Recalculating!
- Details
- Created on Sunday, 17 October 2010 01:00
- Written by Gary E. Smith
{player 2010-10-17-9am-sermon.mp3}
Originally delivered September 9, 2007
Early on in the Hebrew Bible, there in the Books of Exodus and Numbers, there in the stories that were told and retold to these people of faith for generations, there we find the story of Moses and the people of Israel, once in their beloved Zion, caught in times of war and invasion, corruption and dirty-dealing, then defeated, taken prisoner, exiled in Egypt, forced to leave Egypt, trying to return, wandering in the wilderness, whining, complaining, discouraged, depressed, divided, they are a sorry lot.
Moses, herding cats, we would say now, serving as intermediary between God and the people, rushing up and down the mountain, one third of the triangle in this very dysfunctional family, “tell God we’re hungry,” “tell them to stop complaining,” “tell God we’ve had no meat,” “tell them I’ll give them meat; I’ll give them meat until it comes out their noses!” “Oh, yeah!” “Oh, yeah!” And there’s Moses, going up the mountain, coming down the mountain; he’s had it. They’re lost; they’re caught between the home of their past and the home of their future. The land they want becomes better and better in the telling and retelling: the land of milk and honey, they say. Peace and tranquility, they say. Plenty to eat, manna from heaven, the whole deal, they say.
But they’re not there yet, this we know. They are wandering, wandering for forty years, we’re told. Remember in the Hebrew Bible, we’re never sure about the numbers. People live to be nine hundred years old. Sarah has a baby when she’s very old; her husband was one hundred, the writers tell us. So maybe it was forty years the people wandered, but probably it was meant to mean “a very long time.” They were lost, they were wandering, they were fighting, they were challenging the leadership, and they were breaking into camps. That’s what I want you to appreciate. They were miserable. Moses was miserable. God was miserable.
And then it occurred to me. What if Moses had had a GPS, a global positioning device, just like the one Eliz bought me for my birthday some years ago, one of my best presents ever. This is the little box I put on my dashboard, type in the address where I want to go, and, through the mystery of satellites and technology, lights flash, my route is laid out for me, and a disembodied voice tells me, “turn left, turn right, go straight.” It tells me how long the trip will take, what time I’ll get there, how fast I’m traveling.
Before Eliz bought me my own GPS, we traveled that April out to northern California with my brother and his wife. He had a GPS and he brought it with him. We picked them up in a rental car at their hotel in downtown San Francisco, he put the GPS on the dash and it told us how to get out of the city. I would have wandered those streets without it, let me tell you, the traffic was heavy, some streets were one way, the hills were steep, the signs were small, I would have been getting lost, and there would have been some tiny little disagreement in the car, back seat and front, about how best to get back on the highway. We would have been getting hungry, someone would have had to find a rest room, someone would have asked, “how many more miles?” you know the scene. When we were first married, traveling between Maine and Tennessee to school, Eliz and I would ALWAYS get lost in Hartford, and I would get angry she hadn’t read the map, and she was angry I missed the turn.
But in San Francisco, we had the GPS, and we made all the correct turns and were on the Pacific Coast Highway in no time at all. My brother’s GPS had a woman’s voice telling us what to do, and he had named her Darla. So Darla became the fifth person in the car and we treated her as one of us, thanking her for her directions, impatient with her when she led us off onto side roads she had decided would save us time. Over near Yosemite, she led us up over a mountain somewhere near the south gate of the park, a seasonal road, we learned much too late, first gravel, then dirt, then deep ruts, then a closed gate. Darla was in the doghouse for awhile, but the next morning, we started out fresh.
When we got home, Eliz ordered me one, and I called her Darla, too. It was the same voice, and I enjoyed her company. Unfortunately a year later, Darla was kidnapped, taken out of our unlocked car one night, and no ransom was ever demanded. Now we have Dora, named for Dora the Explorer, my granddaughter’s favorite. We’ve taken Dora on other trips around the country to use in rental cars. We use her in Maine every summer. For the most part, she’s been very helpful. But not always. And that’s where this sermon began. When you miss the turn she’s asked you to take, either by mistake or on purpose, the screen on the GPS blinks, and Darla would say one word: “Recalculating!” And, in less than a minute, she had found a new route, usually consisting of turning around at the next opportunity and going back. And usually I do what she says.
