No Freudian Slip!
Sermon
Against the Grain -- Words for a Politically Incorrect Church
Cycle B Gospel Sermons for Sundays after Pentecost (Last Third)
Object:
It's late afternoon but it is still several hours before supper is served. You are hungry. You remember that cookie jar in the kitchen and decide to indulge yourself in a little afternoon snack. You open the jar already imagining the taste of those chocolate chip cookies. But the cookie jar is empty! No cookies! Who ate them? You turn around, and standing there behind you, looking up at you with a funny look on his face, is your six-year-old. "I didn't do it, Daddy. I didn't eat those last four chocolate chip cookies!" How did he know about those last four cookies in the jar? And you know you are staring at the culprit. A slip of the tongue betrayed the villain and revealed the truth.
Some twenty years ago my wife and I spent a summer studying and traveling in Germany. We had only been in the country a few days when we discovered "the ugly American." Repeatedly we ran into large tour groups of Americans who were often rude and obnoxious. They seemed to think that yelling at the Germans would somehow make their English more understandable. We decided that we did not want to be associated with such boors. So, whenever the ugly American tourists would approach us to ask for help, we would pretend to be German and not able to understand them. "Ich verstehe nicht." But occasionally our deception would fail. An English word would slip from our lips, and we would betray our identity. Inadvertently we had revealed a truth we had wanted to keep hidden.
In our popular vernacular such slips of the tongue are called "Freudian slips." The great Austrian thinker and father of psychotherapy, Sigmund Freud, is known for discovering that buried deep within the subconscious of every one of us are thoughts, desires, and urges of which we are usually unaware. But the sub-conscious does affect our behavior. Occasionally these subconscious thoughts will reveal themselves through our behavior, perhaps through our "slips of the tongue." Such Freudian slips betray our true inner feelings, feelings which we may have wanted to avoid, feelings of which we may have been totally unaware.
At the center of today's Gospel is such a Freudian slip: worry. Most of us assume that it is just a natural part of life, part of being human. We assure ourselves that a certain amount of worry about tomorrow is even healthy. It motivates us to work and plan for the future. Of course, too much worry can create problems. Yes, always worrying about the future, about what to wear or what to eat, can become an unhealthy obsession. We are opposed to that kind of worry.
But where do you draw the line? When does a healthy concern for the future become a self-destructive obsession about tomorrow?
Jesus is uninterested in such distinctions. He offers no helpful guidelines. Instead, Jesus sees such worry as a Freudian slip, a revelation of something much deeper and more dangerous within us. Even the most simple of worries exposes something which we all want to avoid. It exposes something of which we may not even be aware. It exposes something which we may be too embarrassed to admit: our lack of faith in God.
The lectionary editors who chose this passage from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount decided to leave out verse 24. I think that was a big mistake. Verse 24 sets the context for Jesus' comments on worry. In verse 24 Jesus makes a claim about what is really going on in our hearts and minds when we worry about what we will eat or what we will wear.
"No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth."
What we assume are our innocent and everyday worries are, in fact, Freudian slips. They reveal what is really going on within us. They expose the fact that we are breaking the first commandment. We are not trusting God. We are serving another master. We are idolaters.
This seems too harsh a judgment on the part of Jesus. He seems to be jumping to an unwarranted conclusion. Since when is worrying about what I will wear to work or what I will cook for supper a sign of my unfaith?
Martin Luther's comments on the first commandment in the Large Catechism are helpful here. Luther points our how all of us have our gods. Humans are incurably theolatrous. We all have those gods, those things, which give our lives meaning and purpose. Look at what excites us and motivates us, and that is our god. Look at what we worry about, what makes us anxious, what we fear losing, and that is our god. Like Jesus before him, Luther is making a profoundly devastating observation about the human condition. We all have dirty hands. None of us is clean. We are all guilty. We all sin. We all break the first commandment every day. We all serve another master.
Jesus must have known that his disciples were worriers just like us. So when he tells them not to worry, he is really accusing them. "Look at the birds of the air ... Consider the lilies of the field ...." They don't worry. They don't scurry about trying to buy the latest fashions at the year's best sale. They don't have their days rise and fall on the basis of the latest Dow Jones average. They don't count calories and grams of fat in order to be sure they keep that svelte figure and attract the admiring glances of the opposite sex. So why do we do these things, we who are worth so much more in the eyes of God? Why do we worry? Jesus makes the embarrassing accusation in verse 30. We have "little faith." We don't trust God. We break the first commandment. We are serving another master.
