"The View From the Balcony" February 27, 2011

Isaiah 49:1-16
Matthew 6: 22-31
In our prayers, we lifted up concern for Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, the whole Southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Over the last many decades, each has solved the causes of infant mortality, where 4 put of every 5 birth died before age five. But with resolution of the deaths of infants, thirty and forty years later, the population began to adjust the number of children they were giving birth to. The result is a majority of the population under age 30 and ½ to ¾ of the population is unemployed. We prayed for the people of New Zealand whose homes and businesses and churches were destroyed by earth quake. We prayed for the Teachers and Legislators in Wisconsin, and across our Nation, struggling to honor the effects of past Collective Bargaining contracts, with limited tax revenues. We prayed for young adult children of this congregation, and the pastors of neighboring churches who have been affected by Cancer. And for one who is in Jail. Then we open the Gospel today, to a passage that says “BE NOT ANXIOUS!” How can we avoid anxiety! Through our choice of media, news services and the internet, we reinforce our perspective of what we know to be the answers, each of us becoming the world's experts on what we would do, as if we were God.

There are times when in preaching I feel like I am addressing myself, because I am a worrier. When in 9th grade I fret whether I could get the right combination of classes, so in 10th grade I could take the successive classes, to be able to take Driver's Ed. We worry and are anxious trying to control our fears.

You have to love the Gospel of Matthew, because he tries to apply the preaching and teaching and life of Jesus to both a formerly Jewish and Gentile now Christian congregation, tying together and making connections between everything that was said throughout the Old Testament and in the civil culture about who the Messiah is. In the midst of this, the evangelist inserts a pronoun to describe the community of believers, the church, he calls them “O Those of Little Faith.” Far different from a pejorative that says you could do better, what Matthew is identifying is this community does have faith, sincere and real faith in Christ, but like those still wet from baptism, those recently confirmed, what we have claimed is our desire to believe, and that faith is only one component in their lives. Those Of Little Faith need assurance and continual reminder of what we believe. This Gospel is a challenge to commitments, that rather than faith in God being one important element of our lives, what we do on Sunday morning: to choose to act in faith in all you do.

In essence the Gospel of Matthew is singing the old Revival Hymn “This Little Light of Mine, I'm Gonna Let It Shine,” he is taking that kernel of leaven that is the Gospel and kneading that ingredient throughout the whole loaf. Rather than a sermon about ANXIETY, what Matthew offers is ASSURANCE that we can CHOOSE TO MAKE A COMMITMENT. Matthew's Gospel is about what it is to be RIGHTEOUS, not Self-Righteous, not assuming we have a better or the true perspective others do not see. “RIGHTEOUS” according to Matthew is quite simply to re-orient our lives to be in right relationship with God. That right relationship being, to live wholly convinced that God is God, all our lives are in God's hands, we need not worry or be anxious, or try to dictate what others believe, rather we live trusting one another, trusting God.

Recently, I have had to learn all over again a basic truth of leadership and faith. In the midst of circumstance, it is difficult to gain perspective. It is easy enough to witness the different sides, to name the political and economic disparities within our Nation, and those throughout the world. It is easy to get drawn in and to take sides, or to try to rally leadership from the midst, but it cannot be done. It is easy when emotions and stressful experiences mount, for us to objectivize one another, not seeing ourselves as part of the problem or the solution. What we need instead, is to withdraw to a place apart, to gain the view from the balcony. It's difficult when you live in a place like Central New York to get the perspective of a time and place apart. As soon as you complete shoveling, there is more snow. When the snows are deep, you plan for ways to make the house more energy efficient, or to master your problems. But walking the shore, the sands extend in more grains than you could ever count, the waves lap at the shore, and as far out as you can see, on to the horizon, one suddenly realizes how insignificant they are and how little we can change or control.

The view from the Balcony is as described of Moses going up the Mountain “High and Lifted Up,” “set apart” so as to observe and gain perspective. What we often forget, is that in both Jesus going up the Mountain to pray, and Moses having done so, as often as they ascend they also come down again, because this is where the circumstance of life is worked out.

