Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Lord Christ, in the name of God, who is love.
[00:00:05] Amen.
[00:00:15] I haven't come to make things cozy.
[00:00:20] Jesus says, I've come to cut.
[00:00:25] To cut sharply. Between daughter and. And mother, between mother and daughter, between son and father.
[00:00:36] Between father and son.
[00:00:39] What a passage for a Father's Day sermon, huh?
[00:00:44] I mean, Sigmund Freud would have a field day with this one.
[00:00:50] My mother, when she was alive through my adolescence, used to often say to me, travis, it's a very delicate dance between a father and a son.
[00:01:04] And I imagine it's a very delicate dance between mothers and daughters as well. From time to time.
[00:01:12] Carl Jung, who was Freud's prime student, his chief protege before they broke over the question of spirituality, Young used to say that the mother's word is yes and the father's word is no.
[00:01:31] That the mother is meant to teach the child that the world is a safe place, that the child has access to love and nurture and support and can survive this scary new reality into which it's been thrust.
[00:01:50] And the father's job is to help the child figure out how to navigate this world without the support and presence of the mother. Can help the child get their bearings and develop a little bit of resilience, a little bit of resourcefulness once they leave the nuclear family home.
[00:02:12] And in that process of orienting ourselves and cultivating independence, of being mentored in this tutelage from our parents, sometimes tensions can arise.
[00:02:26] For example, between my dear father and I, who's in the congregation today.
[00:02:33] Tensions could arise from time to time through my adolescence, usually having to do with the length of my hair or the hour of my curfew, or the number of fish concerts that I was permitted to attend in any given season of life.
[00:02:51] And I could tell a story, as I've told to myself over the years at various points, about how those constraints limited me in different ways, of how hard I had it to forge my own identity and figure out how to really express myself with freedom and inner authority.
[00:03:12] And to tell that story would be to tell a very limited and. And impoverished version of the story.
[00:03:21] To tell a story of constraint and limitation would be to leave out stories about how my dad would take me and my brother around our neighborhood as little kids to explore vacant construction sites. I think the accurate word would be trespass.
[00:03:43] How we would go into these construction sites, these houses being built, and how those experiences gave me my earliest taste of adventure and a capacity for wonder.
[00:03:56] To tell a limited version of this story would be to neglect those Saturday mornings where my dad would get up at 3 or 4am and go out on long marathon training runs and then come back and give me a sweaty bear hug and provide for me an example of the joy in endurance sports and activities which I still live in to today.
[00:04:23] To tell a limited version of this story would be to neglect how my dad's a voracious reader and has given me such a deep passion for the life of the mind.
[00:04:33] But we do this right, especially in the west, especially since Freud, we tend to look at our lives and the parts of ourselves that we may want to neglect or disown, and we tend to blame it all on childhood.
[00:04:52] We look at the ways we were parented, the things they did or didn't do, the way we were securely attached or insecurely attached. And we say that their failures as parents helped us develop these negative, less than optimal coping mechanisms and those resulted in this bundle of neuroses you see before you. Right? It all goes back to childhood trauma.
[00:05:18] But there's another way of seeing things.
[00:05:21] There's another way of understanding our lives as not defined and shaped by trauma solely, but as oriented toward purpose.
[00:05:33] Recently I read this book by a Jungian analyst and writer named James Hillman called the Soul's Code. And in this book, James Hillman reaches back, reaches back in our theological and philosophical tradition, back all the way to Plato and other ancient Greeks who taught that we're not born into this world randomly, that we're not just some sort of combination of happenstance and genetics, that it isn't just randomness the way our stories start, but that our souls, our souls choose the exact incarnation into which they're meant to be born.
[00:06:16] They make a conscious choice to enter a certain historical context and place and family system, because that is the context in which they have the greater chance of evolving and learning and growing and fulfilling their purpose as a soul.
[00:06:37] He turns the Freudian trauma theory on its head and says we're not just a product of our early adverse childhood experience, but we all have a purpose. There's a design imprinted in each of our soul nature that we're meant to fulfill. And the parents we choose help us do that.
[00:07:02] Let me give you a sense of what this looks like in practice. Hillman calls this the acorn theory. He says that each acorn has the design of the tree, the oak tree it will flourish into one day embedded in, in itself as an acorn. And the same is true with each of our souls. And Hillman gives a couple examples.
[00:07:23] One example is the explorer, the Antarctic Explorer Ernest Shackleton.
[00:07:30] Shackleton was born in 1974 in Ireland and his parents raised him. Sorry, 1874. Susan, you caught that, didn't you? I saw it, I saw it. You're like, that's that math doesn't check out.
[00:07:43] I'm a poet, not a mathematician.
[00:07:46] 1874 in Ireland. His parents had the plan that he would become a doctor. That was his trajectory, it was set. But Ernest Shackleton's souls had a different purpose in mind. As a little boy he was fascinated by maps and in particular the blank edges at the end of the world on those maps. And by all accounts Ernest Shackleton was a little bit of a misfit. He was sort of aloof, a bit antisocial, didn't play well with others.
