June 4, 2006
Pentecost Sunday
Text: Psalm
78:23-24
Misdiagnosis
The Gospel as
Opposed to Chicken Little
It could have been anything, I suppose – a seed dropped by an over-flying bird; a twig dislodged by a scurrying squirrel. But it was an acorn that perchance fell, one day on the surprised head of Chicken Little, walking at that precise moment through the woods. An acorn, that marble-sized harbinger of mighty oaks to come, whose falling is a prerequisite for the shade of the next generation; an acorn – what in many traditions is a symbol of promise and hope for tomorrow – as a chance projectile that becomes the portent of doom. "Oh my goodness!" said Chicken Little. "The sky is falling! I must go and tell the king."
On her way to the king's palace, Chicken
Little met Henny Penny. Henny Penny said that she was going into the woods to
hunt for worms.
"Oh no, don't go!" said Chicken
Little. "I was there and the sky fell on my head! Come with me to tell the
king."
So Henny Penny joined Chicken Little and
they went along and went along as fast as they could. It was a conversation and a caution
subsequently repeated along the way with Cocky Locky, Turkey Lurkey and finally
sly old Foxy Woxy. But with him, the
story took a different turn.
"Where are you going, my fine feathered
friends?" asked Foxy Woxy. He spoke in a polite manner, so as not to
frighten them.
"The sky is falling!" cried
Chicken Little. "We must tell the king."
"I know a shortcut to the palace,"
said Foxy Woxy sweetly. "Come and follow me."
But wicked Foxy Woxy did not lead the others
to the palace. He led them right up to the entrance of his foxhole. Once they
were inside, Foxy Woxy was planning to gobble them up! Just as Chicken Little
and the others were about to go into the fox's hole, they heard the king’s
hunting dogs, growling and howling.
How Foxy Woxy ran, across the meadows and
through the forests, with the hounds close behind. He ran until he was far, far
away and never dared to come back again.
After that day, Chicken Little always
carried an umbrella with her when she walked in the woods. The umbrella was a
present from the king. And if --KERPLUNK -- an acorn fell, Chicken Little
didn't mind a bit. In fact, she didn't notice it at all.
In this particular version of the tale, everybody comes out okay – except, of course, the fox. And the story sounds familiar – perhaps because of the Disney movie that brought it to the screen in recent years; or perhaps because a parent or a teacher read it to us as children; or maybe because the chicken’s frivolous warning has simply passed into the cultural vocabulary, for Chicken Little has had countless children.
Chicken Little: the patron saint of all who blow little things out of proportion – who imagine harm that isn’t there, who exaggerate the hazards that potentially are, and unnecessarily roil into a frenzy everyone they meet. In her haste, Chicken Little neglects her judgment, acts on impulse, and puts her friends at risk.
“In her haste.” That simple phrase might be the key to all the problems that ensue. Chicken Little exercised poor judgment, but that poor judgment grew directly out of the shallow soil of tissue-thin patience.
Paulo Coelho writes of a lecture scheduled to be delivered by a great Sufi Master. Planned to begin at 2 pm, the event was set to be a great success. As he tells it:
“The thousand seats were completely sold out and more than seven hundred people were left outside, watching the lecture on closed-circuit television.
At two o-clock precisely an assistant of Nasrudin’s came in, saying that, for unavoidable reasons, the lecture would begin late. Some got up indignantly, asked for their money back, and left. Even so a lot of people remained both inside and outside the lecture hall.
By four in the afternoon, the Sufi master had still not appeared, and people gradually began to leave the place, picking up their money at the box office. By six o’clock, the original seventeen hundred spectators had dwindled to less than a hundred.
At that moment Nasrudin came in. He appeared to be extremely drunk and began to flirt with a beautiful young woman sitting in the front row.
Astonished, the people who had remained began to feel indignant. How could the man behave like that after making them wait four solid hours? There were some disapproving murmurs, but the Sufi master ignored them.
After cursing the people who were complaining, Nasrudin tried to get up but fell heavily to the floor. Disgusted, more people decided to leave, saying it was pure charlatanism, that they would denounce the degrading spectacle to the press.
Only nine people remained. As soon as the final group of outraged spectators had left, Nasrudin got up; he was completely sober, his eyes glowed, and he had about him an air of great authority and wisdom. ‘Those of you who have stayed are the ones who will hear me,’ he said. ‘You have passed through the two hardest tests on the spiritual road: the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what you encounter. It is you I will teach.’”[1]
When the day of Pentecost had come, the story begins, they were all together in one place. Waiting. Earlier, in the 1st chapter of Acts, Jesus had instructed his disciples to stay in Jerusalem – not to leave – but to wait there for God’s promise. “You will receive power,” Jesus had assured them. But you have to wait for it and, as the Sufi teacher had indicated, not be disappointed with what you encounter. So, they had waited, with what we might presume was something of a curious, open and expectant mind. Then, finally, their patience was rewarded.
And suddenly from heaven there came a sound
like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were
sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared
among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with
the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them
ability.
But the moment arrived, for some in the crowd, as an acorn bouncing on their head, resulting in a familiar misdiagnosis. “Charlatanism,” some in the crowd no doubt claimed, “the likes of which should be reported.”
“Drunkenness,” presumed still others, the likes of which should be self-righteously ignored.
“Theatrics,” still others might have guessed, the likes of which should be put on stage.
But those, however, with the openness and patience to discern it saw something quite different: the very power and presence of God. Neither the acrobatics of people nor the disintegration of the cosmos, what was falling was the fire of possibility and animation and nourishment for the soul. It was something the likes of which the Psalmist had described about an event generations before – how…
God commanded the
skies above,
and opened the doors of heaven;
raining down on them manna to eat,
and giving them the grain of heaven.
In our Chicken Little world, defined more by airport searches and border paranoias, pandemic panics and economic fragility than by hopeful curiosity about the possibilities befalling; in a world almost frozen by rabid fearfulness where virtually anything dropping on our head is assumed to carry the seed of our personal or aggregate destruction, what would it mean to diagnose it another way?
Unlike so many of the religious and political voices today cautioning us against going into the woods – hunkering down beneath constitutional amendments to forbid this or demand that; encircled by ever taller fences watched by more and more cameras, what would it mean for us to truly stand apart, as we have been imagining these past few years, as a curious and embracing community that is not inured to danger, but is not driven by fear? That recognizes how, in our haste, we can squeeze the circle so tight that we protect ourselves out of existence?
Ø What if we asked questions before issuing pronouncements and polemics?
Ø What if our first response were patient wonder rather than strident warning?
Ø And what if our invitation to others was to wonder alongside of us, in a spirit of curious possibility, instead of alarmingly urging them to lock elbows with us as a barricade against anything different we don’t recognize or understand?
What if, in other words, we were to live as if that which is falling might just be, not the sky at all, but something more like that acorn, the harbinger of mighty oaks to come, whose falling is the prerequisite for the precious shade we seek ahead; the very grain of heaven poured out, the fiery breath of God’s own spirit? And what if its purpose is not destruction, but the expansive, ever enlarging gift of life, itself?
What if, indeed?