It intrigues me, that each of the previous Sanctuaries of this congregation had balconies, and this one never has. The first Sanctuary that is now the Baptist Church had a very steep balcony that wraps all the way around the three sides of the Nave. While the Sanctuary which originally stood on the site of this Church had a balcony that covered well over half the congregation below. Often the balcony is a most coveted spot, on mornings like this, it is always warmer the higher we go. But more, in the balcony, you feel as though an observer, distanced and removed, you watch what takes place without obstruction but are separate from what occurs down below. Instead, the change that has taken place in this Church in recent years is that we have gone from having the Pulpit elevated, and the choir cloistered in a box, to having the Sanctuary open and without impediment. When the choirs are leading, that other believers would take their seat in the congregation; when the choir is not leading that they are part of the congregation. When the children come forward that each feel comfortable sliding, crawling, being present at the table.

In addition to “Those of Little Faith,” Matthew's other odd phrase in this passage is “MAMMON.” Mammon was not a pagan God, it is neither good or bad, mammon is a thing, mammon is possession, mammon is acquisitions and accomplishments, mammon is accumulated wealth. The point of the Bible not translating the word mammon into the words “money” “wealth” or “property” is that it is like our capitalizing the phrase “The Almighty Dollar” it is not the mammon that is the problem, but the fear of what we have accumulated being put at risk. Here we have a choice between God and an idol, between God and that which is not God. So which will you serve. Easy enough for us to claim, we will serve God, but how often we choose to work extra hours to take on additional projects so as to provide for our families, rather than simply giving them our time and our selves.

The Bible has an implicit assumption: This life is not enough. This life and our knowledge of it, our control, are limited, we need to live our lives for something beyond ourselves, believing we can make a difference. Whether it is the soldier going off to liberate and defend. Whether it is the students protesting for democracy. Whether it is creating a business to provide what is needed. Whether it is confession that God is God and there is no other. All these are choices of what we make most important in our lives. Would that we could get the view from the balcony, of our own lives, to question when we are choosing out of anxiety to accumulate, fear of ever having enough, and when we choose to let tomorrow worry about itself, and today's own troubles be enough for today.

I said learned again, because when I was in Seminary, the Presbytery determined that a pastor should work on their anxiety and defensiveness, by serving as a Chaplain in a Hospital. The difficulty with anxiety, that our fears cause us to work harder, to try to control more. In a Hospital there is such a constant level of crisis, no one individual can master it. I was a Chaplain not just at any hospital, but at the Presbyterian Hospital in Harlem. As a Chaplain, one of the requirements is that a clergy person be present at every death, or crisis, so much like a nurse or doctor we carried a pager. I hated having the pager, because it seemed whenever I touched the thing it went off. I began to believe it was my presence that was causing the crises, within a single month we had 25 calls on my shift alone, sometimes while present at one crisis, another would occur. Suddenly you recognize that you cannot control life, you can control very little, all you can do is to provide that reassuring presence in the midst of a world of anxiety. As described by Yeats in our prayer earlier,”There are no words to take another's pain away. But we can bear witness to one another's sorrows and to each other's dreams, with a gentle presence; and live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even more passionate and fierce life, because of the resolute quiet.”

We have learned too well the image of the Good Shepherd caring for the flock, and of Jesus standing at the door knocking. We wait for God to seek us out and find us. There are times for each of us, when we believe as Israel did, that God has forgotten us. Visiting with a 90 year old, whose spouse died several years before, whose friends have passed, whose children are in their late 60s and 70s, who has seen so many changes. The question invariably is: Has God Forgotten Me here? What am I to do? Why am I here? Listening to those in their 20s and 30s there is a similar chorus, “What difference can I make?” How can I ever pay off school loans and hope to have a home, to marry to have kids? Is the dream no longer possible? Isaiah describes that God has a long and diverse memory, rather than God Growing Tired of Us, or Forgetting Us, or making it impossible for us to succeed, God allows us to live by freedom of Human Will, and periodically God begins again as God did with the Infant in the bullrushes and Pharaoh's daughter; as God did with the Nomads wandering in the wilderness for forty years; as God did with those scattered after the destruction of Jerusalem; as God did with Jesus in the Garden and on the Cross. That God reminds us of who we are and Whose we are, and ReCommissions us for a purpose. The point of acting in faith is accepting the opportunity to be a sharp arrow, to be a lamp to the world.

The charge I love, that recurs in Matthew is that You are a Light to the World, The eye is the lamp of the Body, bringing light into darkness with what you witness and see. It is not our light, that we shine, but rather God's light and what we know is our own darkness. So what is it you know better than anyone else in the world? Where is there darkness that you could provide illumination, or at least a different perspective? How can we help create a right-ness with God?