A Day For Hope
Written by Gary E. Smith Sunday, 07 March 2010 00:00
Garret Keizer speaks of his installation as Lay Vicar of Christ Episcopal Church in Island Pond, Vermont, and Garrett says he had sweaty palms that day – and more. He said he was making a promise to a congregation that day, not unlike the same promises two people make to each other at a wedding, “to love, to honor, and to cherish,” as long as they both shall live. He said the promise he was making to the congregation that day was not unlike the same promises parents make at a baptism or a dedication, to love that child no matter what. He thinks all these promises are a “blind hope, total faith,” kind of promise. After all, who knows how life unfolds – to partner with somebody for a lifetime, after all; to love this child, even when they’re fourteen; to stay with a congregation, in Garrett’s case, even when you’re disappointed, disgruntled, and discouraged, minister and congregation alike.
And in the metaphor I love, he says in all these cases, and more, it’s like being, in his words, “sent out to sea in a frail little craft with a few provisions and a few stars to guide us.” And then he tells us this is more than a metaphor. “Irish monks in the Dark Ages,” he says, “would sometimes be set adrift, literally, in just this way, hoping to land somewhere as missionaries, but realizing they might just as well drown. They were only a little braver than the average bride and groom. Their mission was only a little more desperate than that of a conscientious parent. They looked only a little more precarious bobbing over the horizon than I did rising from my solemn prayer that day.”
And I would add: you and I too find ourselves in that little boat some days, not all the time, not always in relation to marriage or parenting or being ordained as a minister. It’s simply true that life, either through a slowly dawning realization or by a bolt out of the blue, puts us out on that precarious little boat from time to time in the span of our lifetime, bobbing out toward the horizon, hoping with all our hearts that we will find land again. This is a sermon about that kind of hope, the “hoping with all our hearts” kind of hope, the “color green” kind of hope, as in “am I seeing the beginning, the sprouts of bulbs planted near my house?”
It’s Thoreau who said, “the earth sends forth an inward heat to greet the returning sun; not yellow but green is the color of its flame; - the symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer.” And our word “green” has its root in the word “grass” and so it is that Henry traces the meaning of grass itself with all its greenness through the seasons, “checked by the frost,” he says, but “pushing on again… fresh life below… the herds drinking at this green stream… the mower finding its winter supply. So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.” And I am remembering you and me and that “frail little craft with a few provisions and a few stars to guide us.” We are here with spring around the corner - could this be the dry land we seek? The calendar says it’s so, the flowers poking through say it’s so, today’s warmth says it’s so, the birds outside my window in the morning say it is so.
“Why, it was wonderful!” writes Archibald MacLeish,
“Why, all at once there were leaves,
Leaves at the end of a dry stick, small, alive
Leaves out of wood. It was wonderful, You can’t imagine.
They came back by the wood path
And the earth loosened, the earth relaxed, there were flowers
Out of the earth! Think of it! And oak-trees
Oozing new green at the tip of them and flowers
Squeezed out of clay, soft flowers, limp
Stalks flowering. Well, it was a dream,
It happened so quickly, all of a sudden it happened –”
This is a sermon about being set adrift, this is a sermon about hoping against hope for dry land, this is a sermon about leaves at the end of a dry stick, this is a sermon about a Transcendentalist Easter, one full month before the more formal observance; by “transcendentalist” I mean what Thoreau lifts up to be the Easter beneath his feet. So, to this end, what does this color and this concept of “green” stand for? I have, of course, three points: green as resurrection, green as freshness, green as memory.
Green as resurrection, resurrection with a small “r” I mean today, and I will try not to dodge the capital “R” resurrection in early April. But for now, I do mean something like hope, as in feeling as dead as a dry stick, and “all at once there were leaves… leaves out of wood… It was wonderful, you can’t imagine… Think of it… It was like a dream, it happened so quickly.” And when I say “dead as a dry stick,” I mean this metaphorically, that some in this room might feel dead, might feel in between seasons, might feel “not yet.”
And not only a dry stick, but dryness itself. I love this poem by Denise Levertov:
“Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
To solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen
The fountain springing out of the rock wall and you drinking there…
That fountain is there among its scalloped
Green and gray stones,
It is still there and always there
With its quiet song and strange power
To spring in us,
Up and out through the rock.”
