William H. Willimon - "God Is Coming" 11:00 am (April 16, 2000)
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| - | You can't help someone | 0:11 |
| until that person really wants help. | 0:14 | |
| I think they told us that in seminary, | 0:18 | |
| I think somebody told us. | 0:20 | |
| As I remember, they told us that, | 0:22 | |
| you can't help someone | 0:26 | |
| until that person really wants help. | 0:28 | |
| They said it to us with particular reference | 0:32 | |
| to the treatment of alcoholics. | 0:34 | |
| "You can't help them until they want help." | 0:37 | |
| Thus I felt a bit guilty | 0:44 | |
| when I conspired with her husband | 0:46 | |
| physically to bundle her up one Sunday afternoon, | 0:49 | |
| push her into the backseat of an automobile. | 0:53 | |
| I held her there while he drove, | 0:56 | |
| to the alcohol treatment center | 0:59 | |
| for a month of residential therapy. | 1:00 | |
| When she was at last sedated, resting in her room, | 1:05 | |
| I confessed to the experienced | 1:11 | |
| addiction treatment counselor | 1:14 | |
| that I felt a little guilty, | 1:16 | |
| because like they say, | 1:17 | |
| "You really can't help anybody | 1:21 | |
| until that person wants to be helped." | 1:23 | |
| The counselor responded, "That's dumb." | 1:26 | |
| I said, "Really?" | 1:31 | |
| She said, "Yeah. I'd have to worry | 1:32 | |
| about anybody who would want this kind of help." | 1:34 | |
| She said, "This month, we're going to | 1:37 | |
| put her through hell. | 1:39 | |
| We're going to make her look at her life, | 1:40 | |
| we're going to make her stare all of her demons in the face, | 1:42 | |
| we're going to make her go through that. | 1:46 | |
| You'd kind of have to worry about somebody | 1:49 | |
| who would want that." | 1:51 | |
| She said, "No, most of our people come here | 1:53 | |
| because somebody makes them come. | 1:57 | |
| A wife says, 'I love you so much. | 2:01 | |
| I'm not going to stay married to you | 2:04 | |
| unless you do something about your habit.' | 2:06 | |
| Or the boss calls you in and says, | 2:09 | |
| 'Hey, you've got to get help or you're fired.' | 2:11 | |
| That's the way we get our people." | 2:14 | |
| Then she said, "You know, | 2:17 | |
| if you ever get somebody who knows that he needs help, | 2:18 | |
| and he wants help, he doesn't need help." | 2:23 | |
| Let's be honest, there is something comforting | 2:28 | |
| in the old, you can't help people until they want help. | 2:34 | |
| Because that lets the rest of us off the hook. | 2:41 | |
| When you're having trouble, | 2:46 | |
| when you're caught in some web of pain, | 2:48 | |
| it's a lot easier for me to sit back and say, | 2:51 | |
| "Well, um, she knows my office hours. | 2:54 | |
| When she wants help, she'll come and get it, because | 2:58 | |
| after all, you can't help people until they want help." | 3:00 | |
| That way, your help is never my responsibility. | 3:05 | |
| As a pastor, how often have I heard people | 3:11 | |
| justify their inattentiveness to somebody's need, | 3:14 | |
| by saying, (coughs quietly) | 3:18 | |
| "No, I didn't visit her after her | 3:19 | |
| husband's death, because I didn't know what to say. | 3:22 | |
| And after all, she knows where I am, and | 3:24 | |
| you can't help them until they need help." (coughs loudly) | 3:27 | |
| I remember the mother, who | 3:31 | |
| in noting how few church people | 3:37 | |
| had made contact with her since her dear daughter's death. | 3:40 | |
| She said, "You know, I don't blame them. | 3:44 | |
| Because it takes a lot of courage | 3:47 | |
| for somebody to enter pain as deep as mine." | 3:50 | |
| Courage. | 3:56 | |
| And sometimes, hurting people keep their | 3:59 | |
| would-be saviors at a distance, | 4:03 | |
| by saying things like, | 4:06 | |
| "Have you been through what I've been through? | 4:08 | |
| Well then you don't know what I'm going through." | 4:10 | |