Our worry, even the simplest of worries, is a Freudian slip. It reveals the secret we want to keep hidden not only from God but also from ourselves: we are people of little faith.
Instead of worrying about tomorrow, we ought to trust God. We ought to be thankful. I suspect that this is why this passage was chosen for this Thanksgiving Day. Jesus directs our attention to the wonders of nature -- the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. And how about all the wonderful and bountiful things that fill the world around you? And how about the affluence that you people in this community enjoy? You are blessed! So, why aren't you thankful? Why are you worrying about tomorrow, you people of little faith?
Jesus is shaming us into a sense of thanksgiving. But such thanksgiving is easier said than done. Despite our best intentions, our giving thanks is always less than what it should be. And there are always the Freudian slips that reveal that this is precisely the case.
Recently I had an experience that was a revealing Freudian slip. I was in the midst of making a presentation to the junior high youth gathered for our Sunday night youth program when one of the young people took me aside and told me that there was someone here to see me. Who could this be? I would never have scheduled an appointment with anyone during these important Sunday night sessions with the youth.
I went to the back of the room and there stood a nervous, somewhat shabbily dressed black male. He said he had to talk to the pastor, to me, right then. And it had to be in private. I led him into my office and offered him a seat. I must admit I had some anxiety wondering what was so important that this fellow had to see me immediately and in private. It was then that Ronald Reed told me a most extraordinary story.
He was apologetic and self-conscious. He had just been discharged from St. Vincent's Hospital. He had been a patient there, receiving dialysis courtesy of government welfare. He pulled out his discharge papers and showed me that his story was true. He then rolled up his shirt sleeves and showed me his forearms, both grossly misshapen and discolored, skin bulging with huge lumps, the results of his frequent encounters with dialysis. I suspected that this was not your typical street swindler on the make for another victim. I felt that his story was true. At least I wanted to believe that it was true.
He said he was desperate and had no place to go. He had called a local church and found out that there was a large community service going on that night in town, but he didn't know where it was. So he asked for a ride with someone from the hospital to the downtown. Our church had lots of cars in the parking lot, and he thought this might be the place of the service and where he might get some help.
He was right. There was such a service going on that night, but it was not at this church. It was the community Thanksgiving service, and it was going to start in about fifteen minutes at another church, and I was on my way. In fact, I was going to be one of the participating clergy. I didn't have much money, but I was moved by his story and his sincerity. I gave him two twenty-dollar bills that I had in my wallet. I invited him to ride with me over to the Episcopal church where the service would shortly be starting.
On the way over Ronald Reed told me how scared he was to be in town. There weren't any black people out here in this distant suburb, so he feared for his safety. I silently chuckled, knowing that most of the people out here would be more afraid of him than he was of them. His fears were unfounded. However, I suspect that the local police would regard such a rare black with suspicion. They may not have been so hospitable. When we arrived at the church, the parking lot was almost full. We had to park a distance from the entrance. During our walk across the parking lot, Ronald was nervous and silent. The closer we got to the entrance, the more he distanced himself from me. He thanked me for the ride and the help and said he would see me inside.
I was running so late that I forgot all about Ronald until I entered the sanctuary in the clergy procession and saw him standing alone in one of the rear pews. He was trying to sing this grand and glorious thanksgiving hymn that I am sure was not part of the African-American musical tradition. He stuck out like a sore thumb in this beautiful house of worship, not only because of his blackness but also because of his shabby dress and his isolation. No one sat within five pews of him, as if he was some kind of leper.
The service was magnificent. There were choirs from several different churches creating beautiful music. There were the sounds of a magnificent pipe organ. There was a fine sermon reminding us of how we needed to be thankful for the great bounty with which God has blessed us. The well-dressed congregation was vivid evidence of why we needed to be there giving thanks.
But then I saw the dark face of Ronald Reed in the back and wondered what he thought about all this talk of God's bountiful blessings and our need to be thankful. I thought of his shabby clothes, his bulging arms disfigured from many rounds of dialysis, his fear of the whites in town, his quiet despair. In my mind his presence challenged the credibility of everything we were doing in that service. How can we thank God when there are so many with so little in this world? What kind of God is it who would permit such gross disparity between the haves and the have-nots? How can we be praising God for such bountiful blessings when there, sitting in the back of the sanctuary for everyone to see, is someone who obviously has not been so blessed? This whole service finally seemed grotesque, dishonest, a self-righteous exercise in self-congratulation.
When the grand and glorious procession marched out of the sanctuary at the close of the service, I saw something very odd, very strange, very revealing. It was a Freudian slip of massive proportions. As the congregation left the sanctuary and mingled in the narthex, Ronald Reed was totally ignored. No one said a word to him. He was avoided like the plague. No one wanted to acknowledge his presence.
