A CALL TO LIGHTHEARTEDNESS

by

Tom Neufer Emswiler

Wesley United Methodist Church and Foundation, Urbana

6/22/03

SCRIPTURE: Proverbs 15:13-15, 17:22; John 15:1-17

“Held by God…like a feather which has no weight from its own strength and lets itself be carried by the wind”—so wrote the medieval mystic, Hildegard of Bingen. Her image of a feather lightly floating on the wind is more than spiritual poetry; it gives us a way to live.

It is so easy to be weighed down by the oppressive problems facing us. I could spend the rest of this sermon enumerating some of these problems. I sit down to read the newspaper, and I feel as if I am being assaulted by bad news. The same is true when I turn on a TV newscast. We have scores of local, regional, national and international problems. And if that is not enough to get us down we only have to look at our own friends and family and at ourselves. We can even pick and chose Biblical passages and come up with an eternal gloom and doom prediction.

I am here standing before you this morning to proclaim that this heaviness is not what God wants. God has promised to send us the breeze of the Spirit to lift us up and bear us along no matter how bad things seem to get. This is a Spirit that promises joy and happiness and laughter. It promises us health and wholeness and community. It promises us not only joy but joy to the fullest.

The writer of Proverbs understood the importance of a joyful attitude toward life. He understood that laughter and humor bring not just a momentary pleasure but more permanent positive effects on health. Modern medicine is documenting this truth today in study after study. Jesus understood the importance of joy and light heartedness too. Remember that famous passage in Matthew where Jesus says “Come unto me all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest. (Mt. 11:28-30)” I used to picture this saying literally seeing someone with an actual heavy burden. But now I see that it can also be understood psychologically or spiritually. JESUS WILL LIGHTEN OUR LOADS IF WE LET HIM.

How do we let him? First, we get CONNECTED. The passage from John in which Jesus says “I am the vine and you are the branches” has great significance. The branches gain their strength and their continuing life from the vine. They also gain from one another and are most fulfilled when they produce fruit. This is, of course, a metaphor for our own spiritual life. We grow in fruitfulness and joy as we draw from Christ the vine through reading of the Bible and other religious works, through prayer and meditation and through acts of kindness. The fruit we are to produce is the FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). As we allow ourselves to be shaped (pruned) and cleansed by Christ we find we are more and more able to live out the fruits of the Spirit in our lives and as we do this we also find other fruits being manifested—fruits of bringing others to this new relationship in Christ.

To hear all this described in simple prose may seem like deadly serious business. Hear what I said? DEADLY!!! But interestingly that is not the result Jesus says takes place. Instead the result of being bound to the vine and called to be bearers of the fruits of the Spirit is JOY. In John 15:11 it is put this way: “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy MAY BE COMPLETE.” Some other translations say “so that your joy may be full.

The opposite of joy is cynicism. Cynicism is a sense that, at its core, all life is disconnected and without meaning and value. Cynicism lives for dis-integration and distrust, it feeds on, and flourishes in a world of suspicion.

In a time of war and of rampant nationalism, we see people and nations feeding on distrust, reveling in dis-integration and calling it patriotism. Even if the leaders of the nations did miraculously see the folly of the cynical model—divide and conquer, and it's exclusivist God of Force—even if the leaders of the nations could get it together, they would face nations of people who would oppose peace because the economy of cynicism is our currency.

…until, that is, we see a child dancing in delight … until, that is, we see a dog frolicking in the surf … until, that is, the unexpected and unpredicted expression of love is given to us … until the ritual of God's joy wakens us and welcomes us to be among the living. Then the jig is up for us. No, really, the jig has just begun for us and we can dance, dance with joy.

To be light hearted does not mean to be nonchalant and uncaring. It is to refuse to accept the currency of cynicism and despair. It is to be caught up in the wonder of our world and in the great power of God’s love to bring healing and wholeness to us and to our world.

Father Ed Hays has written a beautiful book of meditations titled Feathers on the Wind. It is a call to light heartedness and to courageously and joyfully surrender to God’s compassionate love, to allow the wind of God’s Spirit to bear us along. In the book he has some captivating and immensely practical suggestions to help us along the way. I want to share just a few of them with you.

THE SALVATION OF THE “SO WHAT”

We Americans seem to be obsessed with how we appear to others. On an average day we spend about $50,000,000 on beauty goods and services! Each day some 1,600 of us have plastic surgery to improve our looks, 200 have face-lifts, and 225 receive newly shaped noses. And since slim is in, every day over 100,000,000 Americans are dieting.

A heightened consciousness about good health can cause legitimate concern about our weight. But if we dieters are honest, most of us have to admit that our major motivation lies in improving our appearance. When that kind of concern becomes a preoccupation, it can literally take over our life-energy.

