Sermon 11-05-17: Ho-hum, Humdrum Beauty by Rev. Duncan Johnston

Last Friday I made a 24-hour trip to Boston. Gelind was on business and I went to carry her bag and to see a city I’d wanted to visit for as long as I’ve been in the country. I was familiar with the original Boston, the one in Old England. It is on a geographical feature called the Fens – which is as flat as a pancake and about as interesting. There aren’t even many trees. I used to live near there, in a town called Peterborough. I was ordained in Peterborough Cathedral, but that is possibly the least boring event that has ever occurred in the town in its 1,900-year history.

You can say it with flowers, you can say it with a smile. You can say it with chocolates or cards. And you can say it with coins. Larry Gasper of Redding, California, decided on the last of these. Larry had got a bit behind in paying his property taxes. In fact, he owed the Shasta County tax collector $12,658. So, just as the county was planning to auction his house, Larry made a trip to the tax collector’s office and paid his bill. In coins. In a wheelbarrow. And two buckets. “It took four of my staff a little over two hours just to count all the cash,” says Mary Axelson, Shasta’s chief deputy tax collector; “and then it took probably another hour to get it bagged up to go to the bank.” But, the loss of 12 staff-hours was better than the alternative, thinks Mary. She says, “I could have turned him away. There is a taxation code section that says we do not have to take payment in coin. But he came in looking for confrontation and I just wasn’t going to give it to him.” So, if you can say it with coins, I’ll leave you to judge what it was Larry was wanting to say to the tax collector.

They’re called ‘first world problems’ and when you hear them they make you cringe. They are the petty, insignificant events that well-nourished, soundly-housed, comfortably-incomed people complain about. Now, there’s only one thing worse than hearing other people complain about their first world problems, and that is the feeling of shame and self-loathing you feel when you hear yourself lamenting some problem so trivial that you have to be in the top half a dozen percent of the world’s richest people to even have it. I did it the other day.

Archaeologists have just unearthed an ancient papyrus, which I need to share with you. It appears to be a missing chapter of Genesis:

After Adam and Eve had been evicted from Eden, they complained to God, “Lord, when we were in the garden, you walked with us every day. Now we don’t see you anymore. We are lonely and we forget how much you love us.” And God said, “No problem! I will create a companion for you that will be with you forever and who will be a reflection of my love for you. Regardless of how selfish and unlovable you are, this new companion will accept you rand will love you as I do.”

YEAR A PROPER 21: OCTOBER 1 2017 MATTHEW 21:23-32

I’d never witnessed anyone’s attitude change as fast as his. One moment we were chatting pleasantly, the next he was spitting contempt in that way people do when they feel under pressure, under attack even. “I don’t want to get into religion with you, but I just want to say one thing…” That was the hint that his personality was morphing from placid to hostile, from Jekyll to Hyde, from afternoon tea with genteel company to prosecuting lawyer attacking a hostile witness. He became intense, agitated. His face and shoulders, relaxed and engaged moments earlier, now tightened.

FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2014 JONAH 3:10-4:11

Like a child on Christmas morning I massacred the envelop in my eagerness to get to its contents. It bore a UK stamp, a dead giveaway as to the identity of the sender, and its shape and size confirmed that this was what I’d been waiting for. I clutched it lovingly, relishing the artwork on the front, the names on the back, and the cool smoothness of the plastic container. Here it is. A DVD. A low-budget British movie. ‘The Foley Artist’, it’s called. I’d never heard of it, and I suspect neither have you. But somewhere deep down, where logic and reason don’t shine their dismal light I knew it would become my favorite movie.

I knew I had blown it even as I was saying it. The genie was out of the bottle, the toothpaste was out of the tube, the banana was out of its skin. There was no going back. You know that moment don’t you, when your mouth declares its independence and throws off the rule of your brain and launches torpedo words that sinks the ship of your life. I tried to catch those words, imagining that I could somehow stop them in their deadly path towards the ears of my conversation partner, but voices travel at 767 miles an hour and they weren’t coming back. I should’ve known better. I did know better. In seminary, they spend years training you in what not to say. You attend classes to learn how to bite your tongue when a parishioner says something that makes you want to throw a fit, throw the furniture, or throw up. But, in whatever profession you pursue, there are always those moments when your training lets you down and your unbridled emotions leap from the stable of your soul and gallop over the hedge to cause mayhem in your neighbor’s field.

PROPER 18 YEAR A SEPTEMBER 10 2017 ROMANS 13:8-14

When I remember my teenage years, the intimidating figure of Paul Murphy usually swaggers into my mind. Paul Murphy was in the year above me. Paul Murphy was sophisticated, I was naïve; Paul Murphy was hip, I was square; Paul Murphy had a bulging social calendar, I was shy. Paul Murphy rode a shiny new Honda motorcycle to school each day. It was a 250cc machine, which, for a 17-year-old was more power than anyone needs. It also gave him that most precious and sought-after commodity – the ability to impress girls. My motorcycle was only 125cc, so Paul Murphy was twice the man I was, with double the prospects on the romance front. His bike was silver and it shimmered in the sun in a way that made it appear like some chariot from heaven, or even more impressively, from hell. Mine was red. A perfectly acceptable color, if you’re choosing curtains.

I was driving to work a few months ago, when she glided into my life. She rocked my drive to work; waltzed into my dreary commute, and gilded my day. She was driving one of those SUVs that has the spare wheel fastened to the outside of the fifth door. Protecting this wheel was a plastic cover, which demanded attention. “Life is good” it screamed from thirty feet away. And just to prove it there was the image of a big daisy beneath the slogan. That wasn’t the only message her car blared. There was a sticker in the back window: “Cancer, you picked the wrong witch.” Actually, it wasn’t ‘witch’, but you get the point. I was beginning to form a picture of the lady behind the wheel. She clearly had a great story, and it was having an effect on me. Not only is life good but I am now smiling because of the window sticker. A minute later and we both stop at a red light. And as I sit there, looking through the back window of the SUV, I see the driver waving her arms around wildly. I think she must be angry with someone, but I can see no one else in the car. Intrigued, I study her every move, and I realize she is dancing. In the car. And not that sedate nodding of the head in time to the music, which is how most of us dance in the car. This is passion and energy and abandon. She is tearing up the dance floor. It’s not just her arms that are flailing around, her whole body is in motion. This SUV is jerking from side to side. I’m wondering how the suspension is going to cope. This is ‘stomp’ but with fewer garbage cans. And there am I, shaken not stirred, watching, thinking, “Cancer, you picked the wrong witch”. She shimmies, she rumbas, she trips the light fantastic; she is Dances with Cancer.