Why? Were they afraid of him? I don't think anyone had to fear for their safety, but they, we, all of us, were afraid of him. Why? Because his presence challenged the credibility of our service. His presence reminded us that all is not well with this world, that there are gross inequities, that there are many who are not blessed with such bounty. And such reminders scare us. We all silently fear that "there but for the grace of God go I." Isn't that why many of us live out in the suburbs -- to be safe, not to have to worry about the dangers of being around people who are different and who have less than we do and who may be carefully planning some way to get some of that stuff away from us?
Did God send us Ronald Reed that night? I don't know. But I do know one thing. Our avoidance of someone like Ronald Reed was very revealing. It was a Fredudian slip. It exposed the fear and worry still lurking in the hearts of all of us, despite our songs of praise and thanksgiving which had sounded just moments before. Keeping our distance from the one whose presence contradicted the whole thrust of this Thanksgiving service revealed that we were still anxious, worried, afraid of losing our bounty.
We had just sung our lungs out praising God! Didn't we say that we trusted and believed in him? But this Freudian slip revealed a crack in the armor. We still were anxious about tomorrow. We still had doubts about God's benevolence. And so we had to avoid Ronald Reed. He exposed our little faith.
The truth is that our lives are filled with Freudian slips revealing our little faith. We nervously watch the daily gyrations of the stock market. We hang on every word spoken by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. We live and die for a bargain. We panic about the future of Social Security.
But look at the birds of the air, the lilies of the field, the grass, which is full and lush in the morning but limp and wilted after a day in the hot sun, ready to be thrown into the fiery oven. Could this be the fate of those like us who have such little faith? Could those who fail to trust in God end up in the burning oven? Jesus seems to be hinting as much.
In the face of such a deadly fate, Jesus offers us another alternative. And Jesus is clear and unequivocal. There is no Freudian slip here. Jesus offers himself. When he invites his disciples to seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, he is referring to himself. Jesus embodied the kingdom. Jesus was the manifestation of God's rule in this world. And as Jesus welcomed sinners and doubters and outcasts and tax collectors and whores and all of those who seemed to be miserable failures when it came to trusting God, he was sending a message to his worried and anxious disciples who always seemed to be fretting about what they would eat or what they should wear. God still forgives them. God still embraces them even with their little faith. God can be trusted -- even when everything else in life is uncertain and fraught with risk.
Yes, God can still be trusted, no matter what. And if God can be trusted, then what is there to worry about? Why bother to wring your hands and be anxious about tomorrow? Tomorrow is in the gracious hands of God.
Some twenty years ago my wife and I spent a summer studying and traveling in Germany. We had only been in the country a few days when we discovered "the ugly American." Repeatedly we ran into large tour groups of Americans who were often rude and obnoxious. They seemed to think that yelling at the Germans would somehow make their English more understandable. We decided that we did not want to be associated with such boors. So, whenever the ugly American tourists would approach us to ask for help, we would pretend to be German and not able to understand them. "Ich verstehe nicht." But occasionally our deception would fail. An English word would slip from our lips, and we would betray our identity. Inadvertently we had revealed a truth we had wanted to keep hidden.
In our popular vernacular such slips of the tongue are called "Freudian slips." The great Austrian thinker and father of psychotherapy, Sigmund Freud, is known for discovering that buried deep within the subconscious of every one of us are thoughts, desires, and urges of which we are usually unaware. But the sub-conscious does affect our behavior. Occasionally these subconscious thoughts will reveal themselves through our behavior, perhaps through our "slips of the tongue." Such Freudian slips betray our true inner feelings, feelings which we may have wanted to avoid, feelings of which we may have been totally unaware.
At the center of today's Gospel is such a Freudian slip: worry. Most of us assume that it is just a natural part of life, part of being human. We assure ourselves that a certain amount of worry about tomorrow is even healthy. It motivates us to work and plan for the future. Of course, too much worry can create problems. Yes, always worrying about the future, about what to wear or what to eat, can become an unhealthy obsession. We are opposed to that kind of worry.
But where do you draw the line? When does a healthy concern for the future become a self-destructive obsession about tomorrow?
Jesus is uninterested in such distinctions. He offers no helpful guidelines. Instead, Jesus sees such worry as a Freudian slip, a revelation of something much deeper and more dangerous within us. Even the most simple of worries exposes something which we all want to avoid. It exposes something of which we may not even be aware. It exposes something which we may be too embarrassed to admit: our lack of faith in God.
