A Spiritual Bouquet For A Spiritual Banquet
Sermon
The Feasts Of The Kingdom
Sermons On Holy Communion And Other Sacred Meals
Some years ago, Hulda Niebuhr, sister of the famous Niebuhr brothers, Reinhold and Richard, wrote a book about Jesus titled Greatness Passing By. I have always liked that title because throughout history, great men and women, like Jesus, have been passing by and so many people did not recognize them.
The same is true for ideas. The prophets Amos and Jeremiah were scorned by secular and religious leaders alike for their progressive ideas. Socrates was condemned by his fellow citizens. Paul was stoned and left for dead by religious conservatives incensed with his liberal ideas. Søren Kierkegaard, the now famous Danish philosopher and theologian, was largely ignored in Denmark in the early 1800s. He predicted his ideas would not be appreciated until fifty years from his death -- a prediction that came true to make him one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century.
If great ideas pass by unnoticed, so do great artists. A woman was visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and said to her friend while gazing at an artistic masterpiece, "In my judgment, I don't see what is so great about the painting." The museum guard, overhearing her, could not resist saying to her, "Madam, if you will pardon me for saying so, I think that more than you judging the painting, the painting is judging you."
So it was with the now-famous artist Vincent Van Gogh. Unappreciated in his own time when he sold not a single painting, now his paintings seem to judge all would-be critics by being sold for millions of dollars. Greatness passed by, and it took years for greatness to become recognized.
Such was the case with Van Gogh's paintings of bouquets of flowers. His still life of flowers, his flowers in a blue vase, his oleanders and irises, all from the late 1880s, waited for recognition and high prices. And so did his famous bouquet of sunflowers to which we would draw attention today. For it is the apt symbol of the spiritual bouquet essential for a spiritual banquet.
And the irony is that Van Gogh's own life and work are symbolic of two contrasting bouquets -- the one self-destructive, the other life-giving.
I.
Consider first the destructive bouquet of Van Gogh's own life, the bouquet of death.
Born in 1853 in the Netherlands to a Dutch Reformed pastor and his wife, Van Gogh was a highly sensitive and brilliant man. Although from a family of pastors, he had two uncles who were art dealers who made important art connections for him in London and Paris.
But before art, Van Gogh was rebuffed two or three times in love and later rebuffed in his efforts to be a minister. He went to work among the poor in Belgium, "abased himself to their level of destitution, slept on a board in a wooden hut, shared their privations, cared for the sick, and displayed all the inspired zeal of an apostle" (Van Gogh, by Frank Elgar, p. 2). But his zeal and intensity appeared more as madness than devotion and compassion, so they rejected him.
Van Gogh took up with an ugly, drunken prostitute, then mourned his father's death, received support from his brother, Theo, so he could go to Paris to paint. And paint he did, in a kind of frenzy, creating many of his greatest works the last years of his life in an insane asylum. But not before in a fit of rage and guilt he cut off his ear and gave it to a prostitute in a brothel. And then, tragically, as we know, he ended his life by shooting himself in a manure pile, dying two days later with his brother, Theo, at his side.
Vincent Van Gogh had terrible and tragic and destructive forces at work within him, which though utilized to produce magnificent art, eventually brought the bouquet of his life to ruin.
As with Van Gogh, so with the Church, the very art we produce, the very words and ethics, literature and teachings, music and art came to flourish while the Church itself becomes self-destructive. As with Van Gogh, so also in the Church, passions and forces out of control can cause the Church to decay, even to take its own life in a manure pile.
What are some of those forces that produce the deadly, destructive, fleshly bouquet? Paul names them -- forces which conflict with life and health, beauty and balance, and lead eventually to death. The forces are fleshly desires, from the Greek word, epithemion, which means passions and angers and hostilities which flame up suddenly like ignited gasoline.
One destructive force was that of fornication, which included not only prostitution, but all sexual vice and immorality and unfaithfulness to marriage vows.
Another suicidal force was that of lasciviousness and licentiousness, which suggest unrestrained violence and willfulness, doing what we please without regard for anyone else.