| There's a lot of reasons to hold back. | 4:14 | |
| And that's how some people picture God. | 4:19 | |
| In Rabbi Kushner's popular book, | 4:24 | |
| When Bad Things Happen to Good People, | 4:27 | |
| that's the God we get. | 4:30 | |
| Kushner says, "We have a sympathetic, | 4:34 | |
| at times even empathetic God. | 4:36 | |
| Who, like Bill Clinton during an election, | 4:39 | |
| feels our pain. | 4:41 | |
| However, like Bill Clinton after an election, | 4:44 | |
| God can't do much about it." | 4:47 | |
| The world has been set-up by God | 4:50 | |
| into certain immutable laws. | 4:52 | |
| And God doesn't want to go breaking a law to help anybody. | 4:56 | |
| God cannot disrupt things by getting personally involved. | 5:00 | |
| Certainly not by breaking any rules. | 5:03 | |
| And when the law of nature comes crashing down | 5:06 | |
| upon your head, God, while deeply regretting this, | 5:09 | |
| cannot get too implicated. | 5:15 | |
| God says, "You know my office hours. | 5:17 | |
| If you want to see me, come to church at 11:00. | 5:21 | |
| Who gave you my home phone number, anyway?" | 5:24 | |
| In friend Reynolds Price's book, | 5:29 | |
| Letter To A Man In The Fire: | 5:31 | |
| Does God Exist And Does God Care, | 5:33 | |
| Reynolds says, "We've just got to get out of our | 5:38 | |
| heads the pious notion that God is | 5:41 | |
| involved in everything that happens in the world. | 5:44 | |
| Because there's just too much world, | 5:49 | |
| and there's too little God | 5:51 | |
| for God to be blessed or blamed, | 5:53 | |
| every time something happens that causes us concern." | 5:56 | |
| Unfortunately, neither of these depictions of God, | 6:03 | |
| as a serene, detached, uninvolved clock maker | 6:07 | |
| match up with the God we get today, | 6:13 | |
| Palm Passion Sunday. | 6:16 | |
| Today's story in Scripture you will note, | 6:21 | |
| is of a parade. | 6:24 | |
| A parade that enters into Jerusalem | 6:26 | |
| with Jesus at the head. | 6:28 | |
| Today, Jesus intrudes into Jerusalem. | 6:32 | |
| Oh, he could have stayed away. | 6:38 | |
| Earlier, when he would say, | 6:40 | |
| "I've got to go up to Jerusalem," | 6:41 | |
| his disciples would say, "Don't go there." | 6:43 | |
| They knew, Jerusalem would be the place of his death. | 6:46 | |
| Jerusalem was where the enemies were. | 6:53 | |
| And yet, it is said that Jesus set his face like flint | 6:59 | |
| toward the capital. | 7:05 | |
| And what do you do with that God? | 7:09 | |
| Or maybe more to the point, | 7:15 | |
| what does that God do with you? | 7:17 | |
| Christmas, my family gave me | 7:23 | |
| a lovely statue of the Buddha. | 7:26 | |
| Serene, it's done in the style | 7:29 | |
| of the elegant Buddhas of Siam. | 7:31 | |
| It is Buddha, seated on a lotus blossom | 7:34 | |
| with hands raised out in the Dharmachakra Mudra gesture | 7:37 | |
| of peacefulness and serenity and openness. | 7:42 | |
| Buddha with eyes closed, | 7:48 | |
| sign of peace. | 7:51 | |
| Jesus is not seated on a lotus blossom. | 7:54 | |
| He is bouncing this day | 7:58 | |
| on the back of a borrowed burro. | 8:00 | |
| Moving, he's moving toward the city | 8:03 | |
| where by the end of this week | 8:06 | |
| he will face betrayal and torture and death. | 8:10 | |
| That's why we also call this Sunday | 8:17 | |
| Passion Sunday. | 8:20 | |
| It's from the Latin meaning, to suffer. | 8:23 | |
| That is where he resolutely rides, | 8:27 | |
| and that is how he will eventually die. | 8:31 | |
| Our choir hales him as he passes, | 8:36 | |
| "Ride on, King Jesus, ride." | 8:41 | |
| Scholar Marcus Borg has taken Jesus, | 8:46 | |
| and the Buddha, and laid them alongside one another, | 8:51 | |
| and has marveled at how many things | 8:56 | |
| Buddha said that are uncannily like | 8:59 | |
| what Jesus said. | 9:02 | |
| Well alas, with such belated efforts | 9:07 | |
| to contain or confuse Jesus, | 9:09 | |
