July 16, 2006 Sermon

Reality
James 1:22-27

I will first preach this sermon less than nineteen hours after returning from three weeks overseas. My body will think it is midnight . My brain will wonder why we had to come back to thinking and worrying. We joke about returning from vacation to grim reality. But what, really, is reality?

You want reality? Three weeks ago my wife, our son and I started on a choir tour of Western Europe . We began in Venice . On the surface Venice seems like the least real place I have ever visited. It feels like stepping into the fifteenth century, like walking into an alternate reality one thousand times as removed from today as Mackinac Island . Venice has no motor vehicles (if you don’t count the thousands of motor boats buzzing through its canals and lagoons). Every morning men on the mainland sweat to load their boats with all the consumables modern tourists require: bottled water, meat, paper products, film, clean table cloths, you name it. They speed through the maze of waterways, pull up to wharves, and unload using only their backs. Gondolas prowl the waters, oared by men wearing the striped shirts that go back more than 400 years. Once we crossed a bridge over a canal while a gondola floated below carrying the Gondolier, tourists, and a man singing Italian opera arias.

Venice is pastel reds and tans, hot sun and shaded tables on sidewalk cafes in the Campos, or small squares that dot its streets; stylish women and Italian men openly admiring them; wondrous cathedrals and palaces reflecting the riches of long-ago; surprising twists on footpaths and dead ends formed by canals; hot, humid sunshine, and cool shade. Venice is, in short, alien to a person living in northern Michigan .

I felt time in Venice . Not so much time passing, or even time in the sense of history, but the sheer weight of time. I got a sense of the power of time, of its immense size, its majesty when compared to the short lives we are given. Even the bells in the vast campanile on San Marco Piazza sounded dry and ancient. We all felt it. It made us strain to explain our feelings. The youth in our choir kept saying, in exactly these words, “It’s like Disneyland , except…” After hearing this enough I took to answering, “Except what?” Usually the reply would come, “Except it’s dirtier,” or, “Except it is real.” One young man got a faraway look in his eyes and said, “It’s like Disneyland , except….” I asked, “Except what?”

Without hesitation he answered, “Except no roller coasters.”

We love to experience an alternate reality, a truth other than the truth by which we live our lives. And then we love to come back home to safety and familiarity. We know that Disneyland is not real, yet because we have grown used to it we find it strangely comforting and a useful way to interpret an actual, yet foreign place like Venice . Why do we not find more comfort in our experience of the presence of God? Why do we not interpret the rest of our lives by our visits with Jesus, our Savior?

In Venice we boarded an overnight train for Paris . Those of us fortunate enough to sleep (that’s another story) awoke speeding through the yellow French countryside. We raced past wheat fields and stone villages clustered tightly around churches. The villages grew larger and more modern, then blended together into suburbs, then became the dirty, crowded reality of Paris outside its tourist haunts. A couple of wonderful days there later, our group found itself in Notre Dame Cathedral. The choir sang at a high mass there on Saturday night. Thousands attended. Though the service was conducted in French and Latin and we were exhausted, we all knew something special was going on.

Seventy teenagers from Traverse City wearing white polo shirts and black pants or skirts sat in parallel rows of chairs behind the altar at Notre Dame while priests in albs swung censors, filling the air with incense. The ceiling of the Gothic Cathedral rose almost out of sight, but the notes they sang reached all the way to the top—and then back down again as the echoes of their wonderful music washed over us all. As the mass ended a man lined up our kids in two rows and had them follow the cross and the incense and the priests and alter boys out through the assembly. Then they turned to one side and disappeared into a private area of the cathedral. We parents waited for them outside.

Some of the kids joined us only after a prolonged delay. Several of them had tears streaming down their cheeks. A couple of boys sobbed openly. One girl held up a cross on a necklace that she had asked the presiding priest to bless. He had done so in Latin, then looked her in the eyes and said, “You know, we get a lot of visiting choirs here. You were quite good. You sang with the love of Christ.”

Not too many years ago no self-respecting Presbyterian preacher would speak positively of anything a French priest said. No Presbyterian preacher who wanted to keep his job would speak approvingly of the working over of the senses that happens in a Gothic cathedral. Thank God those days have gone. Because what really matters in this life is that we connect with the reality of God whenever and however we can.

The old Presbyterian Shorter Catechism said it best: the chief purpose of life is to praise God and enjoy his presence forever. Many of the singers in the West High School Chorale had a religious experience at Notre Dame Cathedral. Praise God! They connected with the deepest of all realities, the love of Christ, in the deepest possible way, through music and worship. You want reality? Experience the reality of God through music and worship. Jesus is reality.

Why do we bother to “do” church, anyway? Church takes money, time and effort, three things we wish we had more of under the best of circumstances. Why do we do church? The New Testament book of James tells us to become doers of the word, not merely hearers. I think one of the greatest problems many people have with church is that they mistakenly believe they should be able to attend worship services and somehow be filled with, well with something. Peace, maybe, or joy. Without ever being conscious of it, they want to have church work like television or a restaurant. They want to sit there and take it in, then come away feeling full, satisfied.

But the passive approach to church cannot work. James tells us those who try to consume church (rather than working at it) are like people who forget what they saw in the mirror the moment they walk away from it. This is a powerful image. Do you want to become a lump on the church couch or do you want to have a real experience of the ultimate reality? “Religion that is pure and undefiled is this,” James insists. “To care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” True spiritual power comes to us best when we work for it.

Those youth crying in the side yard at Notre Dame were on empty physically and emotionally. They had spent a fast-paced week traveling, losing sleep, walking more miles than most of them imagined they could. They had already sung in four cathedrals. Despite their exhaustion they conducted themselves admirably while in public and sang with almost operatic professionalism. They impressed musical snobs wherever they went and satisfied the mothers among their chaperones with their behavior under stress. They worked for that religious experience of the love of Christ. They earned what they got.

How will you become a doer of your religion? How will you avoid becoming a passive consumer of church? Where are the orphans and widows in your life? Whom can you serve? When you work and serve, you work in the name of, and serve, Jesus Christ. When you do, he gives you a real experience of his love. You want reality? That’s reality.