Luke 3: 7-18
- "Once there was a silly old ram,
thought he'd knock a hole in a dam.
"Nothing could make that ram scram;
he kept buttin' that dam."
Yes, I know, that's not the way you learned the song. One of our major American myths says we should always keep butting our heads against stone walls and expecting the walls to give way. But it ain't necessarily so. So let me remind you of one of my favorite slogans:
"If at first you don't succeed, try something else!"
Or another way of putting it, "If what you are doing isn't working, then anything else, no matter how stupid, has a better chance of succeeding."
And just remember, even success ain't what it's cracked up to be. Suppose the song is true, and the ram did actually destroy a million kilowatt dam? What do you think happened to the ram, after all those tons of water and concrete came rushing over the place he was standing? Whoops! If what you are doing isn't working, then anything else, no matter how strange, has a better chance of succeeding.
Once there was a silly old turtle ... Too bad I don't know any songs about turtles. Anyway this turtle became so convinced that what it was doing wasn't working, that it began to believe that nothing in its whole life had ever worked out. "I'm a klutz," the turtle said. "I'm a failure. I can't do anything right. The only way to avoid mistakes is to not do anything." So the turtle pulled back into its shell, and just sat there, doing nothing. Wind and rain came, snow and sleet, summer and winter, flying dust, until the turtle was petrified and completely covered up. If you look out south of town, you can see some microwave relays on top of it.
Melody and I used to know a woman who knew that she herself was responsible for all the problems of the world. She would fret and fume about her mistakes. Worse, she would never cease to talk about them. Once, driving along a road, she saw a little dog. And then she didn't see it any more! Although she never felt a bump, although she never heard a thump, she became convinced she had hit the dog. She stopped and looked around: no body, no trail of blood. Didn't matter; she was guilty, and she told us so for weeks!
During the course of my life, I've known lots of people who took after the ram. They never admitted that what they were doing wasn't working, they never admitted they'd made a mistake, they just kept doing the same thing over and over, like butting your head against a stone wall.
During the course of my life, I've known lots of people who took after the turtle. They were constantly hung up on their own mistakes, their whole life was one endless instant replay of failure, they blamed themselves for everything that ever went wrong. Sometimes they tried to solve their problems by crawling into holes and pulling them in after them. "If I don't ever do anything, I won't ever do anything wrong."
It seems to me there has to be a third way. A third way that doesn't ignore mistakes and doesn't get hung up on mistakes. A third kind of animal, a wild goose, a salmon, a laboratory rat that knows how to find its way.
An early name for Christians, mentioned in the ninth chapter of the book of Acts, is people who belong to The Road. We are expected to be on the move, traveling on The Way, on a pilgrimage. Some of our best Bible images are of Abraham, told by God to leave home and look for a new place; and the children of Israel in Egypt, told by God to leave home and look for the Promised Land; and the exiles in Babylon, told by God to leave their new home and go back to their old home, and God is constructing a highway for them to travel on. We remember Paul, the missionary, the nomad, traveling from city to city. And at this time of year we especially remember Mary and Joseph, homeless and traveling, hoping to find shelter before the baby is born.
We are people of the road. We are traveling people. Pilgrims. Looking for a home. Well, the ram, butting its head against the wall, and the turtle, pulled inside its shell, are anything but travelers. They are stuck. They aren't getting anywhere. They're on the road to nowhere. They need to repent.
We began to talk about repentance last week. Repentance begins with the idea that we are on the wrong road, and unless we get off this road we'll be going farther and farther from our destination. We are on the road to nowhere. We repent by getting off this road and turning onto God's road. That's what we said last week.
Yet even if this road is as straight as a laser beam, you just can't aim the car and forget it. There's a road between Wilbur and Coulee City that's incredibly straight for mile after mile. You still cannot just point the car and turn your mind off. The car is going to wobble. The car is going to drift. You're going to hit tiny rough places in the pavement, that may throw you left or right. There might be a wind blowing. There is probably some loose play in the steering mechanism. The car is going to make mistakes. You are going to make mistakes. You have to stay alert and twitch the wheel every once in a while. Even though they are small, those twitches are repentance, just like the big turn onto the new road. You will make driving mistakes, you will have to correct them, and those corrections are also repentance.
Two blinding revelations of Christian life: Revelation One, you will make mistakes, you can't help it. Revelation Two, after the mistake you can always correct your aim.
Remember, the ram doesn't think he makes mistakes, but he's wrong. The turtle doesn't think its mistakes can be straightened out, but it's wrong. We Christians know we make mistakes, and we also know God trusts us to straighten our lives out.
