed tradition: our complex mix of sin and
grace. Jesus doesn’t demand perfection,
just that decision to go, to walk, to follow.
And along the way, Jesus doesn’t teach perfection, just that everyday
willingness to ask for grace, accept forgiveness and learn from inevitable,
sometimes scary mistakes. Over and over
and over again.
Not perfection, you
see. We are called instead to humanness,
to human courage and honesty. That’s
discipleship and faith. Isaiah’s vision
and Jesus’ practice. Look deep into the
shadows for wisdom. Find grace in the
broken parts of our lives. Learn to bind
up and heal and bless—instead of striking out, breathing fire with our words
and hurting those we fear.
I want to encourage
you, even urge you to take up a prayer practice as part of your Christmas
preparation this year, as part of your Advent journey. It doesn’t matter what kind of shape that
practice takes—whether it’s a kind of centering prayer based in silence or
whether it’s a kind of reading based in scripture or poetry or the psalms. But I hope you’re taking ten to twenty
minutes—at least once, even better twice a day—to hold in prayer the gift of
your life and to watch for the face of God’s mercy and love. Prepare the vessel of your life, the home of
your soul for Christmas.
Any of us who’ve made
commitments to prayer, to meditation, will be quick to tell you that sometimes
the wolves within come out to play. We
don’t pray to become perfect. We pray
and find our lives revealed as they are: the beauty and the wonder, the
darkness and the rage, the wild wolves and the nursing lovely child. All of that’s inside us: all of it is
ours. And if we sit still, if we commit
to prayer and stillness, we’ll find it all waiting for us, looking for us,
inviting compassion and tenderness and wisdom.
So don’t freak
out. That’s my advice this morning. When the wolves come out to play, when the
wind turns cold and bitter, when you’re thinking peace but feeling war. Don’t freak out. You are like everyone else in this sanctuary,
every other disciple who seeks the company of God’s spirit. In you stirs a strange mix of light and
darkness, anger and joy, hope and despair.
And that mix is where discipleship begins. For you as for the rest of us. Another great monastic voice, Sister Macrina
Wiederkehr puts it this way. She says: “We
are frail and glorious creatures. [Frail
and glorious.] Our frailty need not
cripple us; our glory need not be denied.
Embraced and cherished as part of the process that we are, these
qualities become God’s greatest advantage in our lives.” Get that?
“Embraced and cherished as part of the process that we are, these
qualities become God’s greatest advantage in our lives.”
Think about
Jesus. Remember the moments when Jesus
lost his composure and ripped off a mean-spirited one liner at an
adversary. Not his best stuff. Or when Jesus reached the end of his rope and
angrily flipped the bankers’ tables in the temple courts, railing against greed
in the marketplace. Or when Jesus unleashed
his own bigotry and called the Syro-Phonoecian woman a dog—refusing to help her
daughter, resisting her plea for compassion.
Jesus had his moments. Jesus
lived with his own shadows, his own darkness.
And again and again, the gospels show Jesus learning from these
missteps, confessing his limitations, offering himself another chance to serve
and love and touch and channel God’s peace.
That’s the
paradigm. That’s the path. That’s the course God sets for you and
me. If peace is the journey of your
lifetime, it is also the intention of God, the passion of God for every one of
your lives. It’s the journey God desires
for you. You won’t find that journey on
sale at the mall. And you won’t find it
in yet another glass of cheap wine at yet another holiday party. I daresay you won’t even find it at church—if
all you’re doing is going through the motions, singing carols and feeling
smug.
Peace is the journey you
get when you follow Jesus into the hills, early in the morning, before
breakfast, before coffee, before the Today Show. Peace is the journey you get when you forgive
yourself for the mistakes you’ve made and the doors you’ve smashed and the wars
you’ve waged. Peace is the journey you
get when you face the wolves within and tame them with love and
understanding. Peace is the journey you
get when you come at last to love yourself: to weep with gratitude for the
imperfect gift of your perfect life. A life
which only God could have imagined. And
only God could have made.
“We are frail and
glorious creatures,” says Macrina Wiederhkehr.
“Our frailty need not cripple us; and our glory need not be
denied.” Maybe that’s where peace
begins. Maybe that’s the truth that sets
us free. Amen