The lectionary editors who chose this passage from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount decided to leave out verse 24. I think that was a big mistake. Verse 24 sets the context for Jesus' comments on worry. In verse 24 Jesus makes a claim about what is really going on in our hearts and minds when we worry about what we will eat or what we will wear.
"No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth."
What we assume are our innocent and everyday worries are, in fact, Freudian slips. They reveal what is really going on within us. They expose the fact that we are breaking the first commandment. We are not trusting God. We are serving another master. We are idolaters.
This seems too harsh a judgment on the part of Jesus. He seems to be jumping to an unwarranted conclusion. Since when is worrying about what I will wear to work or what I will cook for supper a sign of my unfaith?
Martin Luther's comments on the first commandment in the Large Catechism are helpful here. Luther points our how all of us have our gods. Humans are incurably theolatrous. We all have those gods, those things, which give our lives meaning and purpose. Look at what excites us and motivates us, and that is our god. Look at what we worry about, what makes us anxious, what we fear losing, and that is our god. Like Jesus before him, Luther is making a profoundly devastating observation about the human condition. We all have dirty hands. None of us is clean. We are all guilty. We all sin. We all break the first commandment every day. We all serve another master.
Jesus must have known that his disciples were worriers just like us. So when he tells them not to worry, he is really accusing them. "Look at the birds of the air ... Consider the lilies of the field ...." They don't worry. They don't scurry about trying to buy the latest fashions at the year's best sale. They don't have their days rise and fall on the basis of the latest Dow Jones average. They don't count calories and grams of fat in order to be sure they keep that svelte figure and attract the admiring glances of the opposite sex. So why do we do these things, we who are worth so much more in the eyes of God? Why do we worry? Jesus makes the embarrassing accusation in verse 30. We have "little faith." We don't trust God. We break the first commandment. We are serving another master.
Our worry, even the simplest of worries, is a Freudian slip. It reveals the secret we want to keep hidden not only from God but also from ourselves: we are people of little faith.
Instead of worrying about tomorrow, we ought to trust God. We ought to be thankful. I suspect that this is why this passage was chosen for this Thanksgiving Day. Jesus directs our attention to the wonders of nature -- the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. And how about all the wonderful and bountiful things that fill the world around you? And how about the affluence that you people in this community enjoy? You are blessed! So, why aren't you thankful? Why are you worrying about tomorrow, you people of little faith?
Jesus is shaming us into a sense of thanksgiving. But such thanksgiving is easier said than done. Despite our best intentions, our giving thanks is always less than what it should be. And there are always the Freudian slips that reveal that this is precisely the case.
Recently I had an experience that was a revealing Freudian slip. I was in the midst of making a presentation to the junior high youth gathered for our Sunday night youth program when one of the young people took me aside and told me that there was someone here to see me. Who could this be? I would never have scheduled an appointment with anyone during these important Sunday night sessions with the youth.
I went to the back of the room and there stood a nervous, somewhat shabbily dressed black male. He said he had to talk to the pastor, to me, right then. And it had to be in private. I led him into my office and offered him a seat. I must admit I had some anxiety wondering what was so important that this fellow had to see me immediately and in private. It was then that Ronald Reed told me a most extraordinary story.
He was apologetic and self-conscious. He had just been discharged from St. Vincent's Hospital. He had been a patient there, receiving dialysis courtesy of government welfare. He pulled out his discharge papers and showed me that his story was true. He then rolled up his shirt sleeves and showed me his forearms, both grossly misshapen and discolored, skin bulging with huge lumps, the results of his frequent encounters with dialysis. I suspected that this was not your typical street swindler on the make for another victim. I felt that his story was true. At least I wanted to believe that it was true.
He said he was desperate and had no place to go. He had called a local church and found out that there was a large community service going on that night in town, but he didn't know where it was. So he asked for a ride with someone from the hospital to the downtown. Our church had lots of cars in the parking lot, and he thought this might be the place of the service and where he might get some help.
He was right. There was such a service going on that night, but it was not at this church. It was the community Thanksgiving service, and it was going to start in about fifteen minutes at another church, and I was on my way. In fact, I was going to be one of the participating clergy. I didn't have much money, but I was moved by his story and his sincerity. I gave him two twenty-dollar bills that I had in my wallet. I invited him to ride with me over to the Episcopal church where the service would shortly be starting.
