The Rev. Fred G. Garry - February 3, 2002
Text: Matthew 5 It is simply a matter of perspective,
how you look at it. There are things in life that are simply
up to you, how you choose to define and interpret them. Poetry
is perhaps the most notorious for this. The great American poet,
Robert Frost, was confronted with this when a young college student
argued with him about the meaning of a poem he himself had written.
The poem in question was "Stopping
by a Wood on a Snowy Evening." The last line of the poem
is one we hear again and again, "But I have miles to go
and promises to keep, miles to go and promises to keep."
The scene provoking such a claim is a field cloaked in an early
evening grandeur. Frost's poem depicts a desire to stop and ponder,
and knowing a bit about his life, it also depicts the reality
of being a farmer, which Frost was at the time. A poet would
love to stop and stare into the woods, a farmer has no business
stopping with "miles to go and promises to keep."
The young college student's claim was
that the poem was about death, and a poetic flirtation with suicide.
With the poem being semi-autobiographical Frost took issue with
this and said, the poem is not about death, and certainly not
about suicide. To this the young man said, "Mr. Frost, the
poem is no longer yours, nor is the meaning yours to determine.
The poem is ours, and the meaning is ours to determine."
Although I too would take issue, just
as Frost did, if some young student were to make such assertions
about a poem I had written; although I would take issue, I would
have to admit the student's point in the end. In the end there
are things, once spoken, published, or put forth that become
public domain, and thus, open to definitions, interpretations,
and perspectives that may or may not reflect the intent of the
author.
Great pieces of literature invite this.
A novel by George Eliot, a sonnet or play of Shakespeare, a dialogue
of Plato, these have the ability to be read again and again with
the meaning changing each time. With each attempt to follow the
argument, to enact the scenes, the reader is led into a new and
renewed world. The story is the same, but the meaning changes.
Part of this of course is that we change.
There are things we can see in a story at seventeen, and there
things we can see in a story when we are seventy. I can remember
the first time I read Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caufield was
an awkward kid whose life was not far from my own, a sense of
depth in a rather basic world. When I read this story a decade
later with three children, it took on a whole different meaning.
I saw a basic kid in a world beyond his grasp. The story though
could hold each perspective; it could reach into each place of
my life. I am sure I will read the story again in the next decade
and find something new.
No book of course is more open to the
wiles of interpretation than the Bible. From the bizarre realm
of scholarship debating the use of an adverb in one verse to
the somewhat naïve, "If the King James was good enough
for Paul it is good enough for me" the Bible has seen its
fair share of interpreters. Sometimes the interpretation of the
Bible has been disastrous. The story of Brown versus the Board
of Education, replete with Spencer Tracy and Danny Kaye, in the
movie Inherit the Wind, depicts one such moment. A young science
teacher wanted to offer the theory of evolution to his high school
classes, in Kansas. The courtroom was transformed into a vivisection
of American culture and her Bible. The results weren't pretty.
Most interpreters of the Bible who are
passionate and terribly right are selective. Certain passages
are selected and treated as beyond question, while others lay
in quiet oblivion and complete contradiction to our daily life.
It is true that some passages of the Bible are less open to the
imaginative lens. The ten commandments should not read as the
ten suggestions, and the golden rule, do unto others as you would
have them do unto you, should not be interpreted to mean: do
unto others so they will do what you want. While their clarity
should be protected, even they are subject to the challenges
of life and the forces of ambiguity.
No one really debates the meaning of
the beatitudes. This is a curious issue. This is not an obscure
passage. Most any Christian has heard the beatitudes dozens of
times, perhaps even been prompted to memorized them for a chance
at the glow in the dark cross in the treasure box of Sunday school
prizes. No one really debates the beatitudes it could be argued
because we don't understand them. "Blessed are the poor
in spirit?" First, poverty and blessing don't go together
and then "in spirit." This must be one of those Bible
things, poetic things, theology things: a metaphor. Yet nothing
Jesus said would suggest he was speaking metaphorically. In other
word he meant what he as saying.
Perhaps this is a riddle. The beatitudes
are certainly a curious laundry list of contradictions: it is
good to mourn? It is good to be meek? To hunger and thirst? Now
no one would argue the goodness of mercy, except when you are
really mad. Then mercy becomes quite open to debate. Yet in normal
conditions when there is no one who is making us angry, annoying
us, or otherwise making our life hard, mercy is good option,
something we value. If we are honest though there just isn't
that many times free of some level of anger, annoyance, or trouble.
But we shouldn't dwell on such negativity.
The first and greatest clue I ever received
concerning the beatitudes came from Augustine. Looking at life
from the shores of North Africa, just prior to the fall of the
Roman Empire, looking at the town of Hippo as the bishop, Augustine
saw something curious in the beatitudes. They are a series of
steps he suggested. They trace the very life of a Christian.
We begin he argued in spiritual poverty, when we recognize our
sinfulness and need for grace. Such a beginning causes us to
mourn the life we have lived, and this mourning leads to a life
that is humble meek. We have recognized our sinfulness, lamented
our former life and thus are now ready to walk humbly with God,
much like our Micah passage.