Forces of idolatry, that is, the impulse to worship what we have made, whether it be a statue, a state, or a system of thought, can be destructive. Witchcraft and sorcery, with their attendant use of drugs and magic in an attempt to force God to do our will rather than vice versa, will wither the bouquet of life at its core.
Or think of hatred, enmity, rivalry, strife, discord, quarrels, derision, distraction, division, jealousies, flashes of uncontrolled anger, seditions and dissensions, and the damage they can do to the flower of life.
The partisan spirit is especially destructive, because in an age of individualism it always thinks its ideas are right, charging forward with self-righteous opinions, without ever asking what Christ's opinion might be.
If you want to wilt a bouquet and destroy the bouquet of family or Church, just let these forces get going and they will lead to madness, mutual destruction, and suicide. Vincent Van Gogh was an extremely sensitive and gifted genius, but there were forces at work within him, probably beyond his control, which brought him to suicide.
So too with humankind, so often gifted and sensitive with geniuses everywhere. Unless these destructive forces are brought under control, the flowering of all humanity will end in a heap beside a pile of manure.
II.
If that is the fleshly bouquet of death, consider now the spiritual bouquet of life.
If we lament the tragic personal life of Van Gogh, we celebrate the artistic side, because there he brought forth a beautiful spiritual bouquet, to bless the world and give it life. In his own time, he was greatness passing by, and very few people knew it. But in our time, his greatness has come into its own.
So also with Jesus and his Church. In his own time, Jesus was greatness passing by, and few people knew it. But in these twenty centuries, his greatness has come into its own with millions and millions of people. Like his latter-day disciple, Søren Kierkegaard, whose ideas were scorned during his life, after his death they were revered and became a beautiful psychological, philosophical, and theological bouquet for the world; so too Jesus' ideas, once scorned, have produced life-giving, beautiful, spiritual bouquets for centuries.
And if we were to paint a bouquet and place flowers in a vase like a spiritual Van Gogh, what would we put there? We would, says Paul, following in the footsteps of Jesus, put the everlastingly beautiful long-stemmed flower of love. This would not be just a selfish love, but a self-giving love, a love thoughtful of others and their needs as well as of its own needs.
Another important blossom of the Holy Spirit we would add would be that of joy, not a forced joy, but a deep internal happiness or blessed-ness which comes from the graciousness of God. And then we would add the all-important blossom of peace, eirene or shalom, that deep inward sense of well-being and balance and serenity, that peace which passes all understanding, because it infuses us with the assurance that we are accepted by God, that we need not be anxious about our inadequate backgrounds.
Another blossom in our spiritual bouquet to grace our spiritual banquet table would be that of long-suffering or patience. The root word here suggests someone who is able to control for a long time the themia, the sudden passions which tend to flame up inside us to consume us and others.
Kindness is then added to our bouquet to overcome the tendency toward unkindness. Its sister blossoms are courtesy, gentleness, thoughtfulness, generosity, considerateness. In a world of pushy aggressiveness and abrasive selfishness, what a refreshing thing it is to come upon a bouquet of kindly flowers lending their beauty and fragrance to all around them, blessing them, calming them, helping them, healing them. Add to that the blossom of self-control, of self-mastery, and we have a beautiful bouquet indeed.
Were these ideas ahead of their time? Were they greatness passing by? Yes. They always are ahead of the times. Were the Galatian Christians having problems with quarrels and divisions and dissensions? Were some of them trying to destroy the others, even their ministers and Paul the Apostle?
Indeed they were, but eventually they and all the Church saw these ideas as greatness passing by. It is possible, said Paul, to bite and devour one another like wild animals following their base instincts for survival and territory. But it is also possible to build one another up in love, to make a beautiful spiritual bouquet, not only for our spiritual banquet but also for the community and the world.
And that brings us back to Vincent Van Gogh and one of his famous paintings of sunflowers in a vase. When you look at the individual sunflowers, they are not, by themselves, all that beautiful. Some are a little disfigured, others are a little wilted and droopy.
