“As Good as It Gets”
Easter 3C
14 April 2013 8:00 a.m. Said and 10 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Easter 3C
14 April 2013 8:00 a.m. Said and 10 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
Dear God, let us not accept that judgment, that this is all we are.
Enlighten
our minds; inflame our hearts
with
the desire to change—with the hope and faith that we all
can change.
Take
away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
(Dorothy
Day)
The story is told of an early Zen
Buddhist master in China: seeking
enlightenment, he fled to solitude in the mountains, where he sat in silence
for years, meditating, cultivating his Buddha nature, and waiting for the
moment of wu, the moment of emptying
one’s mind and achieving bliss, what the Japanese would call satori.
After years of disappointment, he finally decides he has had enough and
gives up. He comes back down into
society, into the local village. It is
a market day, a raucous and lively scene of people haggling over prices, and trying
to get the advantage of each other. A
butcher (not a particularly praiseworthy figure in Buddhist ethical systems) is
having problems keeping up with the demands of the crowd. One woman calls out “the trotters, I want the
trotters!’ Another, “the pork loin for
me.” Another, “the ribs, the ribs!” The monk notices that one woman stands
silent, watching the butcher intently as he occasionally discreetly palms bits
of less attractive flesh into the masses he weighs and passes to the
consumers.
Suddenly she calls out, “The good
bits. I want the good bits.”
The crowd falls silent at the implied
accusation the woman has rudely made: he
is selling bad stuff as if it were good.
The butcher, without missing a beat,
chimes up, with an affable shrug to his accuser as if she were an old friend,
“Hey lady, all we got here is good.”
The crowd, including the accuser,
breaks into laughter. The monk laughs
heartily with them all. And at that
moment, the story says, the monk finds enlightenment.
The point of the story is this: the
monk finds a sudden release of control in laughter, embracing the absurd idea
that, indeed, what we see before us is all good, no matter how bad—that this is
as good as it gets—and that’s okay. And
this is how in an instant he reaches Nirvana.
“Is this as good as it gets?” Usually for us in the West, the question is a
complaint, an expression of dissatisfaction.
The idea is that things ought
to be better than this, and we ought to
be enjoying things more than we are. Not
accepting how things are, not being reconciled to the status quo, is here understood as a necessary prelude to needed
change, reform, or improvement.
Many of the spiritualities of Asia believe
that acceptance is a core character
trait, something you need for serenity and peace in yourself and in
society.
Some Western wags criticize the Asian values
that cultivate acceptance and detachment by pointing to the endemic poverty, injustice,
corruption, and abuse of political authority in many of those societies and saying
a culture needs some dissatisfaction, because “when it comes to societies, you
get as much bad as you are willing to accept.”
But many Western spiritualties also
teach that we must cultivate acceptance to have serenity and peace. Reinhold Niebuhr, the great progressive
American Protestant theologian of the mid-20th century, wrote the original
prayer that sought to reconcile these differences, which in shortened form has
become a classic in 12-step recovery spirituality: “God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and
the Wisdom to know the difference.”
Conversion of St. Paul
Today’s scripture readings all touch on acceptance and desire for change in some way, and do so with rich, rich images. In the Acts passage, we hear Jesus’ question, “Why do you persecute me?” Saul’s reply, “and who, sir, are you?” receives the shocking and surprising answer that turns Saul’s world upside down, “”I am Jesus of Nazareth whom you persecute.” With Saul, we hear the call to retire in our blindness to a “Street Called Straight” where new friends can direct us and help heal us.
The Gospel story, an add-on after the end of John’s Gospel, tells of Peter fleeing the scene after Jesus’ death and reappearance. “I’m going fishing,” he says, apparently seeking refuge in habit and the details of work. He wants to get away from the shame of reconnecting with the man he has betrayed three times but now has come back from the dead in a surprising and unprecedented form. Jesus seeks him out and when he finds him, Peter is so befuddled that he puts his clothes on before jumping into the water to swim to him.
The resurrected Jesus’ question, “Peter, do you love me?” repeated three times, seems to “undo” the threefold denial of Jesus by Peter during the Passion story. Jesus makes Peter his disciple again by giving him as many chances to reaffirm his love and friendship as he had denied it.
Most translations of the story miss a major element in the drama of how it is told in Greek. Jesus, pointing to the abandoned fishing tackle, asks, “Peter, do you love me more than these things?” But Peter replies with another verb for love, a word that is primarily about the affection of friendship rather than the usual word for love itself that Jesus has used. “Of course I like you.” Jesus replies: “Then feed me sheep.” Jesus asks a second time, “Peter, do you love me?” Again, Peter replies, “I like you, Jesus.” Jesus says again, “Then feed my sheep.” And then, as if Jesus has gotten tired of Peter misunderstanding Jesus’ question and the nature of their relationship, Jesus softens his question, adopting Peter’s verb for love: “Well then, Peter, do you like me?” Peter: “I really do like you,” is the reply. And again, “Feed my sheep.”
Jesus here accepts Peter for who he is and where he is. Even if Peter’s love is not quite what Jesus has in mind, it is enough. And this acceptance is what brings Peter back into the circle of love and fellowship, undoing the harm of his betrayal and denial.
Are there ways that we, like Saul, persecute Jesus? Do we scapegoat others, label them as insufficient, decline to seriously take to heart what they are saying, but rather transfer our hurts, guilts and fears onto them and try to make ourselves feel better about ourselves by labeling them, isolating them, gossiping about them, working them harm, and or outright persecuting them? And do we do this, like Saul, for what we think as the best of reasons, the noblest of causes?
Are there ways that we, like Peter, deny even knowing Jesus even as we proclaim that we will never forsake him? Do we say we believe in Jesus, but then not act as if he lives and reigns? Have we failed to live up to the values we profess: openness, hospitality, diversity, welcome, and reverence”? Are we negligent in prayer and worship, and fail to commend the faith that is in us? Are we deaf to Christ’s call to serve others as Christ served us? Have we instead sought to comfort ourselves and reduce or cloak our guilt by avoiding Jesus, burying ourselves in tasks, returning to routine and habit, and not letting ourselves be challenged and changed by the new situations and people that God has put in our lives?
Sisters and brothers here at Trinity: we all fall short of the mark, and in some ways we are all Saul or Peter. But know that it is okay. Jesus loves us regardless. He accepts us and the way we are. He expects us to accept our weakness and brokenness, the way we are, even as he accepts this. But he also promises to heal us and change us. He regularly seeks us out and lets us know in startling and shocking ways, like he let Saul know, how we have gotten things wrong. And then he calls us to go to our sisters and brothers who live on a Street Called Straight so they can help us heal and be better.
When Jesus asks us, “do you love me,” and we reply “I like you,” he keeps asking us the question. When we persist in a multitude of ways to say “love is maybe way too much for me right now, how about ‘like’,” he keeps at it, but ultimately says, “Like is good enough for now, my friend. Love will come tomorrow.”
Let me conclude with the words of the full original prayer of Reinhold Niebuhr for Serenity, Courage, and Wisdom:
God,
give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day
at a time, the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen.
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