| this Savior is remarkable not only for what he said, | 9:13 | |
| but also for what he did, | 9:19 | |
| and for how he died. | 9:21 | |
| Today, Jesus intrudes. | 9:25 | |
| Earlier in his ministry, Jesus said, | 9:30 | |
| "Come to me, all ye who are burdened and heavy laden." | 9:33 | |
| Today, he comes to us, | 9:41 | |
| bouncing on the back of a donkey. | 9:45 | |
| He is surrounded by a throng, | 9:50 | |
| some of whom wish him well, | 9:52 | |
| others want him ill. | 9:54 | |
| Some of the crowd, little children, | 9:57 | |
| wave palm branches in welcome. | 10:00 | |
| Others seek to set wheels in motion, | 10:03 | |
| whereby Jesus will finally be shut up. | 10:06 | |
| And that is the seething human cauldron | 10:10 | |
| into which Jesus rides. | 10:13 | |
| We're members of the modern world, | 10:18 | |
| and the modern world, in order to make itself work, | 10:20 | |
| first needed somehow to do something | 10:24 | |
| to pacify God. | 10:26 | |
| We couldn't move ahead with modern plans | 10:29 | |
| for human betterment, without the assistance | 10:31 | |
| of Deistic philosophers, who made a careful distinction | 10:35 | |
| between what they called particular providence, | 10:39 | |
| and general providence. | 10:42 | |
| It is the glory of God, said the Deists, | 10:46 | |
| that God doesn't need to get involved | 10:50 | |
| in the grubby little particulars of the world | 10:52 | |
| to make the world work. | 10:56 | |
| God is in his heaven, | 10:57 | |
| and that leaves us free to run the world as we please. | 10:59 | |
| And the twentieth century is the result. | 11:02 | |
| What kind of God is this though, who would | 11:10 | |
| leave us to our own devices? | 11:13 | |
| A sophomore said, | 11:18 | |
| "A good professor will get in your face. | 11:20 | |
| Poor teachers sit back. They come in, | 11:25 | |
| you know, they lay out all this stuff on the table, | 11:28 | |
| and they say, "Come on in if you want to, | 11:31 | |
| and take what you want, leave what you like." | 11:32 | |
| A good teacher, | 11:38 | |
| dares to get with you. | 11:40 | |
| There are just too many defenses | 11:47 | |
| against learning and thinking. | 11:49 | |
| There are too many reasons for faculty self-protection, | 11:52 | |
| that lead many to say, "Well you know what they say, | 11:57 | |
| you just can't teach anybody until that person | 12:01 | |
| really wants to be taught." | 12:03 | |
| Let me tell you, if we waited around here for people | 12:05 | |
| until they really wanted, | 12:07 | |
| nobody would get taught anything. | 12:08 | |
| A prominent management theorist, | 12:11 | |
| speaking on campus awhile back said, | 12:13 | |
| "One of the essential characteristics | 12:17 | |
| for a good leader in business, is | 12:19 | |
| courage to push against the organizational defenses." | 12:22 | |
| "Good leaders," he said, "Have the courage | 12:28 | |
| to be interventionists. | 12:32 | |
| In dying organizations, | 12:35 | |
| there's always some leader who won't lead, | 12:38 | |
| who merely manages what's already going on." | 12:41 | |
| The good leader is the interventionist. | 12:45 | |
| On most Sundays in this chapel, (clears throat) | 12:51 | |
| we say the Apostles Creed. | 12:53 | |
| And when we say the Apostles Creed, | 12:56 | |
| we say Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, | 12:59 | |
| he suffered under Pontius Pilate, | 13:02 | |
| he was crucified | 13:04 | |
| and then he died and was buried. | 13:05 | |
| You know, (clears throat) in the Apostles Creed, | 13:10 | |
| it's all in the passive tense. | 13:12 | |
| Which, if I remember correctly | 13:16 | |
| in my Junior English Composition class, | 13:17 | |
| Miss Amber Bogs said, | 13:20 | |
| "Is a sign of syntactical weakness." | 13:21 | |
| "Boys and girls, use the active voice," she said. | 13:27 | |
| You see, even the creed renders Jesus | 13:32 | |
| into this sort of divine automaton | 13:34 | |
