Summary
The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry
“Finding Your Righteousness”
Scripture Reference: Matthew 5.17-20
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. “
The greatest challenge is to not act.
You want to leave; you need to wait.
You need to give; but you must keep.
We are people who want to go,
to keep going,
and then go even farther.
You tell yourself, “don’t speak
remain silent in the meeting;”
and you walk away lamenting.
To bring something to an end
as in stopping, ceasing
without burning everything down.
We cringe even at “enough.”
Enough for the day,
enough for now . . . we can’t
It is as if we must keep moving,
searching for lost gold
in dark corners of ambition.
When people go on vacation,
they get sick, get weird, get drunk
simply because they can’t stop
To stop, to pause, to wait:
these are not our strong suits;
there are no idols for these
We careen and pinball
from task and distraction,
from duty to binge watching.
Imagine a day where
you did nothing at all,
nothing but be still.
We would have to be seriously ill
to sit still for more than a moment.
We lack the power not to act.
This is not anecdotal ramblings of a quasi-Buddhist. It is true, I have worked very hard to gain some ground here, to gain the strength to wait without anxiety, to listen without waiting to speak, to not decide before the decision speaks for itself. I have been working on this for quite some time and it is very, very difficult.
If given a free afternoon, I start a project. If given a free hour, I pick up a book. Saturday morning, while the rest are still sleeping, do I sit in silence? No. I walk the dogs, go jogging, get bagels, and read the paper with a nice pot of coffee. No time to waste. Day light is burning.
I get energy from getting things done. The list. I love working the list. Called this person . . . check. Wrote the email . . . check. Met with Rabbi Rosin for breakfast . . . check. I have never written on my list “sit on park bench and listen to birds sing.” I love this. One of my most favorite things to do is bird watching with my ears, seeing if I can find them with my ears before my eyes. But I do this as I walk the cemetery, as I walk the dogs, as I walk to the train. I am listening as I go. Sometimes I stop because I spy a woodpecker or a cedar wax wing. But not for long. Once I see the bird, I start going again.
Again, this insight is not just my own Zen confessions. This is actual science. Behavioral scientists have studied the energy it takes to not act and it is incredible. We need a lot of energy, a deep well of energy, to not act.
One famous study is when they have people watch very emotional movies. Subjects are put into a viewing room and shown some tear jerking, sob story of devastation and suffering. And some subjects are told, “enjoy the show.” Others are told, “don’t cry; don’t express emotions.” The two groups are studied afterward for energy levels. The people who were told to “enjoy” exhibit a consistent level of energy reserve. The people who were told “don’t cry” are wiped out. They were told to not act.
Telling yourself to not cry, do not emote, don’t give into the salty discharge: this is exhausting. We know this is true. Some places give us energy; somethings take it. We may not realize how much energy it takes to do nothing, but we are learning.
Sit with someone you enjoy, someone with whom you have an easy rapport and a common view, sit with the person for hours and at the end of the day you are full of energy and ready to enjoy the evening. Sit with someone you detest, someone with whom you have no rapport where all conversation is stilted and awkward. “Pulling teeth” comes to mind. Spend an hour with this person all the while saying, “don’t make it worse; don’t speak; don’t take the bait” and you need a glass a wine and a comfortable chair and someone who can listen to your tale of woe. Your woe: you are exhausted.
I find all of these studies fascinating. The ones that always sticks with me though are the studies they have done analyzing the human statues. People who cover themselves in silver paint; stand motionless in a park; and, people give money for their work. And it turns out, it is work. Highly accomplished folks can do this for maybe three hours a day. At the end of these three hours they are wiped, toast, completely exhausted. Why? For three hours they said over and over and over again, “don’t move; don’t move; don’t move.” They were doing the hardest thing; they were not acting.
As our self-quarantines and social distance and work from home reality is now nearing a week, this is my concern: the challenge of doing nothing. We are not geared for this, ready for this, accustomed to this. We are social much more than we realize; we need distraction and routine and even frustrations of disruption. But what do you do when you realize you must now wait, breathe, resist panic and fear, be calm in the midst of solitude? My concern is that you are gonna get a little nutty. Doing nothing, waiting, is the hardest thing.
Simone Weil wrote a famous essay about this many years ago. The essay is called,
“Waiting for God.” Weil goes over and over how we are restless and driven and searching creatures and then we come face to face with the reality of faith, we must wait for God.
George Herbert wrote a famous poem about this called “The Pulley” where he described our creation and the conversation of the Trinity as we were being finished. The conclusion was to give the human every blessing but rest, “keep them in repining restlessness,” he wrote so they would worship God and not creation.
