Worship

This is a speech I gave in the spring of 2008. During that semester, five different students at the high school lost parents.

I would like to begin chapel today by thanking someone. I know he’s not here to witness this, but my father is the man who is most responsible for all the good qualities I have as a person.  My dad can beat up your dad. He’s a varsity athlete in two sports, recruited to play college football, but instead opts for the Naval Academy. While there he beats the Navy heavyweight boxing champion in a fight, and wins a one hundred yard dash against the Kansas state champion. He is a Marine. He may in fact be a spy.  His office is the only one in the whole Department of Commerce with a keypad entry on it.  He has visited every city I’ve ever seen in a James Bond movie. And he can tell me what the food is like at every restaurant in those movies.  He once ran a fifty mile race!  He and my mother taught me everything I know about what it is to be a human and a man.

When I think back to my upbringing, I can scarcely even hope to emulate the self-sacrifice, wisdom, and artistry with which they live their lives.  My mom is in the back there, for those of you who don’t know her.  She’s been one of the best teachers in the country for more than a decade.  I really pity those of you who don’t get to take her class. Sorry for embarrassing you, Mom.

But it’s my father I actually want to talk to you about today. This is my father. My father’s unique gift is in his voice; he has a voice of command, of authority, and of understanding.  I have never in my life heard him swear. I’ve never even heard him use an angry expression. The words that come out of his mouth are completely under control. You know, both the smartest and the dumbest people in the armed forces are in the Marines, and I once asked my father how he survived as an officer in the marines without swearing.  He said that he knew he had authority, so he just spoke the truth, and if you can do that, people will do what you say.

I’ve witnessed pastors, parents, punks, and principles speaking angrily to my father. They swear, threaten and holler. He waits politely until they’re finished and then says, “This is what you’re going to do.” And by the time he’s finished talking, they’re calling him sir, apologizing, and promising to do better next time.

I try to imitate this aspect of my father, though I don’t really know if it’s the pitch or the tone or the volume that does the trick. Those students whom I’ve yelled at in the hall or in class or on the basketball court have merely heard an imitation (a poor and screeching one at that) of the command that is in Captain Karl B. Nebbia’s instruction. I have to raise my voice to get part of the effect. He merely enunciates.

Let me give you an example of what it’s like to talk to my Dad. There are points in the gospels where we are told that Jesus speaks with authority.  When I was little I always imagined him speaking with my father’s voice. Dad just sounds like a man who’s in control. Like in The Gospel According to St. John in the 4^th chapter where the Samaritan woman says, “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” When my father gives instructions that’s how people respond to him. “I can tell you’re in charge here.  Tell me how to avoid messing up any more.”

And I love how Christ replies to her with absolute calm and certainty. He says “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.  Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

The woman says back to him, “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.” Complete control.

But I’m afraid I’ve mislead you to a certain extent.  I keep speaking of these actions in the present tense. The man you see on the screen isn’t my father any more.

Let me explain. Being human has certain characteristics and certain limitations. We perceive, we describe, and we create. These are things no other creature on the earth does. When we do all these things at once we call it storytelling.  Humans are creatures of stories; for instance, some of the earliest evidence of artistic activity is drawings in caves. When archeologists find drawings of humans hunting antelopes in caves in France, they immediately know that this is an adventure story told by humans. Now one might question how we know this is a human creation.  After all, there are no video tapes or pictures, no security cameras or even eye witnesses. Maybe this is a horror story told by antelopes about the hairless monkeys that keep attacking them with pointed sticks. But we know that’s not the case for one very simple reason. Antelopes don’t draw. No other creatures besides humans draw or tell stories. You can teach a gorilla or elephant or even a mouse to paint, but left to himself, he will never get the idea. However, every child, when left alone in a house will draw on the walls.

One way of summarizing all the things that make humans unique is to say that we are conscious, which doesn’t only mean that we are awake. Philosophically “conscious” means we see ourselves differently than dogs, cats, dolphins, or even gorillas. If you show any of these animals a picture of themselves at a younger age, they will not treat it any differently than if you show them a picture of another animal.

But we humans actually make a ritual out of viewing pictures of ourselves and remembering our lives, especially at different moments in life, like weddings, birthdays, anniversary, and even graduation. I got married this summer. Here’s a picture.

I can look at that picture and recognize an earlier version of myself in it. I can still dance with my wife, we could even get the tux and the dress out, put on a Stevie Wonder record, and dance to the same song, but that moment in my life has passed.  I can’t get it back, though I can remember it, think about it, and wish I could regain parts of that experience. Humans are aware of their passage through time and that they are changing. I look at my picture and see my life passing through that point and continuing.

Each of us sees himself as the central figure in a narrative (we are storytellers). We actually spend time recording and admiring the plot of that story, even though it’s the one plot we are unable to alter on our own.

