“Hey Joe, Whaddaya Know?”
Sunday, December 1, 2013
The Rev. Dr. W. Frederick Wooden
Fountain Street Church
24 Fountain St., NE
Grand Rapids, MI 49503
www.fountainstreet.org
Printed by
THE EXTENSION SERVICE
of
FOUNTAIN STREET CHURCH
Single Copies……….. $1.00
Copyright © 2013 by Fountain Street Church
To the reader: This sermon was only part of a service of worship with many
components working together, all of which were designed to be experienced in a
community context. In our "free pulpit" tradition, its concepts are intended not as
truths to receive, but as spurs to your own thought and faith.
2
“Hey Joe, Whaddaya Know?”
“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator
for all I have not seen.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Responsive Reading
With mounds of greenery, the brightest ornaments, we bring high summer to
our rooms, as if to spite the somberness of winter come.
In time of want, when life is boarding up against the next uncertain spring,
we celebrate and give of what we have away.
All creatures bend to rules, even the stars constrained.
There is a blessed madness in the human need to go against the grain of
cold and scarcity.
We make a holiday, the rituals varied as the hopes of humanity,
The reasons as obscure as ancient solar festivals, as clear as joy on one
small face.
– Margaret Starkey
Readings
Matthew 24:36 - "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of
heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
“The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus”
– by Ogden Nash
*****
Sermon
Before beginning, I need to note that twice this past week I lost my temper. Yes, I
was dealing with the cable TV company, so I am in a large company; but even so the
experience of losing my temper was even more unpleasant than the occasion that
prompted it. Religious liberals are not comfortable confessing sins, for good reason.
But we end up avoiding the spiritual unease that personal failures can bring. This
morning I confess my intemperance as a fellow flawed creature, and that is why each
week I ask for guidance by saying “May the words of my mouth…”
Yes, I memorized Nash’s poem. To be honest, I memorized it many years ago as a
gift to my wife. It was a poem she loved, and in our salad days material gifts were hard
3
to afford. Today I cannot remember many of those physical gifts but recall that first
Christmas season: a day cleaning house in our tiny apartment on the South Side of
Chicago rehearsing verses in my head, her face wrapped against the cold as she
came in from work, and how after presenting my gift I received a newlywed smile and
kiss.
More recently, I remembered a colleague who has promoted the idea of
memorizing things as a form of spiritual discipline. This appealed to me, as classic
spiritual disciplines have not worked. When I meditate I drift off or get inconvenient
itches. Journaling ends up being a diary of daily and ordinary life. I seem to be good
at remembering passages, and that made me think my latter life vocation might be a
custodian of wisdom that can be shared by heart.
Ogden Nash’s poem about Jabez Dawes is hardly epic poetry, but it is worth
memorizing because it has a nugget of wisdom in it. But to get to that, let me back up
and start with another story.
“Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary
had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with
child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to
expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had
resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph,
son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her
is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will
save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by
the Lord through the prophet:
‘Look, the maiden shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him
Emmanuel’, which means, ‘God is with us.’ When Joseph awoke from sleep,
he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but
had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him
Jesus.”
Most people focus on the idea of Mary being miraculously pregnant, either that it is
essential or that it is ridiculous, but overlook Joseph because if you are an orthodox
Christian, he is not actually related to Jesus. But he is there and maybe for good
reason. I believe one reason is faith, part of the fifty year old advent tradition here at
Fountain Street Church takes Paul’s famous trinity – faith, hope and love – and adds
joy to make themes for Advent. Today is the first Sunday, the Sunday of faith. And
this year I am looking at characters in the nativity story as lenses for exploring these
abstract ideas.
Joseph has faith. Consider that he and Mary are betrothed, a commitment as
binding as marriage back then, provided the woman is not pregnant. But Mary is
pregnant, a valid reason to break the contract. He could make a scene but instead
looks for a quiet way to break it off, then just before doing so has a dream that he takes
to be a message from God. Such prophetic dreams are common in ancient times.
Torah has many, including the passage read this week in which Pharaoh has a
mysterious dream which only Joseph, the son of Israel, can interpret.
4
Hmm. I never noticed that. Both biblical Josephs have their lives changed by
dreams. Both the first and second Joseph are models of faithfulness. Even the gospel
seems impressed that this Joseph chose to believe a dream rather than the evidence
right in front of his eyes. Take away the familiar aura of sanctity and we see that he
chooses to be faithful to Mary despite evidence that she was unfaithful to him.