But this according to Augustine is just
the beginning. Instead of life of lust and debauchery, Augustine
had lived such a life, instead of this life came a new direction,
a new path: a life that hungers and thirst for righteousness,
a life devoted to doing good, to mercy. And this life isn't just
a kind of meandering "do gooding." The blessed life
is one that actually leads to the perfect, the highest, the best:
unto purity, the beatific vision, seeing God face to face.
Two things to remember when you are dealing
with Augustine. First and foremost, he is the greatest of theologians.
There truly was not before, and there has not been since such
a vision, such power and creativity. Yet, we also must remember
he was a neoplantonist. This means he saw life as an upward trajectory,
as a series of steps in a ladder that went higher and higher.
Through intellectual assent we could knock on heaven's door.
Some would contend at the very least, Augustine did just that.
But I must always remember this with Augustine, life is not a
trajectory. As good as it gets, things come and go, rise and
fall, go up and down. There is both joy and sorrow, plenty and
want, poverty and, yes, even some riches.
While I agree with Augustine that the
beatitudes contains the moments of the Christian life (there
are moments of poverty, mourning, meekness, hunger and thirst,
mercy, and even purity), while I agree with him these are the
moments, I don't believe they come in such a neatly placed order,
or even one at a time. So much of life is filled with these moments
all at once, complimenting and contradicting one another. At
the birth of a child I am filled with a sense of awe in seeing
the purity of God, yet I am also struck by the limits of my soul,
the fact that such a weak and ill-equipped man should be entrusted
with such a gem, such a gift.
There is another interpreter of the beatitudes.
His is not a commentary, it may not have even been on purpose,
yet interpret he did. Norman Maclean wrote A River Runs Through
It near the end of his life. The story took a lifetime to
write, yet it was merely the record of a weekend. Through that
one weekend though we were able to glimpse what it was like to
grow up in Montana at the beginning the twentieth century, before
Montana was overrun with commercialism.
A River Runs Through It tells
the story of two men raised by a father who was Presbyterian
pastor and a mother who was the salt of the earth. Teaching his
sons in succession the Westminster Catechism and the art
of fly-fishing they were well equipped for life. He taught them
only the first question of the catechism: what is the chief end
of man? The answer we should all know and never forget is: to
glorify God and enjoy him forever. For after such ends are truly
seen no other can contend.
In A River Runs Through It Maclean
describes his father's philosophy of depravity and grace, how
humankind is essentially a mess, and yet, with grace can untangle
some of the damage. He describes the philosophy they learned
on the streets of Missioula, get the first punch in and make
it count. Mainly, though, he presents us with a word of great
value, "beautiful." Maclean's father said the word
"beautiful" like a noun, not an adjective. He meant
to convey not only that something possessed beauty, but also
the presence of life in fullness.
Beautiful in the story A River Runs
Through It is like the beatitudes of Jesus interpreted by
Augustine and brought to life. There is in this notion a sense
of poverty, mourning, and meekness, as well as a hunger, a mercy,
and by all means a purity. There was also in the story a recognition
that all these moments can coalesce, they can all come together
and leave an indelible mark on the soul.
Such a moment was the weekend Maclean
wrote about in his story. It was the last time he fished with
his brother Paul, who was a beautiful fishermen. Paul was the
kind of fishermen all men who fish dream of being. And given
the fact that Paul was such as a fly-fishermen his achievement
was of noble degree. The story though was the last time he would
fish with his brother because Paul had let his life unravel,
he lived too close to the sun, his passions had led to addictions.
Maclean could have told his story to
convey the profound mystery of the beatitudes, making his mark
as one just as illusive to understand. Instead he told a story
about how real the beatitudes are. How the reason we may not
be able to explain them is that we are too wrapped up in living
them.
He told of our poverty: our broken parts
and our desire to make them better; he told of our mourning,
how we can spend a life time in regret or a life time knowing
there is more to it than regret; he told of being humble, and
being humbled by the grandeur of the beautiful. He told of hungering
and thirsting for a brother, wanting to do what was right for
him, help him, save him; he told of how no matter how much you
want to give mercy, people still may not take it, and the ones
who want it are the last ones to whom you want to offer it. Mostly,
he told of how what is beautiful can come in an instant, can
be the arc of a rod, the leap of a trout, and the eyes of a father,
and somehow, be the very face of God.
To my good fortune I am not allured by
fly-fishing. For this reason the parts of A River Runs Through
It were not overshadowed by talk of bugs and trout. With
these out of the way the story simply became a glimpse a snap
shot of life. It became how we live out the beatitudes. We live
somewhere between poverty and purity everyday. We live in the
tension between feeling less and yet knowing the complete love
of God. Each of us knows our limits and failures, while at the
same time we know our lives are complete in Christ.
Somewhere between poverty and purity
is every day. We move from senses of loss to moments rife with
mercy, merciful. How we see this though is all a matter of perspective.
Unfortunately, we can so often see only the negative. Our lives
move from poverty to purity, but we only remember the path from
poverty to meekness. We live the day without the grandeur of
righteousness, mercy, and purity even though they are in our
midst; we live them, but we don't see them.
The promise of God is beautiful. We walk
with Christ from poverty to purity each day. Yet, do we see this?
Do we see the purity in our midst? What is right in your life?
What is tender? What is beautiful? If you live them and don't
see them, they are in the end a waste. The flowers of spring
return, but their beauty is the moment. What are the beautiful
moments in your life? Amen.
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