The Accent Of Heaven
Sermon
From Upside Down To Rightside Up
Cycle C Sermons for Lent and Easter Based on the Gospel Lessons
She opened our eyes to the way that civilizations unfold and develop. Cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead became the talk of society with her study, Coming of Age in Samoa. For decades she toured the world, explaining what she had observed as children were born, how they were raised, what families and groups did to reinforce certain behaviors, what happened to non-conformists, what marriage looked like, and how people aged and died.
When Ms. Mead was speaking at a university, one student asked her what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in any given culture. This was a good question, with a number of different possible responses. Was cultivation of nutritious plants the first sign of civilization? How about the domestication of some species of animals? Maybe it was the creation of cooking or storage pots? Perhaps it was the crafting of spears, fishing tools, and arrowheads?
But Ms. Mead’s answer surprised everyone. She said that the first sign of civilization was represented, in her mind, by a healed femur.
A healed femur? Of course, most immediately wondered what a femur was. The femur is the human thighbone, the main body support of the leg.
But why was this a sign of civilization? At the look of uncertain stares, Ms. Mead went on to explain.
The law of the jungle, she said, is this: “You fall, you die!” If a large predatory animal chases you, only running, jumping or climbing might save you. But if you step into a hole and fall and break your femur, you cannot get up or run or climb to safety. If you fight an enemy and your femur is broken, you cannot crawl away to find water or food. In the jungle before civilization, broken femurs never get healed. Instead, those who break that bone die quickly. On their own, no one ever survives a broken leg long enough to have the bone heal.
For that reason, said Ms. Mead, when we uncover a human skeleton and find a healed femur, we know that someone was there to care about this person. What this person could not do on her own, on his own, someone else did for them. Someone chased away the charging beasts. Someone fought off the predator and the enemy. Some kept watch through the night hours, providing safety. Someone foraged for berries and fruit enough to feed two people. Someone got water and brought it to the person who fell. Someone, at great expense to her own life, dragged this crippled fellow to a place of safety, lit a fire, kept watch, brought food, and stood guard for weeks, while the other healed.
“This is the first sign of civilization,” said Ms. Mead. There was not a dry eye in the auditorium. Everyone knew she was right.
True civility, genuine community, honest care, and love are all deeply related. This is why Jesus spoke “a new command” to his disciples on the eve of his death. John gave us the story of Jesus’ life and ministry as a tale of re-creation. Remember? He started out the gospel mimicking Genesis 1: “In the beginning…” He talked about the original creation, and how it began to die because of sin. He told us that God decided to re-create this world without destroying humankind. John pointed to Jesus as the living and creative word, from the Genesis account of beginnings, who now entered human society in the middle of time as the word and light bringing restoration and life.
The story of Jesus was and is the story of re-creation. The life of Jesus was and is a documentary about getting back to being human in the way that God intended for us. And the disciples of Jesus were the beginning of a new civilization where femurs could be healed, because these children of the light stood watch against the darkness, and cared for those who have been crippled by the attacks of sin’s beasts.
That is why Jesus’ little team of disciples is the vanguard of heaven’s restorative civilization. And the leading quality which identifies them is love. Here is where civilization begins in the dark jungles of earth.
The Accent Of Heaven
A scene from Tony Campolo’s life makes us think about this in fresh ways. When Tony spoke at a conference in Hawaii, it took a while for his body to catch up with the move across five time zones. The first night, his internal clock buzzed at three in the morning, and his stomach growled for attention.
Tony wandered quiet Honolulu streets looking for a place to get fried eggs and bacon. All the respectable places were closed and Tony finally ended up at a greasy dive in a narrow and dim alley. The place reeked with grunge. Tony was afraid to touch the menu for fear that it would stick to his fingers and that if he opened it something with too many legs to count might crawl out.
The guy behind the counter growled at him. “What d’ya want?”
Suddenly Tony wasn’t hungry, no matter how much his stomach protested. He saw a stack of donuts under a cracked plastic cover. “I’ll have a donut and a coffee,” he said. That ought to be safe.