[00:08:18] And a Freudian interpretation would say, well look at it, his parents, his overbearing parents did something to mess him up that made him take on this maladaptive antisocial behavior. So no wonder that weirdo went into the merchant marines and spent his life wandering around the Antarctic just because he didn't know how to fix, fit into polite society.
[00:08:41] No, James Hillman would say, James Hillman's acorn theory would say, Ernest Shackleton was born to explore the Antarctic.
[00:08:52] That was his soul's purpose. And so his soul chose the exact appropriate context, the most conducive system that would allow him to practice and develop those skills of inner self reliance, of resilience, of independence that would make for a great life in exploration.
[00:09:17] Another example is the World War II General Omar Bradley. Bradley was born in 1894 in rural Missouri. His dad was a schoolteacher. And as a little boy, Omar would walk with his dad 17 miles to the schoolhouse and 17 miles back, shooting small game to help feed his mother and siblings. And if Freudians were going to psychoanalyze this, they'd be like, oh, I mean, look at the trauma this kid was subjected to. His father forced him to take these 34 mile death marches every day. No wonder he was maladapted and when he grew up oriented his life towards war.
[00:10:01] No, James Hillman would say that Omar Bradley was born to combat fascism.
[00:10:11] And Omar Bradley was born to liberate occupied parts of Europe from the threat of Nazism. And so the soul chose a context so that when it was young, when it was developing, it would be able to rehearse those day long marches that through Northern Africa and through the European theater.
[00:10:38] How do we tell our stories?
[00:10:41] Are we the product of trauma and circumstance and randomness? Are we victims to unfairness and just the purposelessness of life?
[00:10:55] Or do we all have a purpose embedded deep down in our souls, in that deepest, most real, oldest, most ancient part of ourselves? And do we choose the parents and the circumstances that will help that tree flourish into what it's meant to be?
[00:11:18] How we see our stories and how we see our histories connects with how we see life in general, how we see existence as human creatures.
[00:11:30] Do we believe that the world is a cold, dark place, that this is all randomness and entropy, and that the ecosystems around us in which we find ourselves are rife with competition and envy, red and tooth and claw?
[00:11:49] Or do we believe that there's a goodness to creation, a purposefulness to life, that it's oriented and arcing toward goodness and love and beauty? And that we're here together, however confusedly, however imperfectly, trying to help one another along on that journey?
[00:12:15] That question brings me finally to Jesus.
[00:12:21] In this passage we're given from Matthew's Gospel, Jesus gives his disciples, his followers, a set of instructions.
[00:12:30] This chapter, Matthew 10, is also often referred to as scholars, as a missionary discourse, because Jesus is sending his followers out to fulfill their purpose to be healers, to heal the sick, to bring comfort to those who are discouraged, to bring comfort to the afflicted, to bring people into this vision of more love and liberation for all people. And Jesus gives them a conflicting set of instructions. But one thing he tells them is super clear. It's crystal clear.
[00:13:06] He says, this will not be easy.
[00:13:09] The path will not always be certain.
[00:13:13] You will go into this world following your purpose, trying to let your acorns flourish into these large oak trees. But you will have trouble. The world will not understand what you're about, and you will be met with resistance.
[00:13:30] But.
[00:13:32] And yet with Jesus, there's always an and. Yet.
[00:13:36] He says, you will not be alone, that God's love accompanies you and will sustain you and guide you in this work.
[00:13:46] And what I love about Jesus, I mean, he's such a brilliant poet. He always draws his imagery in teaching context from the world that would have been very familiar to his hearers. And did you hear that little image? It's a little quirky image he pulls up in the gospel text. He sort of compares his disciples to canaries.
[00:14:11] Canaries. These little songbirds.
[00:14:13] That's what we get in this translation, canaries. Some of you might be more familiar with other translations when it says our lives are more than many sparrows.
[00:14:23] Sparrows, canaries. What do we make of them? Well, in the ancient world, sparrows and canaries were plentiful. They were in the world, in fields all around the disciples, but also you could find them at markets.
[00:14:39] Canaries and sparrows were some of the least expensive sources of animal protein that one could access.
[00:14:49] The price for a couple sparrows or a couple canaries was about a tenth of a day's wages. So like 80 cents or a dollar. So even the poor, even those with very limited financial resources, could afford to buy a canary.
[00:15:05] And so because they were so cheap and so readily available in these hears, these disciples ears, and in their minds they would have thought, well, gosh, what are sparrows? What are canaries? I mean, they're kind of worthless. When a merchant sold you four canaries, they might just throw a fifth one in for free.
[00:15:22] And so the point Jesus makes here is that God knows and cares for every single canary, every single sparrow, even the creatures of this world, who we might assume serve no purpose or have no worth, are absolutely beloved to God.
[00:15:50] And how much more precious are all of you than a bunch of sparrows?
[00:15:57] He extends the thrust of his argument and goes on to say, not only does God love you way more than he loves these birds, and he loves them a ton. But he says, you know how much he loves you, Scott? You know how much he loves you, Emmy? You know how much he loves you, Meredith. Bob, every single one of your hairs is numbered to God.