Did you notice that I used the word faithful in two ways? One is the sense of
believing something to be true without objective evidence of its truth. Joseph believed
his dream more than his waking knowledge – in this case a pregnant fiancée, but it
could mean believing in God or the Bible.
That’s the way we usually think of faith. Nash’s poem about Jabez Dawes is about
that kind of faith. In a way, the poem is a witty warning against atheism. Santa does
after all have the formal traits of Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s God – omniscience (he
knows when what you’ve been bad or good), omnipresence (he visits every house in
the whole world on a single night), and omnipotence (able to fly through the air with
toys for every child, created from thin air or bad boys). Nash spins out Pascal’s
famous wager into a charming story, much as Matthew elaborates the esoteric idea of
salvation by weaving a story.
At first glance it appears that Jabez is punished for failing to believe, and Joseph is
celebrated for believing. But that does an injustice to both Nash and the Bible. It is
also where the second idea of faith is helpful.
I conducted a wedding yesterday. And like most every couple, they promised to be
faithful, which we all know does not mean believe in them but that we will be loyal to
them. That’s not the same, but is connected. We won’t be faithful to something false.
We must trust that what we have faith in is true. Trust and true are related. They
come from a root common to English and Frisian and Dutch of something that can be
depended on.
Turning back to marriage, couples getting married make their promise to be faithful
before they know for sure that they can. Yes, people often live together now and know
each other for some time, but whether someone is worth your faith is impossible to
know for sure early on. Only over time does that commitment prove true or false.
I am saying that we have to have faith in some things before we know that they are
worth it. In some ways, perhaps ironically, faith is like the scientific method. We enter
a marriage or a religion as a hypothesis we hope to be true, and then test over and
over until our trust is proved.
Most weeks our welcome message says, ‘doubt and belief work hand in hand to
free the mind.’ Those are my words but not my thoughts. “Doubt isn't the opposite of
faith; it is an element of faith,” said the theologian Paul Tillich. “There lives more faith
in honest doubt than in half the creeds,” said Alfred Lord Tennyson. “It would be the
height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility ‘faith’ said John Calvin.
“Faith is a fine invention/When gentlemen can see,/But microscopes are prudent/In an
emergency,” said Emily Dickinson. Of course there are dozens more.
5
Turning back to Jabez Dawes, he is punished not for lack of faith in Santa but for
lack of faith in anything. He trusts nothing. And who would welcome someone who
was untrusting? Who wants to be around someone who is undependable? In a sense
he did not exist even before Santa showed up, because human society is based on the
premise that people are trustworthy, dependable, worth putting faith in.
Sometimes we are wrong, of course. Who has not been let down, hurt, even
betrayed by someone close? And most of us have let down, hurt and betrayed others.
More often than not we forgive them. Why?
Because we are capable of such ourselves, of course. But more importantly,
because faith is a basic human quality. Those who lack it entirely are called
sociopaths. They are considered ill. Why does the abused child still love the abusing
parent, or the battered spouse the battering partner? Because we need to believe that
people are worth it even when they don’t live up to it. Yes, that need can and does
overpower suffering and even rational sense. It is sometimes sad and even pathetic,
but far worse would be the world where we all waited until everyone proved they were
worthy of trust. It would be a world of fear, living in emotional or even actual fortresses
to keep outsiders from getting in – a world of suspicion where even those closest to us
are not to be trusted and everyone sleeps with one eye open and a hand upon a
weapon.
The gospel lesson in Christian churches includes this verse from Matthew, close to
the end of the story actually, which talks about the end times. 24:36 "But about that
day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the
Father.” Even Jesus did not know for sure what lay ahead. Still, he acts as though the
future is trustworthy. That’s faith, not the abstract affirmation of doctrines and dogmas
or creeds. Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk, put it more simply, “You do
not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What
you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present
moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope” William James, the
philosopher, called it “The Will to Believe,” which means not belief in some grand
cosmic plan, but the decision to trust even when evidence to justify it is scant.
Joseph had a dream, telling him that he did not know the whole story. Yes, Mary is
pregnant, but it’s not what you think. Was he a fool? In a British book and television
drama called “Call the Midwife,” a married woman gives birth to baby that is clearly not
her husband’s child – her husband is white like her but the baby is obviously part
African. The mother and the midwife are terrified of what the husband will say and do.
He sees the baby, and whether he chooses to ignore its appearance or simply does
not see it we do not know. He embraces it, loves it, and as it grows, proudly carries it
around and introduces his child. The neighborhood thinks him a fool. At first.
6