And yet together, they are a beautiful sight, holding one another up to be a beautiful bouquet of the soul. So too, the Church, composed of each of us as individual sunflowers, each a little bit imperfect here and there, some a little wilted and faded and droopy, and yet together, holding each other up, bearing one another's burdens, we can become a beautiful spiritual bouquet worthy of a Van Gogh, or even of the master human artist himself, Jesus Christ.
And such is the spiritual bouquet Christ would have with him at his spiritual banquet.
Prayer
Almighty God, whose loving power generates a multiplicity of life in a sometimes forbidding universe, and whose creative impulse causes seed to bring forth after its own kind, to bless the earth with beauty and bounty, we praise and adore you for your providential care. With beauty and splendor beyond our telling, you entrance the eye, and with subtlety and variety beyond description you satisfy tongue and taste to nourish and sustain us. We give thanks, O God.
Ages ago, in geological time, you brought forth flowers upon the earth, in an instant, as it were -- flowers hardy and delicate, large and small, intricate and plain. From mountainside edelweiss to jungle orchid, from temperate rose to torrid lilies, from rain forest lushness to desert cactus flowers, you make all the world to bloom with the multiplicity of your splendor. We praise you.
As with flowers, so with us. It has pleased you to create us male and female, in varieties of sizes and shapes, races and colorings, languages and physiques. You delight yourself in our distinctive diversities, giving us each special gifts to bless the Church and world.
Help us then, O Lord, to bring to full flower the gift you have given us. If ours is the gift of intelligence, then let us use it with the humility befitting those aware of how little they know. If ours is the gift of feeling and compassion, help us use it without condescension. If we can make music better than most, may it be music drawing hearts and minds to you and one another.
If we have a way with words, let us never be wordy, but rather worthy of expressing great thought and feeling. If ours is the gift of money-making, turning to gold almost everything we touch, save us from greed, and lead us to generosity to create jobs for others and to help those in need. If ours is the gift of a strong will, let it never degenerate into stubbornness, but be used to strengthen the spirit of others. If we can see the bright side and maintain hope in the darkest of days, grant us strength to encourage others with sympathy.
If ours is the gift of artistic expression, or cooking, or administration, or cleaning, or organization, or designing, or building, or planning, or writing, or teaching -- whatever our gift, help us, O Lord, to bring it to full flower to bless ourselves, the Church, and all the world with a spiritual bouquet, fragrant and beautiful. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
The same is true for ideas. The prophets Amos and Jeremiah were scorned by secular and religious leaders alike for their progressive ideas. Socrates was condemned by his fellow citizens. Paul was stoned and left for dead by religious conservatives incensed with his liberal ideas. Søren Kierkegaard, the now famous Danish philosopher and theologian, was largely ignored in Denmark in the early 1800s. He predicted his ideas would not be appreciated until fifty years from his death -- a prediction that came true to make him one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century.
If great ideas pass by unnoticed, so do great artists. A woman was visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and said to her friend while gazing at an artistic masterpiece, "In my judgment, I don't see what is so great about the painting." The museum guard, overhearing her, could not resist saying to her, "Madam, if you will pardon me for saying so, I think that more than you judging the painting, the painting is judging you."
So it was with the now-famous artist Vincent Van Gogh. Unappreciated in his own time when he sold not a single painting, now his paintings seem to judge all would-be critics by being sold for millions of dollars. Greatness passed by, and it took years for greatness to become recognized.
Such was the case with Van Gogh's paintings of bouquets of flowers. His still life of flowers, his flowers in a blue vase, his oleanders and irises, all from the late 1880s, waited for recognition and high prices. And so did his famous bouquet of sunflowers to which we would draw attention today. For it is the apt symbol of the spiritual bouquet essential for a spiritual banquet.
And the irony is that Van Gogh's own life and work are symbolic of two contrasting bouquets -- the one self-destructive, the other life-giving.
I.
Consider first the destructive bouquet of Van Gogh's own life, the bouquet of death.
Born in 1853 in the Netherlands to a Dutch Reformed pastor and his wife, Van Gogh was a highly sensitive and brilliant man. Although from a family of pastors, he had two uncles who were art dealers who made important art connections for him in London and Paris.
