II Pentecost

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
(Proper 3,Year A; 8th Ordinary, RCL)
May 25, 2008

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The story is told of a community of ducks who were waddling off to duck church one Sunday to hear their duck preacher. After they waddled into the duck sanctuary, the service began, and the duck preacher spoke eloquently of how God had given the ducks wings with which to fly.
He pounded the pulpit with his beak and said, “With these wings, there is nowhere we ducks cannot go! There is no God-given task we ducks cannot accomplish! With these wings we no longer need walk through life. We can soar high in the sky!”
Shouts of “Amen!” quacked throughout the duck congregation.
Every duck loved the service. In fact all the ducks commented on what a wonderfully inspiring message they had heard from their duck preacher … and then they left the church and waddled all the way home.
Today’s Gospel from Matthew 6 affirms for us in very clear images that God loves us and cares for us unconditionally. It’s enough to make us fly, to go back to our lives having defeated fear and anxiety, ready to do the most difficult tasks for Christ and his Kingdom.
Yet, we waddle our way back into our lives as usual, all our doubts and worries still there—unmoved and maybe not convinced that this reassuring passage from the gospels applies to us and to our situation.
Life seems to go back and forth for us, from being confident and peaceful, to being fearful and desperate over whether God’s promises will turn out to be real or not.

A man took a ride in an airplane.
Unfortunately, he fell out.
Fortunately, he had on a parachute.
Unfortunately, it didn’t open.
Fortunately, there was a haystack below him.
Unfortunately, there was a pitchfork sticking out of it.
Fortunately, he missed the pitchfork.
Unfortunately, he missed the haystack.
We are hungry and thirsty for Good News that doesn’t have “unfortunately” in the next sentence.
A man riding in a taxi wanted to speak to the driver, so he leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder. The driver screamed, jumped up in his seat, hit his head, and jerked the wheel in the process. The car ran up over a curb, demolished a lamppost, and came to a stop inches from a shop window.
The startled passenger said, “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I just wanted to ask you something.”
The taxi driver replied: “It’s not your fault, sir. It’s my first day as a cab driver. … I’ve been driving a hearse for the past 25 years.”
It’s not easy to change our way of thinking when we’ve been trying to avoid catastrophe, to stay “under the radar” of danger, to beat the grim statistics—rather than trust God for our very air, breath by breath. Expecting rational, Western thinkers and planners not to take thought for their lives is like telling us not to breathe at all. Yet, the Gospel asks pointedly, what worrier can thereby add a single hour to his or her span of life?
Todd W. Allen tells the following stories:
The famous playwright Aeschylus was not expecting to die as he went out walking one day. But an eagle that had captured a tortoise was looking for rock to smash open the shell of the tortoise it was carrying in its talons, and, spying the bald head of the Greek author of some 90 tragedies and plays, mistook his head for a rock and turned loose the tortoise … and the renowned playwright was killed instantly. But the tortoise shell remained intact.
Or take the death of another Greek named Calchas. Calchas was a famous soothsayer. One of his contemporaries made a prediction about him that when he planted a vineyard, he would never drink any wine from the grapes. After the vineyard began to produce grapes, Calchas made some wine and threw a party, to which he invited his rival soothsayer. He wanted to disprove the prophecy of his fellow seer. As he was raising his goblet filled with wine, the other man repeated his prophecy. Calchas was so struck by the humor of it all that he began to laugh uproariously, and he choked to death (from Reader’s Digest Facts & Fallacies).
Isadora Duncan, a flamboyant and controversial dancer of the last century took a drive in small racing car called Bugatta on September 14, 1927, in Nice, France—and, as usual, she was wearing an immense red silk scarf draped around her neck and streaming out behind her. Neither she nor the driver noticed that the scarf had drifted outside to the rear of the car. As the car pulled away, the scarf wound around a rear wheel, yanking her out of the car and dragging her for several yards before the driver realized what had happened and stopped. The dancer’s neck was broken. The beautiful scarf was the cause of her death.
It’s not that bad things cannot happen … even to the wise, wiser, or wisest—or to the most talented and conscientious of people. Rather, we are not to live either unaware of the perils of life OR overly concentrated on what COULD happen—so that we either bring it about in spite of ourselves, or meet it on the road just as our fears had dictated.
Thank God, there can be a third way.
Simply trust. That’s it. There is enough trouble already to fill up today’s date on the calendar. Don’t be overly concerned about tomorrow; it will bring its own commands with it, and, yes—you’ll be informed on a need-to-know basis.
Pray … follow Jesus’ commandments to love others as ourselves, whatever it may demand. And sleep on it. Rest. Trust. Live. Soar.
This illustration of how to live comes from the Desert tradition:
Some monks came to see Abba Lucius, and they said to him, “We do not work with our hands; we obey the command to pray without ceasing.” The old man said, “Do you not eat or sleep?” They said, “Yes, we do.” He said, “Who prays for you while you are asleep? … Excuse me, brothers, but you do not practice what you claim. I will show you how I pray without ceasing, though I work with my hands.”
“With God’s help, I collect a few palm-leaves and sit down and weave them, saying, ‘Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness; according to the multitude of thy mercies do away with mine offenses.’” He said to them, “Is this prayer or not?” They said, “Yes, it is.”
And he continued, “When I have worked and prayed in my heart all day, I make about sixteen pence. Two of these I put outside my door, and with the rest I buy food.
And he who find the two coins outside the door prays for me while I eat and sleep. And so, by the help of God, I pray without ceasing.”

(Fr. Phillip Ayers)
[Stories and commentary from Isabel Anders, in Synthesis for 5/25/2008]