Changing Lanes
Matthew 18:23-34
A
Sermon Preached by
University
Congregational United
It’s an early August morning, 26 years ago. I’m 16 and waiting to get picked up by my driver’s education teacher. Each morning Mr. Harbour picks me, I drive us on quiet back roads to the neighboring town where to stop to have coffee and donuts.
That is, every day but this particular day. Today, we are going to do something new.
Today, I am told, we are going to do something I have never done before. We are going to drive on the highway! As I am nervously driving up the entrance ramp to the highway, Mr. Harbour turns to me and says, “Don’t turn your head. Keep looking straight ahead. It’s their job to see you. If they see you turn and see the whites of your eyes, they’ll cut you off.”
So I learned how to be a good
Some of you are thinking – “You were that guy that cut into my lane the other day!”
You know how it’s supposed to work:
A car is merging into your lane on the highway.
You slow down, or change to the next lane.
It’s like a little dance on the highway of changing lanes.
But it doesn’t always work that way, does it?
Sometimes as your blue Honda Accord is merging into the traffic, coming up behind you is a red turbo-charged Saab.
They see you about to merge into their lane right in front of them and oh, they get mad! “This guy isn’t even looking”
So they push the accelerator to the floor and zoom ahead. Well, the driver of the red turbo-charged Saab is so busy being mad at you that he isn’t paying attention as he should and bumps right into the back of the green Escort wagon in front of him.
And you, not expecting this sudden stop, bump right into the back of the red turbo-charged Saab.
Oh! We’ve got a mess! We’ve got an accident! We’ve got traffic at a standstill from the
Ship Canal to
Well, this is exactly what we are looking at in today’s parable – this parable is about a mess, an accident, something that just shouldn’t have turned out this way.
The parable should be a dance – like the dance of changing lanes on the highway.
A king chooses to do something – others follow in course, all down the line – that’s the way it’s supposed to work. We get a dance of order, stability, beauty – how changing lanes is supposed to look and be.
But this is the opposite of what we get in Jesus’ parable – instead we get a king trying to make a change by forgiving his slave a huge debt - only things end up being worse than when they started.
The servant doesn’t catch on that something really new is being called for here, that he is going to have to do something differently. Instead, he keeps at his old ways and demands that his slave repay the small debt he owes him in full. The king hears about this and he gets upset about how his slave treated this other slave and he ends up sending him off to be punished. Things have ended up worse than when they started!
Well, what in the world is the point of a parable like this?
Why would Jesus tell a story about an accident, a mess like this and make us pause and look at it?
In
We’ve all been in them. We drive by an accident slowly with our mouths open. Why do we do it? Why does it happen every time there is an accident?
An accident on the highway shows us what is not supposed to happen and yet what can happen so easily – its rather amazing that it doesn’t happen more often. As we look around at the broken windshields, the smashed hood, we are reminded of how fragile this dance on the highway is – heck, it could have been us. Might is will be us if we don’t pay attention when we are changing lanes.
Change is going on right now, today in all of our lives.
I’ve been talking to some kids who are getting ready to go to kindergarten – a big new step and change.
And some kids and their families are getting ready to go to a new school.
Some older kids have just gone back to college – and some will be going back soon.
There are lots and lots of changes all of us are facing in one way or another. Big changes. Little changes. But all important. We are all changing lanes in lots of ways.
Our church community is doing a big changing of lanes as we move to a new Sunday morning schedule – that is huge – one of the biggest changes a church can make. We are all going to have to do something differently from what we are used to on September 19.
Change is hard and unsettling in different ways for all of us.
We sometimes come into times of change with expectation.
Sometimes with sheer terror.
Sometimes angry.
Often times with tears.
Sometimes with laughter and delight.
And often there are a few bumps along the way.
We are anticipating or fearing a change in our nation as we vote this fall. I have heard commentators say that we haven’t had such a divided electorate in decades. People are holding tight to the change they seek – or the change they fear. And with a lot of tight-fisted people right now, I think there is danger that we are going to have an accident down the road.
I saw the danger of this kind
of tight-fisted holding in times of change two years ago. Two years ago this month, the President first
sounded the call of going to war with
Some incredibly creative things happened as people marched and wrote letters, danced and prayed and sang for peace. But I also saw some people holding tight fists in this time. “If only we do THIS THING – write one more letter, do one more thing - well, we could stop this war.”
When eight months later the war began, I saw people some people who were working for peace enter into despair and depression. That is natural - and yet I also saw stop all those creative things that had been happening as people marched and prayed and sang and danced for a different way, a way of peace.
