“The
Colors Through Which we Look at Life”
Fifth in a Series
on the Sanctuary Stained Glass Windows
March 21, 2010 Des Moines
John 6:35, 48-51
The Wheat
Things have changed by now; and
even then, as I admitted in the Link column I wrote last month, it was a small
thing. But it had become an
irritation. You had no doubt noticed
that the display sign near our parking lot had been stuck on gratitude since
mid-November. The problem, of course, had
nothing to do with gratitude but with the ice that had frozen shut the covers
and the snow drifts in the flower beds surrounding the sign that prevented
their movement even were they free. And
as I recognized at the time, it was hardly the source of public annoyance. Plenty of signs stay up longer than this one
– candidate signs, for one example – and it was hardly visible anyway,
surrounded as it was by all that snow.
But there were other things we
wanted to say, other invitations we wanted to extend, and those encouragements
to extravagant gratitude – as timely as they might have been for the
thanksgiving season during which they first appeared – had long since begun to
feel a little worn. Missed completely
was any chance to wish passersby a “Merry Christmas” or a “Happy New
Year.” Concerts came and went without
mention. I began to despair that Holy
Week and Easter might themselves pass without signage before enough thawing
occurred to change the letters. But as you have seen, the day finally came –
the melting of our own “Great Ice Age” – and the letters have since changed;
more than once.
But – and this is the perversity
of it – now I rather miss the reminder. Thanksgiving’s
sentiments might be the perfect Easter message – and timely. In these days when scarcity dominates the
headlines – not enough jobs, not enough exports, not enough economic growth,
not enough money – our lives are nonetheless blessed and full of grace.
You might fairly see it another
way – the notion of “gratitude” something like salt in the wounds of a season,
for many, of far too little. “Give
thanks for what?” you and countless others might be asking, along with the
poet W.F. Croffut whose character Simon
Soggs posed the very same question:
"Let Earth give
thanks," the deacon said,
And then the proclamation
read.
"Give thanks fer what,
an' what about?"
Asked Simon Soggs when
church was out.
"Give thanks fer what?
I don't see why;
The rust got in an' spiled
my rye,
And hay wan't half a crop,
and corn
All wilted down-and looked
forlorn;
The bugs jest gobbled my
pertaters,
The what-you-call-em lineaters,
And gracious! When you come
to wheat,
There's more than all the
world can eat;
Onless a war should
interfere,
Crops won't bring half a
price this year;
I'll hev to give 'em away, I
reckon !"
"Good for the poor!
" exclaimed the deacon.
"Give thanks? "
said Simon Soggs again,
"Jest look at what a
fix we're in!
The country's rushin' to the
dogs
At race-horse speed! "
said Simon Soggs;
"Rotten all through -
in every State,
Why, ef we don't repudiate,
We'll hev to build, fer big
and small,
A poor-house that'll hold us
all.
All round the crooked
whiskey still
Is runnin' like the devil's
mill;
Give thanks? How mad it makes me feel,
To think how office-holders steal!
The taxes paid by you and me
Is four times bigger'n they
should be;
The Fed'ral Gov'ment's all
askew,
The ballot's sech a mockery,
too!
Some votes too little, some
too much,
Some not at all -- it beats
the Dutch!
And now no man knows what to
do,
Or how is how, or who is
who.
Deacon! Corruption's sure to
kill!
This ‘glorious Union’ never
will,
I'll bet a continental cent,
Elect another President!
Give thanks fer what, I'd like to know?"
The deacon answered, sad and
low,
"Simon ! it fills me
with surprise,
Ye don't see whar yer duty
lies;
Kneel right straight down,
in all the muss,
And thank God that it ain't
no wuss !"
Well, that’s something, I suppose
– as far as it goes; it just doesn’t go very far. Here, in the midst of what is arguably a time
when there is more than enough in this world to go around, the peanut butter
hardly gets spread evenly across the bread.
There are globs and then there are gaps, and no one likes to take a bite
– of a sandwich or of life – and come up empty.
Ironic,
then, that every time we gather in this space we are confronted by the symbol
of prosperity and abundance. It’s up
there on the south side of the sanctuary, in the stained-glass window bearing
sheaves of wheat bundled after the harvest.