But sometimes I just want to go a different way. We took Darla with us to Nashville, Tennessee one year and drove out into the country. Coming back, I did not want to go on the interstate. I knew the road I wanted. We had lived in Nashville. We were staying in a hotel downtown and I could see the city skyline clearly. But Darla wanted us on the interstate, faster, more direct, and it was always just to our left. At every stoplight, she would say something like, “in 300 yards, turn left on 16th Street,” and I would sail by, and she would say, “recalculating!” and I would ignore the next set of directions, and she would say it again. Now one thing I noticed, and I could be imagining this, but I thought each successive time she had to plan a new route, the way she said “recalculating” became just a teeny bit more hostile. She developed a kind of attitude.
I always have my eyes open for a possible sermon. When she kept saying, “recalculating,” I knew I had something. The GPS is a metaphor of faith. The people of Israel, wandering in the wilderness. First Parish. You and me. There’s a sermon here, I thought then, and I hope you are thinking now.
Let’s start with you and me. It’s mid-October. Some have sent their young person off to college or a job. Some have lost a job or begun a job. Some have learned of a new medical diagnosis. Some are in treatment. Some have bad news. Some here have fallen in love. Some here have fallen out of love. Some have moved. Some are moving. Some have lost. Some have gained. There’s been a birth. There’s been a death. Life changes every day. We never know. We solve one thing and another thing comes right along.
Imagine a GPS for this. Imagine we can type onto the screen our next destination. Call it our hopes. Call it our prayers. Call it our plan. It can be big or small. I get the job. I buy the house. I make a friend. I pass the test. I fall in love. The cancer goes into remission. We work it out. The dog comes home. I don’t need a new roof. My daughter gets her driver’s license. I win the lottery. Type in anything, the prayer of a lifetime, the indulgence of a moment. Type it in. Darla repeats it to you, and you confirm. The lights flash, and she tells you the first step. She’ll tell you the whole route if you ask. Usually she just says the first step. And she tells you how long it will take.
But you miss a turn. You never saw it. Maybe there’s a detour Darla never knew. Maybe there’s a mountain road. Maybe there’s a closed gate. Maybe a bridge is out. So, what now? The screen blinks, and Darla says, “recalculating!” To you, her voice is comforting. She’s patient today. She’s consistent. She always says the same thing. She finds you a new route. Sometimes she says, “return to the marked route.” I like that one. She doesn’t know where you are exactly. But she can show you the marked route which is just there. Go back there, she says, and we’ll work out a new route.
And so it goes. It’s one stop at a time. Sometimes we pull off at a rest stop. Sometimes we change where we’re going. Sometimes the interstate is too much, too many trucks, too fast. We want a back road. Darla can do that. She just needs the destination. I’ve tried this in Maine, with Eliz. Darla remembers I have more than one route and she walks me through it, again and again.
“Recalculating,” she says to me, and I thank her – most of the time. But I said this sermon was about First Parish, too. The metaphor stretches. It’s yet another transition year again, a big one. Who knows what the year will bring? We know the litany of possibilities for us as individuals and families and loved ones and this country and this world. But what of First Parish itself? Now nearly 375 years as a gathered community, good times and bad. What is our destination this year? Ministerial decisions, strong finances, closer community, more connections, transcendent music, inspiration everywhere, children growing, the fainthearted strengthened, the weak supported, the suffering helped, all beings honored.
These are big things, large expectations. We’ll miss a turn. Budgets rewritten. New staff here. This family moves. We’ll take the dead-end street. “Recalculating,” Darla will say. Our search for ministerial leadership, Darla’s voice will be there, over and over, “recalculating,” she will say. New models of ministry. “Recalculating.” Tight budgets. Recalculating. Maybe not everybody happy. People in the wilderness. What’s the direction? Some whining from there. Some anger there. Recalculating. Darla will remind us. Keep the destination in mind. We’ll take it, step by step. Return to the marked route, she will say. Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating.
“This is what life does,” the poet Eleanor Lerman says. “It lets you walk up to the store… It lets you choose the way you have your eggs… lets you take the dog for a walk… lets you have pie for a late night dessert… It lets you remember the years… lets you go home to think about all this… This is life’s way of letting you know that you are lucky… because you stopped when you should have and started again.” This has been a sermon about life, the route it takes, the unexpected turns, the dirt roads, the turning around, the detours, the open highway, the stopping and starting again.
“Recalculating,” Darla and now Dora says, and, if I have let her rest overnight with my cap over her, keeping her warm, she sounds almost happy the next day, excited to be out on the road with me once again.