The guy poured a cup of dark, thick coffee. Then he wiped his greasy hand on his dirty apron, grabbed a donut with his fingers and threw it on the counter in front of Tony. There sat Tony Campolo, gagging on sour coffee and a stale donut.
All at once the door slammed open and eight or nine prostitutes sauntered in, just finished with a night’s work. The joint was small and when the women crowded at the counter, they surrounded Tony, swearing, smoking and gossiping tales of their Johns. Another gulp and bite, and Tony would scram.
But something stopped his exit when the woman next to him turned to her friend and said, with a faraway look in her eye, “You know what? Tomorrow’s my birthday. I’m gonna be thirty-nine…”
The other woman got nasty. “So what d’ya want from me?” she said. “A birthday party? Ya want me to get you a cake that says ‘Happy Birthday’ on it?”
The first woman whimpered a bit and replied, “Awe, come on! Why do ya have to be so mean? I was just tellin’ you, that’s all. You do ya have to put me down? I don’t want anything from you! I mean, why should you give me a birthday party? I’ve never had a birthday party in my whole life! Why should I have one now?”
That got Tony thinking. He stayed until the women left, then said to the fellow behind the counter, “Do they come in here every night?”
“Yep,” said the man. “Every night.”
Tony asked him if he knew the one who had sat next to him. “Sure, that’s Agnes. She’s been coming here for years.”
“Well,” said Tony, “she just said that it was her birthday tomorrow. What do you think? You think you and I could do something about that ― maybe throw her a birthday party right here tomorrow night?”
The man got a cute smile on his chubby cheeks. “That’s great!” he said. So they made their plans. Tony would be back at 2:30 the next morning. He said he would help decorate the place and bring a birthday cake. “No way!” retorted the man. “My name’s Harry and this is my place, and around here I make the cakes!”
At 2:30 the next morning Tony was back. He brought crepe paper decorations and a fold-out sign that said Happy Birthday Agnes! By 3 o’clock, the diner was looking pretty good. By 3:15 it was crowded with wall-to-wall prostitutes. Harry’s wife had gotten the word out on the streets and every Honolulu streetwalker showed up.
At 3:30 Agnes and her group walked in. Tony had everyone ready for a shout, “Happy birthday, Agnes!” She was flabber-gasted. Her mouth fell open, her legs wobbled, she put her hands to her head and almost fell over stunned. Her friend grabbed her by the arm and led her to the counter where her birthday cake rested on a pedestal. Tony led the room in an energetic chorus of “Happy Birthday To You.”
Agnes began to cry. She saw the cake with all the candles and wept. Harry, who was not used to seeing a prostitute cry, said rather gruffly, “Blow out the candles, Agnes! Come on! Blow out the candles! If you don’t blow ‘em out, I’ll have to do it!”
So Agnes composed herself, and after a minute or two she blew them out. Everyone cheered. “Cut the cake, Agnes,” they yelled. “Cut the cake!”
But Agnes looked down at the cake and, without taking her eyes off it, said to Harry, “Look, Harry… Would it be all right with you if I… I mean, is it okay if I… What I mean is, do you think it’s be okay if I just kept the cake for a little while? I mean, is it all right if we don’t eat it right away?”
Harry didn’t know what to say. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Sure, if that’s what you want. Go ahead and keep the cake. Take it home if you want to.”
Agnes turned to Tony and asked again, “Is it okay? I live just down the street. Can I take the cake home for a minute? I’ll be right back. Honest!”
Agnes picked up the cake like it was the holy grail itself. Slowly she promenaded through the room with it high in front of her for everyone to see. She carried her treasure out the door and everyone there watched her in stunned silence. When she was gone nobody seemed to know what to do, so Tony got up on a chair and said, “What do you say we pray?”
There they were together in a hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon, all the prostitutes of Honolulu’s streets, at 3:30 in the morning, and Tony gathered them to pray for Agnes. He prayed for her life. He prayed for her health. He prayed for her soul and her relationship with God.
When Tony finished praying Harry leaned over the counter and said, accusingly, “Hey! You never told me you was a preacher! What kind of a church do you belong to anyway?”
Tony replied, “I belong to a church that throws parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning.”