But before art, Van Gogh was rebuffed two or three times in love and later rebuffed in his efforts to be a minister. He went to work among the poor in Belgium, "abased himself to their level of destitution, slept on a board in a wooden hut, shared their privations, cared for the sick, and displayed all the inspired zeal of an apostle" (Van Gogh, by Frank Elgar, p. 2). But his zeal and intensity appeared more as madness than devotion and compassion, so they rejected him.
Van Gogh took up with an ugly, drunken prostitute, then mourned his father's death, received support from his brother, Theo, so he could go to Paris to paint. And paint he did, in a kind of frenzy, creating many of his greatest works the last years of his life in an insane asylum. But not before in a fit of rage and guilt he cut off his ear and gave it to a prostitute in a brothel. And then, tragically, as we know, he ended his life by shooting himself in a manure pile, dying two days later with his brother, Theo, at his side.
Vincent Van Gogh had terrible and tragic and destructive forces at work within him, which though utilized to produce magnificent art, eventually brought the bouquet of his life to ruin.
As with Van Gogh, so with the Church, the very art we produce, the very words and ethics, literature and teachings, music and art came to flourish while the Church itself becomes self-destructive. As with Van Gogh, so also in the Church, passions and forces out of control can cause the Church to decay, even to take its own life in a manure pile.
What are some of those forces that produce the deadly, destructive, fleshly bouquet? Paul names them -- forces which conflict with life and health, beauty and balance, and lead eventually to death. The forces are fleshly desires, from the Greek word, epithemion, which means passions and angers and hostilities which flame up suddenly like ignited gasoline.
One destructive force was that of fornication, which included not only prostitution, but all sexual vice and immorality and unfaithfulness to marriage vows.
Another suicidal force was that of lasciviousness and licentiousness, which suggest unrestrained violence and willfulness, doing what we please without regard for anyone else.
Forces of idolatry, that is, the impulse to worship what we have made, whether it be a statue, a state, or a system of thought, can be destructive. Witchcraft and sorcery, with their attendant use of drugs and magic in an attempt to force God to do our will rather than vice versa, will wither the bouquet of life at its core.
Or think of hatred, enmity, rivalry, strife, discord, quarrels, derision, distraction, division, jealousies, flashes of uncontrolled anger, seditions and dissensions, and the damage they can do to the flower of life.
The partisan spirit is especially destructive, because in an age of individualism it always thinks its ideas are right, charging forward with self-righteous opinions, without ever asking what Christ's opinion might be.
If you want to wilt a bouquet and destroy the bouquet of family or Church, just let these forces get going and they will lead to madness, mutual destruction, and suicide. Vincent Van Gogh was an extremely sensitive and gifted genius, but there were forces at work within him, probably beyond his control, which brought him to suicide.
So too with humankind, so often gifted and sensitive with geniuses everywhere. Unless these destructive forces are brought under control, the flowering of all humanity will end in a heap beside a pile of manure.
II.
If that is the fleshly bouquet of death, consider now the spiritual bouquet of life.
If we lament the tragic personal life of Van Gogh, we celebrate the artistic side, because there he brought forth a beautiful spiritual bouquet, to bless the world and give it life. In his own time, he was greatness passing by, and very few people knew it. But in our time, his greatness has come into its own.
So also with Jesus and his Church. In his own time, Jesus was greatness passing by, and few people knew it. But in these twenty centuries, his greatness has come into its own with millions and millions of people. Like his latter-day disciple, Søren Kierkegaard, whose ideas were scorned during his life, after his death they were revered and became a beautiful psychological, philosophical, and theological bouquet for the world; so too Jesus' ideas, once scorned, have produced life-giving, beautiful, spiritual bouquets for centuries.
And if we were to paint a bouquet and place flowers in a vase like a spiritual Van Gogh, what would we put there? We would, says Paul, following in the footsteps of Jesus, put the everlastingly beautiful long-stemmed flower of love. This would not be just a selfish love, but a self-giving love, a love thoughtful of others and their needs as well as of its own needs.