If you fasten an unloaded rifle in a clamp, and peer through the sights at a target, and have a friend mark the target right where the sights line up, and then do the same thing again, and then do it a third time, the three points will form a triangle. For a beginner the triangle is big. For an expert sharpshooter the triangle is small. But it will never go away. Mistakes are unavoidable.
When I studied navigation in the Navy, we were supposed to calculate a line, based on a star sighting, and then another line, based on sighting a second star, and then another line, based on a third star. Those lines never crossed at a point. They always made a triangle. For a beginning navigator the triangle was huge, sometimes thousands of miles wide. For an expert navigator the triangle was tiny, sometimes only a couple miles across. But no one could shrink the triangle to a dot. Mistakes are unavoidable.
Science has built a marvelous pile of accomplishments, based on two principles: people are allowed to make mistakes. People are allowed to correct mistakes. Without mistakes there is no progress. Without mistakes being corrected there is no progress. Aristotle believed that women have fewer teeth than men. He was so sure that he never bothered to ask Mrs. Aristotle to hold her mouth open long enough for him to count. It was a mistake, which is okay. It took more than a thousand years to correct, which is kind of slow. Once there was a silly old Greek ...
Christians are always making mistakes, it's unavoidable. And God forgives us and encourages us and nudges us to recognize the mistake and get back on the road. Repent and believe God's good news. Whole churches make mistakes, all the time. And God forgives us and encourages us and nudges us to recognize the mistake and get back in the groove. Repent and believe God's good news.
Some of the people listening to John preach believe they don't need to repent, because they have Abraham for an ancestor. Butting their heads against the wall of family privilege. John says, repent anyway, and bear the fruit of repentance.
Some of the people listening to John believe they are such awful sinners that they couldn't ever repent enough, so they crawl into the hole of self-blame and self-pity. John gives them practical advice for getting their lives on the right road.
Then several years later Simon Peter, already a Christian, already a church leader, has to repent of his attitude toward gentiles. And a great deal of the rest of the New Testament is about Peter's efforts, and Paul's efforts to get the whole church to repent of their attitude toward gentiles. Mistakes are for everyone, and repentance is for everyone. Repent and believe God's good news.
We need a sense of direction. We need to know the road to eternal life. We need a divine compass. And Jesus tells us that he is that compass, that we should follow him. Throw out everything that might hold us back. Give away all the furniture that keeps us at home. Stop butting our heads against a stone wall. Poke our heads out of our shells. Get onto God's highway, and follow Jesus, our compass, our star. Sure we are bound to zig and zag a little bit. Everybody does. God trusts us to repent, to admit our mistakes, to correct our aim.
- During the slavery days a hundred fifty years ago there was a dock builder who traveled down the Mississippi, contracting with the plantation owners to build a dock for each plantation with the help of the local slaves. But while they worked he would teach the slaves how to escape and use the underground railroad to go north to freedom. He couldn't give them maps, and many of them couldn't read to use the maps. But he embodied the directions in a song, "Follow the Drinking Gourd". The drinking gourd, of course, was the Big Dipper, a constellation of stars in the sky. As the earth turns, the Drinking Gourd in the sky seems to turn, too, but the last two stars in the lip of the dipper always point to the North Star. Whoever follows the drinking gourd is going north.
- Think I heard the angels say,
Follow the Drinking Gourd,
Stars in the heaven gonna show you the way.
Follow the Drinking Gourd.Follow the river till the clouds roll by,
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
Keep on moving, better look to the sky
Follow the Drinking Gourd.There's a good day coming and it won't be long.
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
All God's children gonna sing this song:
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
- Think I heard the angels say,
No, we don't have to be a ram, trying the same mistake over and over, because we refuse to admit it is a mistake. We don't have to be a turtle, doing nothing for fear of failure. God trusts us to be a wild goose, with a magnetic compass in its head, navigating its way north and south with the changing seasons. God trusts us to be a salmon, with the memory of home in its taste buds, seeking the headwaters of the home stream. God trusts us to be a laboratory rat, running a maze, zigging and zagging toward the cheese, able to learn from its mistakes.
Able to learn from our mistakes.
And sometimes we will make mistakes. And sometimes we will get lost. And sometimes we'll be on a road or a river that seems to meander. Sometimes there will be detours. And then we see Jesus, our polar star, our compass, and we repent, and get back on the road. Let's follow our compass, let's follow our star, until we reach our true home.
- Follow the Guiding Star,
Follow the Guiding Star,
Keep on traveling that muddy road to freedom!
Follow the Guiding Star.
(Comments to Don at crestnch@televar.com.)
Creston Christian Church, Creston, Washington, USA