“My Daughter’s Sermons:
Murphy, The Things We Pass Down”

As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Guide us, O God, by your Word and Spirit, that in your light we may see light. Send out your light and your truth, O God, and let them lead us. Amen.

This is the second sermon of two in my series of sermons that are inspired by the simple fact that I am a father. As I said last week, I have felt closer to God by being a father. Last week, I noted that through being a father, I wondered if some of what parents feel and experience relates to some of what God experiences. Is what we desire for our children similar to what God desires for us? Maybe, I hope. If God is our great parent, some of the moments we have as parents must equate, right?

That was last week, Kayla’s sermon. And, as I said last week, what I have found is that once in a while I will be in my dad mode, and all of a sudden I will think “This is theology, a theological moment.” Last week it was about God as parent. This week, it is about our role in the finite creation.

Open your hearts and hear The Word of the Lord from Psalm 90. Psalm 90.9-10.

For all our days pass away under your wrath; our years come to an end like a sigh.

The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.

The Grass withers, the Flower falls, but the Word of the Lord endures forever…Thanks be to God.

Hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in the gospel of John. Listen. John 10.10.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

The Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God.

A little while ago, I was putting Murphy to bed. Since routine is helpful when you do things everyday, I was sticking to the routine. I’m not sure who the routine is more helpful to, the child, or the parent, for it is beneficial to both. When one of us puts her to bed, we change her pants, we put on the jammies, we give her bear, this is a replica, she should have the real one downstairs as we speak. We don’t go too far without bear. Then we read her a book, usually while we have turned on her music. She has a few different CDs that she will listen too. She has a couple of classical CDs, because they, whoever they are, say that babies experience brain development through classical music. She also has a CD of music by famous artists who are fathers, like James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James. And she has this CD, the one you might be able to hear now, a mix of stuff I have made for her. See, I think that it isn’t just classical music that stimulates the brain, but complicated music, complex music, music with subtle undertones. Okay, in reality, I just like this stuff better than classical. It is some slow stuff, cause I want her to go to sleep when she is in the crib. And it is some of my favorite stuff, cause I made the CD.

This song, the one you can barely hear underneath the sermon, is from my favorite CD, and it is my favorite song from my favorite CD. I sat down with Murphy one night, hit play on the CD player as I began to read her Pajama Time, which is her bed time book, and which was Kayla’s bed time book. And it was one of the few nights in which she sat still for the ritual. About a third of the time, she is not tired enough, and fights the ritual. Another third of the time she is too tired, and fights the ritual. But, especially more so recently, the other third, she gets into the ritual. She looks at the book, points at the piggy if you ask her to, one thumb in the mouth, the other arm around her bear, and sits there in my lap and just soaks it in. And this song was playing.

This song, from the album Acadie by a guy named Daniel Lanois, by the way. I’ll include the link to his home page so that if you want, you can go on our website when Ken puts this up. This album originally came out when I was in college, in the year 1989. It doesn’t sound like that long ago at first, but I suppose it is. Anyway, in college we lived in a little house that used to be a garage. Someone had turned it into a two story, two bedroom house. We built a third bedroom into it, which was about the size of a small walk in closet. That was my room. And we didn’t have a television in the house, which was one of the reasons that it was some of the happiest times in my life. And we had a record player. What we would do is hang out, listen to records, talk to each other, get some studying in, make dinner, clean up, listen to more records, and that was about it. In fact, when friends of ours visited from the University of Georgia, our college was very close to the beach after all, they were puzzled by what we were doing with them. We were hanging out, sitting around, listening to albums. Finally my friend Anthony said, “You know, you don’t have to entertain us. Do whatever it is you would normally do. What is it that you would normally do on a Friday afternoon?” My housemates and I all looked at each other, and unanimously said, “Yeah, this is about it. Sitting around, hanging out, listening to records.”

We used to listen to this Daniel Lanois album regularly, and it was my custom to lay on the floor when we listened to it. My theory was that by closing my eyes, shutting down other senses, and finding the most comfortable seat in the house, the floor, the couch was atrocious; I could hear the music better.