Harry thought about that for a moment and then said, “Naw you don’t! There ain’t no church like that! If there was, I’d join it! Yessir, I’d be a member of a church like that!”
What do you think? Would you be a member of a church like that? Is this a church like that?
Circles Of Life
A friend’s son was very shy, Dale Galloway wrote in Dream a New Dream. Chad was usually by himself, and others took no effort to include him in their circles of friends. Every afternoon Chad’s mother would see the children would pile off the school bus in groups, laughing, playing, and joking around with each other. Chad, however, always be the last down the steps, always alone. No one ever paid much attention to him.
One day in late January, Chad came home and said, “You know what, Mom? Valentine’s Day is coming and I want to make a valentine for everyone in my class!”
Chad’s mother told Dale how terrible she felt. “Oh no!” she thought. “Chad is setting himself up for a fall now. He’s going to make valentines for everyone else but nobody will think of him. He’ll come home all disappointed and just pull back further into his shell.”
But Chad insisted, so they got paper and crayons and glue. Chad made 31 valentine cards. It took him three weeks.
The day he took them to school, his mother cried a lot. When he came off the bus alone as usual, bearing no valentine cards from others in his hands, she was ready for the worst.
Amazingly Chad’s face was glowing. He marched through the door triumphant. “I didn’t forget anybody!” he said. “I gave them all one of my hearts!”
That day Chad gained something more than just friends. He gained a sense of himself. He won a sense of dignity and worth. “I gave them all one of my hearts!” he said.
That is the accent of heaven in our earthly speech. That is the first sign of re-creation civilization. Edwin Markham, Oregon’s onetime poet laureate pictured it powerfully:
He drew a circle that shut me out ―
Heretic! Rebel! A thing to flout!
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.
(in the public domain)
Circles of hatred are erased by circles of love. Circles of judgment are blurred by widening circles of mercy. Circles of death give way to circles of life. The Bible says that when we had drawn God out of our circles, divine love drew us in. Perhaps Edwin Markham’s poem could be translated into the conversation of heaven as the Father and the son reflect about us:
He drew a circle that shut us out ―
Heretic! Rebel! A thing to flout!
But our love alone had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
(in the public domain)
That is the beginning of true civilization. When you listen to people like that, you know they are Jesus’ disciples, and speak with the accent of heaven.
What do others see when you act, and hear when you speak?
When Ms. Mead was speaking at a university, one student asked her what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in any given culture. This was a good question, with a number of different possible responses. Was cultivation of nutritious plants the first sign of civilization? How about the domestication of some species of animals? Maybe it was the creation of cooking or storage pots? Perhaps it was the crafting of spears, fishing tools, and arrowheads?
But Ms. Mead’s answer surprised everyone. She said that the first sign of civilization was represented, in her mind, by a healed femur.
A healed femur? Of course, most immediately wondered what a femur was. The femur is the human thighbone, the main body support of the leg.
But why was this a sign of civilization? At the look of uncertain stares, Ms. Mead went on to explain.
The law of the jungle, she said, is this: “You fall, you die!” If a large predatory animal chases you, only running, jumping or climbing might save you. But if you step into a hole and fall and break your femur, you cannot get up or run or climb to safety. If you fight an enemy and your femur is broken, you cannot crawl away to find water or food. In the jungle before civilization, broken femurs never get healed. Instead, those who break that bone die quickly. On their own, no one ever survives a broken leg long enough to have the bone heal.
For that reason, said Ms. Mead, when we uncover a human skeleton and find a healed femur, we know that someone was there to care about this person. What this person could not do on her own, on his own, someone else did for them. Someone chased away the charging beasts. Someone fought off the predator and the enemy. Some kept watch through the night hours, providing safety. Someone foraged for berries and fruit enough to feed two people. Someone got water and brought it to the person who fell. Someone, at great expense to her own life, dragged this crippled fellow to a place of safety, lit a fire, kept watch, brought food, and stood guard for weeks, while the other healed.
“This is the first sign of civilization,” said Ms. Mead. There was not a dry eye in the auditorium. Everyone knew she was right.