In a time of change there are important things to DO: to pray and talk about your beliefs, your faith. It is important to vote, to write letters, to talk to friends. (And if we really want to shake things up – to also do those things without words – to sing, dance for peace. We need more singing and dancing.)
But there also are important ways to BE – as important as what we DO. And there has to be a better way than holding tight-fisted on in a time of change.
Claire was driving down the highway when the cars in front of her came to a standstill. As she came to a stop behind a long line of cars, she glanced in her rearview mirror to discover that the car behind her was not stopping. In fact, it was hurling toward her with tremendous speed. She realized that the driver was not paying attention, that she was going to be hit, and hit hard. She knew that given his speed and the face that she was right up against the car in front of her that she was in great danger. She realized in that moment that she might die.
She looked down at her hands clenched on the steering wheel. She hadn’t consciously tightened them; this was their natural state, this is how she lived life. She decided that she did not want to live that way, nor did she want to die that way. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and dropped her hands to her side. She let go. She surrendered to life, and to death. Then she was hit with enormous force.
When the movement and noise stopped, she opened her eyes. She was fine. The car in front of her was wrecked. The car behind here was demolished. Her car was compacted like an accordion.
The police told here she was lucky she had relaxed, for muscle tension increases the likelihood of severed injury. She walked away feeling that she had been given a gift. The gift wasn’t that she had survived unhurt, it was greater than that. She saw how she had been living life and was given the opportunity to change. She had held life with a clenched fist, but now she realized that she could hold it in her open hand, as if it were a feather resting on her palm. She realized that if she could relax enough to release her fear in the face of death, she could now truly enjoy life.
I see in Claire the very way of Jesus. The way Jesus is calling us to be in world of change and needing deep change. To be set free to not hold so tight.
We are all facing changes in our own lives, our nation and world.
What is it like to open up your hands in the midst of these changes? I invite you to do that as you step into the changes taking place in your life today and this fall.
It often involves tears – for some deep letting go is required.
It means taking a deeper breath.
It requires faith.
Faith not only to believe with our heads – but to make real with our very bodies, our very lives the faith that we are held by a hand, a will, a way bigger than any of our own hands.
I believe that. And I want us to do release enough to do all we can to be one with that purpose for life, for justice, for peace, for love in which we live. I don’t serve the purposes of that which holds me, us all, when I live with clenched fist. I do when I live like this – with an open hand – it makes all the difference. All the difference.
I believe in a God who is turning the world around. A hand that holds us bigger than our own hands and ways. I see one who gave himself over to that God in the face and way of Jesus – and calls me and us to do likewise amidst the changes taking place in our lives and world. To give over to that power so we may be filled with the power of God.
For those who have lived into times of deep change with open hands, you know what I mean. It is hard and holy work to do so. And you have known you had more power than you ever could have imagined before – for you knew the very power, the very strength to walk right into places of death and death itself. The power to risk, to dance, to sing – to not be defeated though defeats and accidents happen along the way. For you know a larger hand than our own holds us all.
Let us open our hands and give ourselves over to being part of the turning of the world.
The world will turn, is turning, as we open our hands, our lives, our hearts and bodies more and more to the God who is holder of us all.
Let us sing out our lives for the turning of the world.
Amen.
My soul cries out with a joyful shout that the God of my heart is great,
And my spirit sings of the wondrous things that you bring to the ones who wait.
You fixed your sight on your servant’s plight, and my weakness you did not spurn.
So from east to west shall my name be blest, Could the world be about to turn?
Refrain:
My
heart shall sing of the day you bring, Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe
away all tears, for the dawn draws near, and the world is about to turn!
Though I am small, my God, my all, you work great things in me.
And your mercy will last from the depths of the past to the end of the age to be.
Your very name puts the proud to shame, and to those who would for you yearn,
You will show your might, put the strong to flight, for the world is about to turn.
Refrain
From the halls of power to the fortress tower, not a stone will be left on stone.
Let the king beware for your justice tears every tyrant from his throne.
The hungry poor shall weep no more, for the food they can never earn;
There are tables spread every mouth be fed, for the world is about to turn.
Refrain
Though the nations rage from age to age, we remember who holds us fast:
God’s mercy must deliver us from the conqueror’s crushing grasp.
This saving word that our forebears heard is the promise which holds us bound,
“Til the spear and rod can be crushed by God, who is turning the world around.
Refrain
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Sources:
Claire’s story came from Life Lessons: Two Experts on Death and Dying Teach Us About the Mysteries of Life and Living by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler, p.21.
I am indebted to the following Biblical scholars for breaking open my understanding of the parables:
Bernard Brandon Scott, author
of Re-Imagine the Parables and Hear Then the Parable.
William Herzog, author of Parables as Subversive Speech