Another important blossom of the Holy Spirit we would add would be that of joy, not a forced joy, but a deep internal happiness or blessed-ness which comes from the graciousness of God. And then we would add the all-important blossom of peace, eirene or shalom, that deep inward sense of well-being and balance and serenity, that peace which passes all understanding, because it infuses us with the assurance that we are accepted by God, that we need not be anxious about our inadequate backgrounds.
Another blossom in our spiritual bouquet to grace our spiritual banquet table would be that of long-suffering or patience. The root word here suggests someone who is able to control for a long time the themia, the sudden passions which tend to flame up inside us to consume us and others.
Kindness is then added to our bouquet to overcome the tendency toward unkindness. Its sister blossoms are courtesy, gentleness, thoughtfulness, generosity, considerateness. In a world of pushy aggressiveness and abrasive selfishness, what a refreshing thing it is to come upon a bouquet of kindly flowers lending their beauty and fragrance to all around them, blessing them, calming them, helping them, healing them. Add to that the blossom of self-control, of self-mastery, and we have a beautiful bouquet indeed.
Were these ideas ahead of their time? Were they greatness passing by? Yes. They always are ahead of the times. Were the Galatian Christians having problems with quarrels and divisions and dissensions? Were some of them trying to destroy the others, even their ministers and Paul the Apostle?
Indeed they were, but eventually they and all the Church saw these ideas as greatness passing by. It is possible, said Paul, to bite and devour one another like wild animals following their base instincts for survival and territory. But it is also possible to build one another up in love, to make a beautiful spiritual bouquet, not only for our spiritual banquet but also for the community and the world.
And that brings us back to Vincent Van Gogh and one of his famous paintings of sunflowers in a vase. When you look at the individual sunflowers, they are not, by themselves, all that beautiful. Some are a little disfigured, others are a little wilted and droopy.
And yet together, they are a beautiful sight, holding one another up to be a beautiful bouquet of the soul. So too, the Church, composed of each of us as individual sunflowers, each a little bit imperfect here and there, some a little wilted and faded and droopy, and yet together, holding each other up, bearing one another's burdens, we can become a beautiful spiritual bouquet worthy of a Van Gogh, or even of the master human artist himself, Jesus Christ.
And such is the spiritual bouquet Christ would have with him at his spiritual banquet.
Prayer
Almighty God, whose loving power generates a multiplicity of life in a sometimes forbidding universe, and whose creative impulse causes seed to bring forth after its own kind, to bless the earth with beauty and bounty, we praise and adore you for your providential care. With beauty and splendor beyond our telling, you entrance the eye, and with subtlety and variety beyond description you satisfy tongue and taste to nourish and sustain us. We give thanks, O God.
Ages ago, in geological time, you brought forth flowers upon the earth, in an instant, as it were -- flowers hardy and delicate, large and small, intricate and plain. From mountainside edelweiss to jungle orchid, from temperate rose to torrid lilies, from rain forest lushness to desert cactus flowers, you make all the world to bloom with the multiplicity of your splendor. We praise you.
As with flowers, so with us. It has pleased you to create us male and female, in varieties of sizes and shapes, races and colorings, languages and physiques. You delight yourself in our distinctive diversities, giving us each special gifts to bless the Church and world.
Help us then, O Lord, to bring to full flower the gift you have given us. If ours is the gift of intelligence, then let us use it with the humility befitting those aware of how little they know. If ours is the gift of feeling and compassion, help us use it without condescension. If we can make music better than most, may it be music drawing hearts and minds to you and one another.
If we have a way with words, let us never be wordy, but rather worthy of expressing great thought and feeling. If ours is the gift of money-making, turning to gold almost everything we touch, save us from greed, and lead us to generosity to create jobs for others and to help those in need. If ours is the gift of a strong will, let it never degenerate into stubbornness, but be used to strengthen the spirit of others. If we can see the bright side and maintain hope in the darkest of days, grant us strength to encourage others with sympathy.
If ours is the gift of artistic expression, or cooking, or administration, or cleaning, or organization, or designing, or building, or planning, or writing, or teaching -- whatever our gift, help us, O Lord, to bring it to full flower to bless ourselves, the Church, and all the world with a spiritual bouquet, fragrant and beautiful. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