In the silence of our meditations here, I know there are prayers for life again. “Morning has broken, like the first morning,” we sing, which is to say, can we start again, is the slate clean, is this the new first morning of our lives? Will the fountain and will the water be there? There is something coming to life again, and, dear God, can it be me?
So, if this meaning of green has to do with hope, with resurrection, and with the future, green can also mean something like freshness. This is the new green leaf, “the limp stalk flowering,” but it is more than that. It is whatever it means for us to be alive, fully alive, lush, growing, being fully alive now in this moment. Green means looking into the future, but it also means showing signs of life in the here and in the now. And while I mean green as freshness, green as aliveness, for us and our own odysseys and our own living, breathing selves in the fight against all that might deaden us, I must say a word today about who we are collectively as a congregation.
The second meaning I have put on the word “green” has a collective meaning, now as the sermon moves from “me” to “we”. It is time for a word from our sponsor, a commercial break. Green is the color of money, and we want yours. [Oh, no, Gary. Too direct! Let me try that again.]
For those of you who only came inside after driving by here time and again, until you came in, we were nothing more to you than a dead and dry stick, dead and dry white clapboards actually. But when you entered in and brought your tears to this place, brought your laughter to this place, brought your joys and your pain to this place, dedicated your children in this place, blessed your graduating senior in this place, married your spouse in this place, memorialized a loved one in this place, witnessed to the world’s needs from this place, heard music in this place, told your own story in this place, until you did these things and more, it was a dead and a dry place.
You make this place green. You make this place alive. We do this together. We bring leaves to the end of the dry stick. We bring water to the fountain. We are “the woman of that place” in the poem, “waiting to see we drank our fill and were refreshed.” Our history and our past accomplishments in some sense mean nothing. They are news of another season, leaves dropping and blowing away, the skeleton of what we were. But enter in, any day of the week, and “all at once there [are] leaves, leaves at the end of a dry stick… small, alive. It [is] wonderful. You can’t imagine.” Green is freshness.
The winds of love blow through here. The wind is an image of being alive: bringing freshness to the air, blowing through our towns, through our schools, through our homes. Airing out, opening windows, and hanging things outside: spring-cleaning. This is green as freshness. Our bodies and souls need the same freshness, letting the wind blow through us, revitalizing us, and making us new and alive again. This is why we hear talk of money today: we need it for who we are in the present and what we make possible by our being together.
Green as resurrection, our future, green as freshness, our present, and finally, green as memory, our past: this is not the usual cycle; future to present to past, but this is the kind of cycle that speaks of vision – the future is coming toward us. We live “as if.” Our vision for our own selves and for this community is rooted in our past. Holding on to what has been, emboldened by who we are, we look ahead with hope. We do this over and over again. Are we satisfied with who we are and the work we are doing? Where is the place, Buechner asks, “where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet?” Who have we been so that we can understand what we might yet be?
Green as memory: honoring the past, seeing the life back there; back before the stick was dry, it had been green before, again and again, and so it is with us, as individuals and as an institution. How is it that we bring honor to what we have been, seeing the greenness of our past, seeing the possibilities of what we might yet be. Do you remember I’ve said my colleague Roy Phillips believed his task as a preacher is to put his congregation to sleep every Sunday. “Why should we waste dreaming for when we’re flat in bed?” he said. He wanted his congregation to dream, and I want the same for you. In our dreams we take this moment and that, this person and that, and we put them together in new ways, we see new things, we dream new dreams. We remember today the power of our memories and for where they might lead us.
I have spoken of the impending springtime and of you, you there waiting as a dry stick for hope, waiting for new green, for resurrection, for freshness, for piecing your memories together into new dreams. And I have spoken, too, of First Parish, where you are sitting now, but more than you and more than just this moment, but for all of the moments that make this place alive: who we have been, who we are, who we want to be. This depends on all of us. Imagine the clapboards outside, ready to sprout new green. Why, it was wonderful. You can’t imagine! Think of it!
The winter is ending. There will be storms. We New Englanders know this. But it is coming spring, and I wish for you, each one of you, a season of hope, and I wish for us, all of us together, a season filled with green, leaves tipped with green, fountains filled with water, and dreams fulfilled with possibilities.