But if we are truly connected to the vine, we have a different priority. Instead of being driven by questions about how others see us, we are committed to yielding ourselves to God and God’s hopes for our lives. This brings a lighthearted perspective. When a flat tire makes us late for an appointment, instead of becoming angry, we can pray a mini-prayer that goes like this: “So what! God, so what! What does being late have to do with my real concern today?”

The next time your computer goes down, a birthday party flops or an August rainstorm ruins your picnic, just chant your “So what!” prayer. Pause for a second and place the moment’s disaster within the framework of your life’s greatest concern: to be faithful with all your heart and soul to God and to love your neighbor as yourself. You may find that what first appeared as a disaster is really a gift-opportunity to reinforce your reliance on God’s love.

To be able to pray “so what?” in the midst of daily difficulties may well be a salvation prayer to you bringing more chance to lighten up and see things in the larger perspective of God’s love for you and for the world.

ELEPHANT PEGS

Have you ever wondered how those circus elephants can be kept in one place by a simple peg driven in the ground. Here is a powerful animal that can drive heavy stakes in the ground to set up a tent. It can lift hundreds of pounds with its trunk. And yet it is held by a single small stake driven into the ground. It could easily rip up that stake and be gone. Why doesn’t it strike out for freedom?

It seems that a baby elephant is trained by being chained to a concrete post buried deep in the earth. Should a young elephant tug at the post with all its might, it would be unable to pull it out of the earth. The result of such childhood training is that later in life it will never attempt to pull up the post to which it is chained, even one that could be easily yanked out of the ground.

If we wish to live with a light heart, we must be free of anything that chains us earthbound, especially any elephantine childhood restraints. Each of us has been restricted by childhood statements and attitudes both at home and at school which still shackle us today. “You’re too dumb.” “You can’t sing, just pretend you are singing.” You couldn’t fight yourself outside a cardboard box.” “I’m choosing you last for baseball because you couldn’t hit the side of a barn.”

How many of us are tied down by echoes of “You’re no good” or “Dear, you can’t do that?” All such restraints are handicaps to our spirituality. Today make an inventory of all the things you have been told you can’t do. Then weed out the ones that you don’t need or which won’t help you to become more holy. Then, write in bold red crayon across the top of your paper, “With God, all things are possible.”

TAKING A HEART READING

Finally, I believe one of the biggest obstacles to light heartedness is resentments and anger toward others. We know we live in an unfair world. All of us can site times when we have been treated badly. We can let these situations built up in us and weigh us down or we can decide to transform our circumstances and yield up our resentments to God and find true joy.

Many of you remember Stir Crazy starring Gene Wilder as Harry. Harry is a perpetually happy-go-lucky fellow with a knack for turning every experience into a gift. When Harry is thrown into prison for a crime he did not commit, the prison officials try to break his positive attitude. The guards hang Harry by his wrists for several days, only to find him with a big smile on his face. “Thank you, oh, thank you!” he exclaims as they untie him. “You’ve finally solved my back problem!”

Then the guards lock Harry in a little hot box under the sweltering sun. When they release him a few days later, he begs, “Oh, please, give me just one more day—I was just starting to get into myself.” Finally they throw Harry into a cell with Grossberger, a 300-pound crazed murderer that the toughest criminals avoid like the plague. When the guards return, they find Harry and Grossberger on the floor laughing over a game of cards. Harry kept choosing joy, and everything around him lined up with his best interests.

Harry reminds me of the Biblical character Joseph. You remember how Joseph was sold into slavery by his own brothers. Then he gets thrown into prison on false charges. But he is able to come back every time he is down. And finally toward the end of his story as he confronts his brothers again this time in a position of power over them, he says “What you intended for evil, God has turned into good” (Gen. 50:20).

Bad luck, mean treatment by others, can weigh in upon us and literally do us in. Sometimes such negative feelings built up gradually in us day by day. We may not even notice them until we suddenly realize that we are completely weighed down, absolutely bent over like the woman Jesus healed (Lk. 13:10-17). I would encourage you as a part of your spiritual discipline each day to take a heart reading. Ask yourself, “in this moment is my heart light or heavy? Am I pandering to the fears and expectations of others or proceeding from my own inner strength? Am I captive to resentments and anger or am I able to release these burdens to God and continue through my daily life? Have I given my power to appearances, or do I remember the truth?

Enjoy your life as you give it away in service to others. Everything else is details. Do not yield to the ugly monsters of resentment and insecurity. These are the figments of other people’s imagination. Your own imagination can take you to far brighter places. It can keep your heart light as you stay solidly grafted into Jesus the vine who wants to give you the gifts of forgiveness, unconditional love and joy. Amen.