True civility, genuine community, honest care, and love are all deeply related. This is why Jesus spoke “a new command” to his disciples on the eve of his death. John gave us the story of Jesus’ life and ministry as a tale of re-creation. Remember? He started out the gospel mimicking Genesis 1: “In the beginning…” He talked about the original creation, and how it began to die because of sin. He told us that God decided to re-create this world without destroying humankind. John pointed to Jesus as the living and creative word, from the Genesis account of beginnings, who now entered human society in the middle of time as the word and light bringing restoration and life.
The story of Jesus was and is the story of re-creation. The life of Jesus was and is a documentary about getting back to being human in the way that God intended for us. And the disciples of Jesus were the beginning of a new civilization where femurs could be healed, because these children of the light stood watch against the darkness, and cared for those who have been crippled by the attacks of sin’s beasts.
That is why Jesus’ little team of disciples is the vanguard of heaven’s restorative civilization. And the leading quality which identifies them is love. Here is where civilization begins in the dark jungles of earth.
The Accent Of Heaven
A scene from Tony Campolo’s life makes us think about this in fresh ways. When Tony spoke at a conference in Hawaii, it took a while for his body to catch up with the move across five time zones. The first night, his internal clock buzzed at three in the morning, and his stomach growled for attention.
Tony wandered quiet Honolulu streets looking for a place to get fried eggs and bacon. All the respectable places were closed and Tony finally ended up at a greasy dive in a narrow and dim alley. The place reeked with grunge. Tony was afraid to touch the menu for fear that it would stick to his fingers and that if he opened it something with too many legs to count might crawl out.
The guy behind the counter growled at him. “What d’ya want?”
Suddenly Tony wasn’t hungry, no matter how much his stomach protested. He saw a stack of donuts under a cracked plastic cover. “I’ll have a donut and a coffee,” he said. That ought to be safe.
The guy poured a cup of dark, thick coffee. Then he wiped his greasy hand on his dirty apron, grabbed a donut with his fingers and threw it on the counter in front of Tony. There sat Tony Campolo, gagging on sour coffee and a stale donut.
All at once the door slammed open and eight or nine prostitutes sauntered in, just finished with a night’s work. The joint was small and when the women crowded at the counter, they surrounded Tony, swearing, smoking and gossiping tales of their Johns. Another gulp and bite, and Tony would scram.
But something stopped his exit when the woman next to him turned to her friend and said, with a faraway look in her eye, “You know what? Tomorrow’s my birthday. I’m gonna be thirty-nine…”
The other woman got nasty. “So what d’ya want from me?” she said. “A birthday party? Ya want me to get you a cake that says ‘Happy Birthday’ on it?”
The first woman whimpered a bit and replied, “Awe, come on! Why do ya have to be so mean? I was just tellin’ you, that’s all. You do ya have to put me down? I don’t want anything from you! I mean, why should you give me a birthday party? I’ve never had a birthday party in my whole life! Why should I have one now?”
That got Tony thinking. He stayed until the women left, then said to the fellow behind the counter, “Do they come in here every night?”
“Yep,” said the man. “Every night.”
Tony asked him if he knew the one who had sat next to him. “Sure, that’s Agnes. She’s been coming here for years.”
“Well,” said Tony, “she just said that it was her birthday tomorrow. What do you think? You think you and I could do something about that ― maybe throw her a birthday party right here tomorrow night?”
The man got a cute smile on his chubby cheeks. “That’s great!” he said. So they made their plans. Tony would be back at 2:30 the next morning. He said he would help decorate the place and bring a birthday cake. “No way!” retorted the man. “My name’s Harry and this is my place, and around here I make the cakes!”
At 2:30 the next morning Tony was back. He brought crepe paper decorations and a fold-out sign that said Happy Birthday Agnes! By 3 o’clock, the diner was looking pretty good. By 3:15 it was crowded with wall-to-wall prostitutes. Harry’s wife had gotten the word out on the streets and every Honolulu streetwalker showed up.
At 3:30 Agnes and her group walked in. Tony had everyone ready for a shout, “Happy birthday, Agnes!” She was flabber-gasted. Her mouth fell open, her legs wobbled, she put her hands to her head and almost fell over stunned. Her friend grabbed her by the arm and led her to the counter where her birthday cake rested on a pedestal. Tony led the room in an energetic chorus of “Happy Birthday To You.”
