It's Just Too Good (A Sermon from First Church in Cambridge)

First Church in Cambridge, Congregational UCC
27 March 2005

J Mary Luti

It's Just Too Good

The First United Methodist Church in Chicago is situated in a building called The Temple, a 25-story office tower in the heart of The Loop. The church's Sanctuary is on the ground floor. The next three floors house the church offices and classrooms. Above that, fifteen floors of lawyers. Above the lawyers, a three-story parsonage where the pastor, Philip Blackwell, and his wife, Sally, live. And finally, on the top floor, a Chapel in the Sky.

There's a regular building custodian who cleans the parsonage, but one day last winter, a substitute showed up who'd never been there before. She was a thorough sort of person. She assumed that anything on the floor was trash. And she threw it out.

When the couple returned home that night they discovered that all the catalogues they'd marked for Christmas and saved in a basket beside the bed were gone. Gone too were all the magazines they'd thrown into a basket next to the TV hoping to catch up on them some day. And that big basket next to the sofa where they'd been collecting things for years''”a '57 World Series scorecard, newspapers with world-changing headlines, their kids' graduation programs, photos of the Rose Parade? Empty.

It was 11:00 at night when Philip Blackwell went dumpster-diving in the basement of his building. He fished out half-eaten doughnuts, Styrofoam cups, dead flowers, shoes with broken straps, and several dozen items he could not identify. But no Blackman family treasures. Not one. He went back to bed, but couldn't sleep.

The next morning he told the regular cleaning person the story, and she returned to the basement to search. She eventually found everything in a recycling area only a few people knew about. Catalogues, magazines, the scorecard, the graduation program, the parade photos. Everything. The Blackwells were beside themselves with joy. It was really good!

That's nothing! God says. Did you hear the one about the shepherd who has a hundred sheep, and one of them gets lost, and he looks and looks and finally finds it? Now, that's good!

Or the one about the woman who loses her last dime and searches frantically all night, sweeping and sweeping, and finally finds it? How good is that?

Or the one about the parent who scans the horizon morning and night looking for the child who broke everybody's heart, and then, one day, here he comes? Pretty good, huh?

Oh, and if you think that's good, God says, listen to this one. The one about you. The one about the time you were lost in rage at the hand life dealt you. Then something gracious helped you let it go.

Or the one about you, when you were lost in your need to be loved and to please everybody. Then something gracious addressed you, "I already love you. You already please me"

Or the one about you, when you were lost in your pain, your loneliness, your bottle, your put-together façade. You gave no one any reason to want to go looking for you. But something gracious did.

Or the one about you, when you lost yourself in work, in worry, in control and compulsion, in gadgets or in sex. Then something gracious healed the hole in the heart of your self-regard.

The one about you, when it was time for you to go off the map, to enter the night of unspeakable grief, and you were afraid. Then something gracious went ahead of you with a light.

You think that's good? God says. Maybe you haven't heard the one about the world. The one about the way its people and things are abused and wasted. The way you humans are always forgetting the lessons of global grief and pain, stupidity and violence, indifference and injustice—lessons you keep swearing to me in your prayers you'll never forget, that you'll really heed next time. If you want good, let me tell you this one about the world, God says, and the one about the One who came into the world to be with you.

Let me recite the litany of calamity and hurt, all the ways you invent to die before you really live, and let me show you where he has always been in your losses, all tender and good; what he has always been doing in your pain, all healing and light; where he has always been working in the weal and woe of the spinning world, all justice and joy, all mercy and hope.

Because the truth is that no matter how much you've sinned or have been sinned against, no matter how insistently you've messed up, or how obsessively you've tried to clean yourself up and pretend you don't mess up; no matter how busy you've been accumulating toys or how recklessly you've dedicated yourself to wasting your gifts, he has always been better than you in the determination department. He has always been one-up in the recklessness department.

He is always outlasting your sin, working through your suffering, he is always giving your shallow hearts new depth and your exhausted arms new reach so that you can encompass life in all its mystery and wonder and possibility and pleasure and do good, make beauty, and love each other in the midst of this world, without finally and forever succumbing to its evil and its pain.

You want good? Have you heard this one? The one about Jesus. About the life he lost long before you nailed him to a tree. The life he poured out for you fully and foolishly all his days, locating your lost hearts and hopes, re-routing your misplaced desires, restoring your trashed innocence, repairing your trampled dignity.

The one about the extra mile he went rummaging around in the worst places to give you back everything you thought was gone for good, to give you back things you had forgotten and things you never even knew were rightly yours—my delight in you, your true human beauty, my grace and mercy, the kingdom's food and feasting, its refreshment and song, its faith and company, its healing and hope; its extravagant inclusion, its peace and consolation, its mission and compassion, its joy and communion.

Let me tell you the one about Jesus who faced down the Empire—that systemic self-delusion masquerading as order and stability that has always been in the cleaning business, wiping out life when its power is threatened, clearing away obstacles to its will, emptying all the baskets of memory and hope. Let me tell you, God says, about what happened when he walked right into its jaws, into the heart of what ails us all, and was dumped for his trouble like rubbish into the forgotten corner of death.

You want good? Listen to this.

After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to his tomb. And suddenly an angel came and rolled back the stone. The angel said, "You are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. He has been raised." Then Jesus himself stood before them and said, "Greetings! Do not be afraid; run and tell the others to go to Galilee; they will see me there." So they left the tomb with fear and great joy.

Fear and great joy. Now that, God says, is good. That is very good. So good it's scary!

I read a story someplace about a kid whose heroes were Mr. Rogers and Captain Kangaroo. He adored them both. One day his father told him that Captain Kangaroo was going to appear on Mr. Rogers' program. Of course the child kept asking every day for weeks if this was the day when Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Rogers would be on TV together. He could barely wait.

When the day finally came, the boy and his parents settled down on the couch to watch the program. It was, of course, a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Mr. Rogers came in smiling. He changed into his sweater and sneakers. Then there was a knock at the door. In came Captain Kangaroo, and there they were, the two of them, together. Suddenly, the little boy bolted from the room. His father found him on his bed, curled up in a ball, hands over his head, heart pounding. "Son," he said," what's the matter?" "Oh, Daddy," the boy replied, "it's just too good!"

And you and I who know the story of just how good God really is; you and I to whom grace has offered a compelling taste of resurrection; you and I who have lost some things or lost every thing—you and I know this story, the one about how great joy fills up with fear and great fear fills up with joy when something unimaginably gracious finds us and gives us back our little lamb, our basket's treasures and our dime, our wayward children, wayward hearts, our hope and faith, our beautiful selves—and so much more.

You know. And I know. And, like women at an empty tomb face to face with Life itself—terrified and overjoyed—because we know, we have to go now and tell. Tell the world that it's good. It's very good. It's just too good. It's Easter.

Acknowledgment: I owe the opening of this sermon to one by the Rev. Philip Blackwell, "Joy in the Presence," that aired on the radio program 30 Good Minutes, January 2, 2005.