| who passively is brought on the scene, | 13:37 | |
| passively born, | 13:40 | |
| passively suffers, | 13:41 | |
| passively dies. | 13:43 | |
| Well not today. | 13:45 | |
| The beginning of this story today, | 13:48 | |
| Genesis first book of the Bible, | 13:51 | |
| God speaking into the silence, | 13:55 | |
| God laying hold of the void, | 13:59 | |
| God said, "Let there be light, and there was." | 14:02 | |
| And then the ending of the story, | 14:08 | |
| in the book of Revelation, | 14:10 | |
| "Behold, | 14:13 | |
| the dwelling place of God is with humanity. | 14:16 | |
| And God will be with them, | 14:20 | |
| and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes | 14:22 | |
| and death shall be no more." | 14:28 | |
| People, something's afoot. | 14:35 | |
| I'm sorry if you thought | 14:40 | |
| we had God all tucked safely to bed. | 14:42 | |
| This God is on the move. | 14:45 | |
| God is not hunkered down here at church, | 14:48 | |
| God is now invading the city, | 14:51 | |
| God is taking back what God owns. | 14:53 | |
| A student said to me the other day, | 15:00 | |
| I asked him, "What are you majoring in here at Duke?" | 15:03 | |
| And he said, "History." | 15:05 | |
| And I said, "Well that's a tough major, | 15:07 | |
| a lot of challenging courses, majoring in history." | 15:09 | |
| He said, "Well, you know the hardest thing | 15:13 | |
| in history is before you can major in it, | 15:15 | |
| you first have to try to be an atheist." | 15:17 | |
| I said, "What?" | 15:20 | |
| Oh that's right, yeah, I almost forgot, | 15:25 | |
| we can't have God intruding into exclusively human events. | 15:28 | |
| We've got to explain all human history as self-made. | 15:32 | |
| Our lives are exclusively self-derived. | 15:38 | |
| Everything comes from the inside, | 15:42 | |
| from the tug and pull of human events. | 15:44 | |
| We can't have history told like the Bible tries it. | 15:48 | |
| History is these insistent incursions | 15:52 | |
| of a God that just won't let us be. | 15:57 | |
| Some plan put forth first in the mind of God. | 16:01 | |
| Oh no, now it's up to us to make history go right, | 16:06 | |
| or history won't go right. | 16:09 | |
| Sorry, History Department, | 16:14 | |
| look, here he comes. | 16:16 | |
| Not necessarily to fix what's wrong with the world, | 16:21 | |
| but to reclaim the world. | 16:25 | |
| Sometimes he just bears what's wrong, | 16:28 | |
| shoulders it, takes it up with us, | 16:30 | |
| he stands beside us. | 16:32 | |
| The crucifixion that awaits him at the end of this week | 16:39 | |
| was a death chosen not just for Jesus. | 16:43 | |
| Crucifixion was the typical | 16:48 | |
| Roman, imperial, political way | 16:50 | |
| to deal with Jews who got too big for their britches, | 16:53 | |
| and said things and did things | 16:57 | |
| that caused Caesar trouble. | 16:59 | |
| Thousands of Jews were tortured to death in this way. | 17:01 | |
| And this is the fate that Jesus | 17:07 | |
| willingly took upon his back. | 17:10 | |
| He could have bypassed Jerusalem. | 17:12 | |
| He could have died a pleasant end | 17:15 | |
| in some nursing home somewhere. | 17:19 | |
| No! | 17:21 | |
| He couldn't have been the kind of God he is. | 17:25 | |
| Behold, Jesus is on the move. | 17:31 | |
| He will ride, he will encroach, | 17:36 | |
| he will with whip in hand, cleanse our corrupted temples. | 17:39 | |
| He is going to make people in power very mad | 17:43 | |
| before the end of the week, | 17:46 | |
| both political and religious. | 17:48 | |
| He is going to unmask our deceit. | 17:51 | |
| He is going to evoke the violence | 17:54 | |
| upon which our culture is based. | 17:56 | |
| It will come down in full force upon his naked back. | 18:00 | |
| He is going to hang there and bleed | 18:04 | |
| and gasp his last. | 18:07 | |
| All for us and for our salvation. | 18:10 | |
| All for us. | 18:13 | |
| Ride on, King! | 18:16 |