The great limitation to this part of our humanity is that our stories don’t ever really have a pause or a stop until the Lord calls us back home. With literature, the plot can end before death. We think of Jason Bourne as a hero because of where the story ends. Maybe he goes on to live a quiet life helping the elderly cross the road.  Maybe he joins Bono and the Edge and spends the rest of his life helping poor people in Africa and cheating poor people in Ireland.  I can see it now.  Sixty years from now, you may take your grand children to see the Bourne Senility, where Matt Damon, having been committed to a retirement home by his resentful children dominates the shuffleboard and tries to get his vitamins back from the FBI. Maybe he becomes a villain.

Martin Heidegger

We assume that the main characters of rom-coms live happily ever after because we never get to see the moment after their reconciliation. We don’t get to see their first anniversary, or what happens once they have children, all we see is Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson smiling dreamily at each other the way only people who don’t have a future to worry about can. The lie that movies tell us is that there’s no sequel coming next summer with bigger villains and more complicated plot twists, new love interests and a different setting.

But the truth about our lives is that we all have a future. After every triumph, every reconciliation, and similarly, after every failure and every fractured friendship, another moment follows.

The great German Philosopher Martin Heidegger said that because we are aware of our passage through time, we exist, but we never get to say what we are.

You can tell he’s a great philosopher because of his mustache. It’s not as good as Friedrich Nietzsche’s, but … that was the craziest mustache of all time. Heidegger might tell Spanish I students that “estar” can be used to describe humans, never “ser.” For example, this is a picture of me and my brother, Joe, when we were four and two.

Below is another one from last summer.  Joe is still about a head shorter than me, but he’s been married for almost six years and has two kids.  He got a steady job before I did. In many ways, Joe is now older than me.

This used to be my family, below. I’m the big gangly one in the middle with limbs like a marshwiggle. Joe’s there on the right, seven years old but still timidly wearing the swim sweater, Val next to him not anywhere near the beautiful woman she would grow to be.  The one on the left that looks like a rubber ducky is Karl.  That kid had the largest head of all time.  It’s like Jupiter orbiting the sun of his body.  It’s like an orange balancing on another orange.

This is my family now. It’s grown.  There’s Joe next to the tree, And Karl with a new normal sized head, and my gorgeous sister sitting on the bench with my even more gorgeous bride.  I have new brothers and sisters now: new people to discover and defend.

Time moves and we change.  Our relationships develop and it’s difficult to find a stopping point to evaluate where we’re going. You guys are pretty good at reminding me of this. I still think of myself as one of the “young teachers,” at the school, but that is certainly changing.  A girl tried to guess my age earlier this year and came up with 47.  She’d have been closer if she guessed that I was a 7^th grader. I had a student, aware of the fact that we are all speeding through time, ask me how I knew my wife would still love me when I finished going bald.  I used to be able to dunk. Really.  Those who saw the charity game early this semester could see that’s no longer a possibility. Freshmen won’t be freshmen forever, and in about five months the seniors will be freshmen again.

My father is no longer the man he was thirty years ago.  His voice is as strong and as clear, but he’s more careful now, more interested in augmenting the voices of the people who are around him than using his strength to defend them. This is who he is now. He tends his lawn and garden instead of running. I haven’t seen him play basketball or baseball in over a decade. He has two grandsons. That will change a person. He would rather spend time with them than command troops.

Now some people don’t like this idea very much. They try to avoid it and get time to stop. Ever see a fifty year-old woman coming out of Forever 21 with a pink halter-top and a tanned-until-orange midriff showing? Lady, that store lied to you.  I love baseball, but I still don’t understand why football coaches wear sweats, basketball coaches wear suits, and baseball managers and coaches wear the team uniform.  Do they think that if there’s an injury to the shortstop they’ll somehow get into the game? It’s only after our death that a final word will be said on the meaning of our lives, and then we’re likely to be either surprised or frustrated.  We don’t get to pause our journey through time.  All we can do is speak the truth, and make choices based upon it.

However, I am inclined to say that when Heidegger says we NEVER get a moment to think about who we are and what we have become, he is exercising a bit too much Teutonic fatalism. Graduation, for instance, is a point where little is going on besides taking stock of who you ARE, in the sense that Heidegger would use the word. It’s a breathing point where we get to see what our life has achieved so far. There is something I really like about Heidegger though and that is the way he cuts through the most unforgivably stupid parts of the religion I hold dear.

He shows us that we are all in the process of becoming something.

It’s abject foolishness to go about thinking that after we become Christians our job is over or to divide the occupants of the world into the holy and the profane, because none of us is finished growing or finished dying. We are everyday becoming either more or less like Christ, more an eternal being, or more a being which must be destroyed. But none of us here is finished yet. That is either a comforting thought or a frightening thought, depending on which way you’re headed.

CS Lewis said it this way. “Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before.”

Heidegger will tell you that by the time all those decisions have accumulated, many people, like Dorian Grey, would not recognize their own portrait.