Augustine of Hippo, the fourth century theologian, offered this confession, my restless heart will not rest until it rests in thee. I think Warren Zevon was the most succinct: I’ll sleep when I am dead.
I like Warren Zevon, but I am not sure he is our best guide right now. Simone Weil is a bit more germane. For we need to find, not only the strength to cool our jets, we need to find the power that comes from rest, from waiting. This is what Weil found and it is the key to our reading from the Sermon on the Mount today.
Our reading today is unique. It is the only moment in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus talks about himself in terms of his action; this is his only teaching about his ministry and purpose. As such it is a teaching about what God is doing, or how God is acting in Jesus to bring what he calls the fulfillment of all righteousness. I have come not to change the law, but to fulfill the law Jesus says.
I want to be honest with you here. This is a very challenging passage and it is one of the most important teachings of Jesus. I considered laying aside the discipline of lectio continua today because it takes a lot of work to unpack this and see it in our lives. And now may not be a time of intellectual dexterity. When there is an emergency, people are not ready for theological conundrums.
But here is the deal. At the heart of our passage today is a way of finding power, strength; a way of gaining power in very stressful times. So if we take a stab at this, we may just find a blessing to help us live a very unknown week of not acting.
The good news for me is that I don’t need to create or conjure the truth of Jesus’ righteousness. Usually with this teaching I would need to create images of control. Religion, zealotry, orthodoxy: these are the paths of control that our righteousness must go beyond. Jesus will live this out in his life and he calls us to do the same. Your righteousness must exceed the scribe and the Pharisees.
What this means is that what is good and true and beautiful must be born and nurtured of freedom, not control. We must find the truth without trying to control the truth; we must love what is beautiful without trying to define it for others; we must seek to do justice without become tyrannical or controlling. The thing is we have all just been thrown into this. Being in control of life has taken on a very new and challenging reality.
Usually, in a sermon on the fulfillment of righteousness I would talk about raising children. You are blessed with a child. A son or daughter is born and you experience, as most parents do, a profound wonder. You know this creature is a gift, a creation of God’s hand, and you are in awe. You revel and rejoice that something like this would happen. In the reveling, there is a clear sense of precariousness. This gift is precious cargo in a dangerous world. As a parent you are vigilant and ready to protect and nurture. But some part of you always knows this is God’s child entrusted to you. All goodness hinges upon what God does, and we trust this.
And then, the child grows up and moves on, leaves the nest, begins a life. You are still in awe, still in wonder, still recognizing that God is in charge and upon God’s mercy all life hinges. We still trust that we must ever wait for God. But now, we must wait and not act. Where before we decided, now we must wait for the child to decide. Before we told him, told her what to do, now we must wait to be asked for advice. Before we set the boundary, now we pray good boundaries will be made.
Today, such a metaphor is all too clear. Together we just moved from a sense of control to a demand for trust. Today we are clear how little control we have. We are all feeling the weight of not being in control. The hard shift from raising a child to loving someone who is mature is neither easy nor without stops and starts. It is a long question of letting go of control and finding strength in freedom, in trust. As a parent of a young child we could make things right, as a parent of an adult we have to wait for things to be right. This is a big change.
In some ways, this just happened to all of our lives. The control, the momentum, the direction, the ability to determine, however true or illusory, was just cast aside. When will it come back? Will this be a dip in the road or a crevasse? Right now all we can do is wait and trust.
Again, under non-emergency conditions, this is a path to pick up, to step into. For a lot of folks this shift from control to trust was not gradual, but immediate. Its jobs and finances and relationships and expectations. For our youth to be moving toward such looming moments of high hope and expectation and be told, “this is a pause; we don’t know” is devastating.
Today is not normal.
The ability to not act is a skill requiring great effort, great patience, and honesty. To find the place beyond control and unto freedom is a long path. And so the message today is simple. Look to each other right now and your neighbor with the greatest compassion. Look to the teen not as restless, but as struggling with the greatest of life’s challenges coming too fast, all at once. Remember the parent and the need to gain trust and reach out to the them. Talk to people at the end of life about control, you may find some wisdom about trust.
Mostly, though, as you are trying to breathe and wait and trust and find the Zen of not acting, give yourself a break. Realize this is the hardest of challenges. This is a crash course in trust and it will exhaust you. So before you “go nutty” ask God for the power to be. Pray for the aversion of disaster, the recovery of the economy, the safety of the health officials, and the well-being of each other. All good prayers. But add to the list, give me the strength to trust in you, to trust freedom. Give me the strength to do the hardest thing, to wait for you. Amen.
Bible References
- Matthew 5:17 - 20