It’s
an ancient symbol. Early agricultural
people viewed a good wheat harvest as the down-payment on the mountains of
bread that would keep the community alive throughout the winter. Wheat sheaves
understandably came to represent all that is truly nourishing and
life-affirming (“Mystic Symbols of the
Harvest” by Cait Johnson, http://www.care2.com/greenliving/mystic-symbols-of-the-harvest.html#).
In
the Old Testament, both Joseph and the Egyptian Pharaoh had dreams about wheat
that telegraphed prosperity. In the late
1990’s, Waterford Crystal began to release a limited edition collection of
glasses that bore the symbols of their four prayers for the new
millennium: a dove for peace, a bow for
joy, a heart for love, and sheave of wheat for prosperity – abundance. And ever since the mid-1970’s when the
windows from old Central Christian Church were installed here, looming large in
this room: abundance. Prosperity.
So
what are we to make of that assertion?
Is it all just a hoax – a cruel joke?
Haven’t we known more than a few – many of whom are no stranger to these
pews – who have scarcely had enough, let alone an abundance? Haven’t we known all kinds of people who
could hardly be accused of committing prosperity? And those, and we haven’t even begun to
stretch our vision beyond these doors and around the world.
What
are we to make of this window – and this premise?
Perhaps one thing we can make of
it is the need to change our angle of vision.
The truth is that we don’t have to look very far in nature to see
examples of abundance. Think of all
those snowflakes and their infinite designs.
How many seeds are there in a watermelon (the old-fashioned kind)? Or a tomato?
Or an okra spear? Did you know
that a typical ear of Iowa corn contains 800 kernels? Or that there can be as many as 300 grapes in
a cluster (though a mere 60 is closer to the norm), and how many clusters on a
single vine? And that each grape
contains up to four seeds? And did you
know that a single head of wheat can contain 80 kernels? Now consider that all those waving fields of
wheat in the United States – all those heavy heads – represent only the third
largest in the world behind China and India.
We are surrounded by abundance.
Which
is to say that maybe the abundance we are seeking is not the abundance we are
given. I know that there are preachers –
on TV and those who would like to be – who insist that God wants us all to be
rich; that if we only had enough faith, all our problems would be over. But they never tell us how much is enough.
Last
month at Minister’s Week in Fort Worth I heard the author of the best-selling
book The Shack, William Paul Young, talk about his faith and how the book
came to be. He told the story of being
called to the hospital where his wife’s grandmother was gravely ill, and how a
friend of one of their nieces was chastising them for not having enough
faith. “If you had enough faith, your
grandmother wouldn’t be in this condition,” he asserted. More than aggravated, Young approached the young
man and inquired as to how much faith might be required in this situation. “Would even the faith of one single
individual be enough?”
“Well,
yes,” was the young man’s response.
“Fine. You’re it.
If she dies, it’s your fault.”
How
much faith is required to unlock all these storehouses of gold and silver that
God is for some reason holding back? And
who is to say, when they are finally open, that God’s calculation of abundance
equals mine? I mean will it pay off my
mortgage, or just this month’s share?
Will it satisfy all my creditors, or just cover my weekly tab at Starbucks? Exactly what constitutes abundance?
“None
of the above,” I think Jesus might respond.
When he spoke about abundance I’m fairly sure, contrary to my television
colleagues on television, that my bank account, my pantry, nor my garage were not
on his mind. God is not just waiting for
me to say the magic word to release all the “goods.” Oh, I’m absolutely sure he wants us all to
have enough to eat, but I’m also aware that our definitions of “need” and
“want” have become so corrupted that any serious attempt to differentiate
between them is automatically suspect.
Our sense of the standard of living to which we aspire is really not
God’s concern.
It
is, however, scripture’s conviction that whether or not we have enough to eat
or pay the bills; whether or not we have enough to buy a bus token or a basic
from the Value Menu, we finally have more than enough of something else even
more fundamental to our survival. We
have the knowledge that hungry or full, rag-wrapped or silk-draped, we are
somebody – a somebody made in God’s
own image that God will never finish showering with love abundant; “somebodies,”
when all is said and done, fed by God’s own hand.
“I
am the bread of life,” Jesus once taught us. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry,
and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 48I am the bread of life. I am the living bread that
came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever...”
Which,
when you put it that way, makes us some of the richest people in the world. Maybe I should have left those signs up
outside after all.