Agnes began to cry. She saw the cake with all the candles and wept. Harry, who was not used to seeing a prostitute cry, said rather gruffly, “Blow out the candles, Agnes! Come on! Blow out the candles! If you don’t blow ‘em out, I’ll have to do it!”
So Agnes composed herself, and after a minute or two she blew them out. Everyone cheered. “Cut the cake, Agnes,” they yelled. “Cut the cake!”
But Agnes looked down at the cake and, without taking her eyes off it, said to Harry, “Look, Harry… Would it be all right with you if I… I mean, is it okay if I… What I mean is, do you think it’s be okay if I just kept the cake for a little while? I mean, is it all right if we don’t eat it right away?”
Harry didn’t know what to say. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Sure, if that’s what you want. Go ahead and keep the cake. Take it home if you want to.”
Agnes turned to Tony and asked again, “Is it okay? I live just down the street. Can I take the cake home for a minute? I’ll be right back. Honest!”
Agnes picked up the cake like it was the holy grail itself. Slowly she promenaded through the room with it high in front of her for everyone to see. She carried her treasure out the door and everyone there watched her in stunned silence. When she was gone nobody seemed to know what to do, so Tony got up on a chair and said, “What do you say we pray?”
There they were together in a hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon, all the prostitutes of Honolulu’s streets, at 3:30 in the morning, and Tony gathered them to pray for Agnes. He prayed for her life. He prayed for her health. He prayed for her soul and her relationship with God.
When Tony finished praying Harry leaned over the counter and said, accusingly, “Hey! You never told me you was a preacher! What kind of a church do you belong to anyway?”
Tony replied, “I belong to a church that throws parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning.”
Harry thought about that for a moment and then said, “Naw you don’t! There ain’t no church like that! If there was, I’d join it! Yessir, I’d be a member of a church like that!”
What do you think? Would you be a member of a church like that? Is this a church like that?
Circles Of Life
A friend’s son was very shy, Dale Galloway wrote in Dream a New Dream. Chad was usually by himself, and others took no effort to include him in their circles of friends. Every afternoon Chad’s mother would see the children would pile off the school bus in groups, laughing, playing, and joking around with each other. Chad, however, always be the last down the steps, always alone. No one ever paid much attention to him.
One day in late January, Chad came home and said, “You know what, Mom? Valentine’s Day is coming and I want to make a valentine for everyone in my class!”
Chad’s mother told Dale how terrible she felt. “Oh no!” she thought. “Chad is setting himself up for a fall now. He’s going to make valentines for everyone else but nobody will think of him. He’ll come home all disappointed and just pull back further into his shell.”
But Chad insisted, so they got paper and crayons and glue. Chad made 31 valentine cards. It took him three weeks.
The day he took them to school, his mother cried a lot. When he came off the bus alone as usual, bearing no valentine cards from others in his hands, she was ready for the worst.
Amazingly Chad’s face was glowing. He marched through the door triumphant. “I didn’t forget anybody!” he said. “I gave them all one of my hearts!”
That day Chad gained something more than just friends. He gained a sense of himself. He won a sense of dignity and worth. “I gave them all one of my hearts!” he said.
That is the accent of heaven in our earthly speech. That is the first sign of re-creation civilization. Edwin Markham, Oregon’s onetime poet laureate pictured it powerfully:
He drew a circle that shut me out ―
Heretic! Rebel! A thing to flout!
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.
(in the public domain)
Circles of hatred are erased by circles of love. Circles of judgment are blurred by widening circles of mercy. Circles of death give way to circles of life. The Bible says that when we had drawn God out of our circles, divine love drew us in. Perhaps Edwin Markham’s poem could be translated into the conversation of heaven as the Father and the son reflect about us:
He drew a circle that shut us out ―
Heretic! Rebel! A thing to flout!
But our love alone had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
(in the public domain)
That is the beginning of true civilization. When you listen to people like that, you know they are Jesus’ disciples, and speak with the accent of heaven.
What do others see when you act, and hear when you speak?