There is something then that I would like to point out about this process that I hope will allow us intentionally create who we are, and prevent who we have become from horrifying us at some point in the future. I don’t want anyone to wake up on a Saturday morning twenty years from now and realize, like David Byrne in his song “Once in a Lifetime” he’s married to the wrong person, sleeping in the wrong house, living the wrong life.

1^st take a lesson from the Merchant of Venice and Shylock. Shylock has a great gift for cutting through the rhetoric and hypocrisy people throw at him. When told by Portia that he must be merciful, he asks, “On what compulsion must I? Tell me that.” Portia launches into her famous speech about how great mercy is, but it’s entirely futile. They can’t make Shylock do the kind thing, the right thing.  They can beg and threaten all they want, but the choice is still his.

Whether or not a man makes good choices is the result of his conscience, not a matter of how many church services he attends or his daily devotions.  Going to youth group isn’t going to keep someone off drugs any more than the signs on the highway will make someone obey the speed limit. He has to make a choice, and every choice changes his conscience; it changes the thing that chooses.  This is really the terrifying part of romance: no amount of marriage counseling or tithing or whatever can force someone to be faithful.

And thank God. We teachers often make it our job to try to create a school or a classroom where no one is able to mess up, where the opportunity to do something wrong doesn’t exist. This is a mistake. If we were to see a situation where someone locked his spouse in the basement to prevent her from cheating, we would call it abuse, not love, though some of my students would still pay money to watch a movie of the incident.  Similarly, because God is love he refuses to make virtue something that has to happen. He merely asks us to choose it.  I for one am glad that teaching doesn’t mean forcing people to be perfect.

What I would encourage everyone to do then, throughout his life, is to protect and inspect your conscience.  There are many ways to do this, friends, scripture, church, and especially prayer, but by now everyone has heard them all from people who have more theological study than I.  If I may though, I would like to suggest that the most important part of maintaining the conscience too often gets overlooked.

That’s worship. We talk about worship as if it’s something for God, as if he needs us.  Or even worse as if it’s something to do lest we displease him or some other authority figure within swinging distance. What is nearly always neglected is the affect it has on us.

William Temple, who used to be the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1881- 1944 said, “Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of the mind with his truth; the purifying of the imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of the will to his purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable, and therefore the chief remedy of that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.”

The aim of worship is to stop thinking about ourselves for just a moment and think about the great mystery that surrounds life and determines our path.  When we’re really worshipping, we don’t think about other people, we don’t even think about ourselves, we just think about God. That’s why the high church maintains a repetitive, ritualized service. We can’t REALLY dance if we’re constantly looking at our feet.  A good worship service doesn’t force us to do anything; it only opens up the avenue for us to listen to God. It’s an invitation.

The prayers we speak together are merely a skeleton, a frame.  Our own inner emotions and interactions with the almighty have to dress it with flesh and produce the real prayer that lifts up from among us. When the Samaritan woman is amazed that Christ knows her, she immediately asks how she can worship as he does.

College professors often call this experience the liminal. It’s the experience we get when we’re swallowed up by the energy of a throng, when we participate in something larger than ourselves and become engulfed by a corporate emotion, like chanting or dancing with a crowd at a concert or a sporting event. For a moment, it’s somebody else’s story, the singer’s, the athlete’s, experience and story that matters, not our own. To this day one of my friends still talks about seeing Pink Floyd in 1980 at RFK stadium and singing “We don’t need no education” with 70,000 other people. This is why people talk about sex as being so significant. If it’s an individual experience, something is wrong. The liminal is a vital, powerful thing in human life, and what it allows us to do is to ignore ourselves and our own story for just one minute and see who God is: see who we are in his eyes.

True worship is a hard and unsettling thing; it can change a life, and there are times in my life when I have been unready for it or incapable of it.

If that’s the case, try an intermediate step. Practice thanking God by thanking other people. Practice worshiping God by giving earnest compliments to those around you.  I was a class sponsor for four years at school, and I was terrible at it like I have never been at anything before in my life.  My classes would go semesters without events, meetings, or announcements.  How we got through graduation and the senior trip was not my doing.  It was the work of my two co-sponsors.  They’re the ones who did a great job to accomplish much.  I always thought I was a good baseball player until I stopped one afternoon and watched the ferocity and precision with which my little brother pitched.  It is in those moments of perceiving, and describing the brilliance of those around us, of telling stories about other people, that we understand what we want to create with our own lives, and the steps we need to create it.  Seniors, you only have the time until graduation to spend with the people around you, and then you are never going to see them again.  You think I’m wrong, that you will always stay with your guys. That you’ll be back to coach or to teach or for homecoming, but you don’t know which way the wind will blow you.

I encourage you to take some time to tell those around you how much you appreciate what they do for you.  Take the time to say something now.  They’ll be grateful, but more importantly, it will give you the opportunity to learn about yourself, and as this semester has taught all of us here, we can’t stop change from coming, and we might not get another chance.