So I’m holding Murphy in my arms, listening to this music, and I become overwhelmed with a sense of my past, and my future, coming together in one moment. And since I had to do an in-depth paper on Psalm 90 in seminary, I actually thought of the section that we read earlier. “For all our days pass away under your wrath; our years come to an end like a sigh. ¹⁰The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” I became confronted with one of those moments when I am reminded of my mortality, that the mortality rate for humans remains at 100%. I’m not going to live forever. Well, I am, but just not here in this realm. And as much as that saddens me, I am not overwhelmed with a sense of sadness. I’m overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude. I get to pass down, to my children, but really to all people as part of the generational duty that happens with all generations, I get to pass down the beautiful things in this world. Many of those things are created by the Creator, none other than God. As you may know or remember, I am a fan of the Backpacking. I’ve even summited a 14er, which means I’ve gotten to the top of a mountain whose peak is over 14,000 feet above sea level. I, like all of you, have seen beautiful scenery in this world that reminds us that there is a creator. We’ve seen starry, starry nights and endless beaches, and tall pines, and snow kissed mountain tops. And all of it is part of what we get to experience and then hand off to the next generations. And that is wonderful, to be part of the cosmic play. We get to share with the next generation that which was shared with us by the previous generation, and it is wonderful to take our place in the cosmic ballet.

But, what I became aware of that night is this. It isn’t just the God made things that I am proud to pass down. Sure, I love seeing a child’s eyes when they see the first snow. Or when they see a sky full of stars, so many stars that they look like they are too many for the sky to hold. But not only that. I am excited that I not only get to enjoy the things that are human made, like Van Morrison, Ray Charles, Branford Marsalis, Aretha Franklin and others, but that I also get to pass on that stuff to the next generation, to my children. And I’m sure that Murphy and her sister soon enough will listen to some music that I can’t stand or understand, whose sole purpose is to annoy the parents of the listeners, the same way I listened to music when I was growing up, the same way my parents did to their parents, and the same way Murphy’s children will do to her, for which I will sit back and smile, won’t I. And there are other human made things, besides music. I get to pass down good food, like Jambalaya, and scampi, and even pizza and good beer. And then, Psalm 90 and John 10.10, “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly,” come together. If we are lucky, we get to live a long life, says Psalm 90, and we get to experience all of the things that we can’t take with us, like the times when we can’t stop laughing, and the sides of our stomachs hurt so much that we actually wish we could stop laughing for just a moment. And we get to watch as the next generation experiences some of the same stuff.

Maybe that’s nothing, or perhaps its something special.

This is the last stanza from Walt Whitman’s poem, O Captain! My Captain! As found in Leaves of Grass, and made famous by the movie Dead Poet’s Society. O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring. Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish. Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew'd. Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me, Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring -- What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer That you are here--that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

We get to contribute a verse, we get to effect what others experience. We get to create beauty, and get to effect the future. Tell me that isn’t cool.

And not just the good stuff. In John 10.10, Christ doesn’t say, “I have come that they might have the good life, and have it in spades.” He says, “I have come that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” He doesn’t say, “I’ve come that you might have the abundant life,” but, “I’ve come that they may experience life, and experience it fully,” which is a solid translation from the original Greek. The highs and the lows, the good and the bad, the re-livable and the regrettable, all of it. When I held Murphy that night, I was overwhelmed by being thankful for all of it. Because the highs, and the lows, the good and the bad, the relivable and the regrettable all make you feel more alive. And oh how we have all know walking corpses, people who are dead though their pulse says differently.

To that end, I want to read you something that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote. Bonhoeffer was a German theologian in the 1940’s, during the rise and terrible reign of Hitler. And Bonhoeffer considered it his ethical duty to get Hitler out of power so that the genocide he was living in would stop. He tried to assassinate Hitler, and the explosion he instituted obviously came up in vain. So he was arrested and put in prison. He was put to death, something he knew was a risk whether or not he was successful in getting Hitler, on the 8^th of April, 1945, 3 weeks before Hitler was surrounded by Allied forces and committed suicide.

In prison, facing death, Bonhoeffer showed a peace that could not have been expected. He wrote to his best friend, , knowing that he was headed for his ultimate end.

“Later I discovered and am still discovering up to this very moment that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to believe. One must attempt to abandon every attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, a churchman (the priestly type, so called!) a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. This is what I mean by worldliness - taking life in one's stride, with all its duties and problems, its successes and failures, its experiences and helplessness. It is in such a life that we throw ourselves into the arms of God and participate in his sufferings in the world and watch with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, that is metonoia and that is what makes a (person) and a Christian (cf Jeremiah 45) How can success make us arrogant or failure lead us astray, when we participate in the sufferings of God by living in this world?”[1]

By being in the world, and experiencing life, and experiencing it abundantly, we get to live with God. May we always be so lucky. Amen.

[1] A taste of his thoughts from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Letters and Papers From Prison” (Collins Fontana Books; London:1953) pp. 122 -125