[00:16:22] God knows how many hairs are on your head, each of you. I know, Scott, I know. I was like setting us up for something there.
[00:16:32] Do you know how many hairs you have on your head in your prime?
[00:16:37] Do you know how many hairs a human head has? Does anyone know?
[00:16:43] About 100,000.
[00:16:46] A single human head has about 100,000. Blondes have a couple more.
[00:16:51] Blondes have about 150,000 more. Brunette and dark haired individuals have a couple less. About 80,000. We don't know the exact number, but I don't think this is just hyperbole. I think Jesus is saying that God, the source of all wisdom, all knowing, all goodness, all beauty, knows exactly how many hairs are on our heads because each one of us was one of God's beloved children.
[00:17:19] And God wants to see each and every one of us flourish into exactly what we're meant to be.
[00:17:30] And it's not always easy all.
[00:17:34] You know, sometimes, I mean, I've got this like big bleeding sorrowful poet's empath's heart and sometimes I look around and. And I just like marvel at how darn heroic we all are.
[00:17:53] How much each and every one of US carries every single day our private challenges and anxieties and griefs. I look at the courage that it takes for us just to put pants on and get out the door and meet our obligations and commitments, and it makes me want to weep.
[00:18:22] And the beautiful thing about this community, and about any church community, is that we're not in it alone.
[00:18:32] We're here with one another, supporting each other as we do this perplexing community, confounding work of trying to figure out what is our purpose, what does this acorn want to flourish into? And we come alongside one another, providing support and comfort and humor. We give each other occasions to practice patience and maybe a little generosity. And a little by little, each and every day, this oak tree grows larger, grows into something miraculous that provides shade for people to play beneath and space for birds to lodge in the branches.
[00:19:20] There's this line I love from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who's about my favorite writer there is, and he says that this work of figuring out our purpose has to do with enlarging our imagination, expanding our vision. He says that we have to learn to accept our actual circumstances and companions, however odious, as mystic officials to whom the universe has delegated her whole pleasure for us.
[00:19:56] Translation Everyone is our teacher.
[00:20:01] Everything is our teacher.
[00:20:03] Our parents, our friends, our acquaintances, those we encounter randomly. We're all meant to teach one another something.
[00:20:14] Our souls, on some level, chose to be here. And we're figuring it all out together.
[00:20:24] There's another quote, this is the second to the last one of the sermon that often gets attributed to Plato, but it's actually from the philosopher Ian Maclaren. And the quote is be kind, for everyone is fighting a great battle.
[00:20:40] And it's so true. We're all here wading through it as best we can. And I think the invitation for us, as we seek to let our hearts not just be broken by life or numbed or calcified, but broken open, is to find ways to not just not just consider that we're all fighting a great battle, but to celebrate one another as we take on the challenges life has given us.
[00:21:09] And I want to share a poem with you as I move to close today. It's a poem that I think kind of draws a lot of these themes together and tells the story of a boy in childhood trying to figure out his relationship with his dad. The poem's called those Winter Sundays, and it's by the American poet Robert Hayden.
[00:21:33] Robert Hayden was born in 1914 in Detroit. And the story the poem tells is this young boy wakes up on a Sunday morning and hears his father making a fire to drive the cold from the house and getting his family's clothes ready for church that morning.
[00:21:54] Here's the poem.
[00:21:56] Those winter Sundays, Sundays too, my father got up early and put his clothes on. And the blue black cold then, with hands cracked that ached from labor in the weekday weather, made banked fires blaze.
[00:22:20] No one ever thanked him.
[00:22:23] I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
[00:22:28] When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise, dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, speaking indifferently to him who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well.
[00:22:47] What did I know?
[00:22:50] What did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?
[00:23:01] What do we know, y'? All?
[00:23:04] What do we know of the heaviness each one of us carries?
[00:23:11] What do we know about how difficult life has been?
[00:23:17] What do we know of the difficulty our parents had in raising us?
[00:23:22] And what do we know about those loving, austere, lonely offices all of us have kept in trying to love one another a little bit more fully?
[00:23:35] I think one of the most beautiful things we could do this summer, this season of come out and play as we try to live into a little more lightness as a congregation, is just to acknowledge how heroic one another are.
[00:23:52] To me in that poem, the most heartbreaking, but also the most beautiful line is, no one ever thanked him.
[00:24:04] So maybe we practice thanking one another.
[00:24:08] Maybe we practice celebrating one another.
[00:24:11] And this Sunday, this Father's Day, because I have my dad with me here in the congregation, I want to say thank you, dad.
[00:24:28] Thank you for loving me.
[00:24:31] Thank you for mentoring me, for teaching me.
[00:24:35] Thank you for showing me how to navigate the world without my mom's support.
[00:24:41] Thank you for allowing me to stay up as late as I wanted to on a Saturday and also forcing me to come to church on a Sunday morning.
[00:24:50] And thank you, especially this last 13 years, for being not just dad, but mom to me as well.
[00:24:57] I love you. Happy Father's Day.
[00:25:00] Amen.