On the way over Ronald Reed told me how scared he was to be in town. There weren't any black people out here in this distant suburb, so he feared for his safety. I silently chuckled, knowing that most of the people out here would be more afraid of him than he was of them. His fears were unfounded. However, I suspect that the local police would regard such a rare black with suspicion. They may not have been so hospitable. When we arrived at the church, the parking lot was almost full. We had to park a distance from the entrance. During our walk across the parking lot, Ronald was nervous and silent. The closer we got to the entrance, the more he distanced himself from me. He thanked me for the ride and the help and said he would see me inside.
I was running so late that I forgot all about Ronald until I entered the sanctuary in the clergy procession and saw him standing alone in one of the rear pews. He was trying to sing this grand and glorious thanksgiving hymn that I am sure was not part of the African-American musical tradition. He stuck out like a sore thumb in this beautiful house of worship, not only because of his blackness but also because of his shabby dress and his isolation. No one sat within five pews of him, as if he was some kind of leper.
The service was magnificent. There were choirs from several different churches creating beautiful music. There were the sounds of a magnificent pipe organ. There was a fine sermon reminding us of how we needed to be thankful for the great bounty with which God has blessed us. The well-dressed congregation was vivid evidence of why we needed to be there giving thanks.
But then I saw the dark face of Ronald Reed in the back and wondered what he thought about all this talk of God's bountiful blessings and our need to be thankful. I thought of his shabby clothes, his bulging arms disfigured from many rounds of dialysis, his fear of the whites in town, his quiet despair. In my mind his presence challenged the credibility of everything we were doing in that service. How can we thank God when there are so many with so little in this world? What kind of God is it who would permit such gross disparity between the haves and the have-nots? How can we be praising God for such bountiful blessings when there, sitting in the back of the sanctuary for everyone to see, is someone who obviously has not been so blessed? This whole service finally seemed grotesque, dishonest, a self-righteous exercise in self-congratulation.
When the grand and glorious procession marched out of the sanctuary at the close of the service, I saw something very odd, very strange, very revealing. It was a Freudian slip of massive proportions. As the congregation left the sanctuary and mingled in the narthex, Ronald Reed was totally ignored. No one said a word to him. He was avoided like the plague. No one wanted to acknowledge his presence.
Why? Were they afraid of him? I don't think anyone had to fear for their safety, but they, we, all of us, were afraid of him. Why? Because his presence challenged the credibility of our service. His presence reminded us that all is not well with this world, that there are gross inequities, that there are many who are not blessed with such bounty. And such reminders scare us. We all silently fear that "there but for the grace of God go I." Isn't that why many of us live out in the suburbs -- to be safe, not to have to worry about the dangers of being around people who are different and who have less than we do and who may be carefully planning some way to get some of that stuff away from us?
Did God send us Ronald Reed that night? I don't know. But I do know one thing. Our avoidance of someone like Ronald Reed was very revealing. It was a Fredudian slip. It exposed the fear and worry still lurking in the hearts of all of us, despite our songs of praise and thanksgiving which had sounded just moments before. Keeping our distance from the one whose presence contradicted the whole thrust of this Thanksgiving service revealed that we were still anxious, worried, afraid of losing our bounty.
We had just sung our lungs out praising God! Didn't we say that we trusted and believed in him? But this Freudian slip revealed a crack in the armor. We still were anxious about tomorrow. We still had doubts about God's benevolence. And so we had to avoid Ronald Reed. He exposed our little faith.
The truth is that our lives are filled with Freudian slips revealing our little faith. We nervously watch the daily gyrations of the stock market. We hang on every word spoken by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. We live and die for a bargain. We panic about the future of Social Security.
But look at the birds of the air, the lilies of the field, the grass, which is full and lush in the morning but limp and wilted after a day in the hot sun, ready to be thrown into the fiery oven. Could this be the fate of those like us who have such little faith? Could those who fail to trust in God end up in the burning oven? Jesus seems to be hinting as much.
In the face of such a deadly fate, Jesus offers us another alternative. And Jesus is clear and unequivocal. There is no Freudian slip here. Jesus offers himself. When he invites his disciples to seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, he is referring to himself. Jesus embodied the kingdom. Jesus was the manifestation of God's rule in this world. And as Jesus welcomed sinners and doubters and outcasts and tax collectors and whores and all of those who seemed to be miserable failures when it came to trusting God, he was sending a message to his worried and anxious disciples who always seemed to be fretting about what they would eat or what they should wear. God still forgives them. God still embraces them even with their little faith. God can be trusted -- even when everything else in life is uncertain and fraught with risk.
Yes, God can still be trusted, no matter what. And if God can be trusted, then what is there to worry about? Why bother to wring your hands and be anxious about tomorrow? Tomorrow is in the gracious hands of God.
