The Gospel of Wasting Time

Luke 7.18-23

February 25, 2007 - First Sunday in Lent

Rev. Matthew M. Fry

As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Give us, we pray, O God, thoughts higher than our own thoughts, prayers better than our own prayers, powers beyond our biological possibilities, that we may spend and be spent in the preaching and hearing of Thy Word. Amen.

This season of Lent, I get to preach 4 sermons to you, and then one on Easter. There are 6 Lenten Sundays, including Palm Sunday. This year on Palm Sunday, we are having a choir cantata, as has become our custom. And another one of the Sundays the Fry family is going to take a long weekend vacation. That leaves 4 Lenten sermons, and one Easter sermon. So, this lent I will preach 4 sermons that I am calling the Gospels according to Matt, and then on Easter I will preach a sermon titled “The Culmination of the Gospels.” These are not the replacements of the written Gospels, nor are they additions or addendums. They instead are 5 things that I believe through my soul to be true, things that are in the scriptures and are themes that I see running throughout the bible and that are part of the call of living the life that God has in store for us. I think these are going to be really fun, and I hope you think so too.

I should explain about the title of this one first. When I was in my first church in the Pittsburgh area, I was in a small town 25 miles outside of downtown that didn’t act at all like a suburb. It was a little like that John Cougar Mellancamp song, Small Town. The people there would say, “I was born in this small town, and I’ll probably die in this here small town.” There were small churches, and small stores, it was just a small community. As far as Churches, there was our Presbyterian Church, and caddy-corner to us was a Methodist church. 1 block away to the North was a Lutheran Church. And 2 blocks to the East was the Catholic Church. When my father visited, he couldn’t believe there wasn’t a Baptist church, or 4. But Pittsburgh isn’t in the south. It was a small town with many churches. As such, not only did all the people know each other, but also all the pastors really knew each other well, and we would get together for breakfast every month and talk about how we could create opportunities for ministry together.

One of my favorite people from that group was Father George, the priest. Father George was fun, and he and I enjoyed a similar sense of humor. We were the ones making fun of the other pastors during these breakfasts. In some ways, my ministry was validated in my mind, because here was someone who had been doing this for 20+ years in a manner similar to the way I wanted to do it. Anyway, we would gather for breakfasts, and get our official meeting over, and then just stick around and talk. After one meeting, someone said something like we waste too much time gabbing and goofing off. I said something theological and yet still smart-aleck like, “Well, we are in the ministry of relationships.” And Father George said, “Yeah, but we should call it the Gospel of Wasting Time.”

When I visited in the hospital the day before the surgery he didn’t make it through, he beamed and told the Nun who was at his bedside to give us some time, so he could get an official Presbyterian visit. When she left, he said, “Well, now we can get to the good stuff, the Gospel of wasting time.” And we laughed and laughed during that visit. So, the title is an homage to my departed friend, Father George.

Anyway, hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in the Gospel of Luke.

Listen. Luke 7.18-23.

The disciples of John reported all these things to him. So John summoned two of his disciples and sent them to the Lord to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” When the men had come to him, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to you to ask, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’” Jesus had just then cured many people of diseases, plagues, and evil spirits, and had given sight to many who were blind. And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

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

In college we had a housemate named Tom who was in a wheelchair from spin bifida. That fact has nothing to do with the following story. We didn’t have a television in the house. I think I’ve mentioned that to many of you before. Anyway, Tom was a history major, and as such proclaimed it important to us that he regularly watch the news. Seemed a good reason to us. So Tom would wheel the two blocks from our house to the campus, and hang out in the men’s dorm gathering room where there was a television. Right after this, we realized that as Philosophy and Religion majors, it was a good idea for us to keep current on the news as well. So, one day we walked down an hour after Tom left, in time to get there for the 6.00 news. Tom was there, sure enough, and was deeply engrossed in the program on the tube. It was a Cosby re-run. So we gave him a good ribbing, and came back at 7.00 to see the national news. Jeopardy. Turns out, Tom just liked television.

After that episode, Tom couldn’t with a straight face tell us he was going to watch the news. So instead he would say, “I’ve got to go to the campus and Take Care of Some Business.” And that became the mantra for, “I’m going to watch Cosby and Jeopardy, nothing special, just do what I do.” TCOB we called it. Or BTO for Bachman Turner Overdrive, who sang Taking Care of Business. And this was a regular thing, TCOB, almost daily.

That’s what Jesus list feels like. Some of John’s followers come to Jesus and the disciples, and they ask if Jesus is the one, in as good of a Matrix voice as they can. And then Luke reads what Jesus has been doing, curing the people of diseases, plagues, and evil spirits, and giving sight to many who were blind. And Jesus ticks off that list, and it reads to me like Jesus is saying, “Look, I’ve been Taking Care of Business, just TCOB. The dead are raised and the poor hear good news. Tell John that.” To Jesus it is no big deal. To Jesus, this is business as usual.

Now, to those of us who read the Old Testament, it is a pretty big deal. And it would have been to any person with Biblical understanding back then. Jesus is fulfilling prophecy. Jesus is ushering in God’s reign, because the lame walk, the dead are raised, and the poor hear good news. This is fulfillment of what the people of God have hoped for, what they have waited for, what they have prayed for. This is life in the garden, how God meant for the world to be instead of the way things currently are. This is the realization of heaven on earth.

And Jesus seems to me to be thinking about it in a very nonchalant manner. To him, this is just TCOB. He is simply ushering in God’s reign, taking humanity back to the garden. He seems a little put off at the question in the first place. See, I think that Jesus is put off because it is not important to him how people view him. He’s got a job, but he is doing it, and doing it well. He doesn’t need the publicity. He doesn’t need other people’s disciples questioning him. He isn’t about external validation nor about living up to the standards of any people. What is this but an interruption? It is an interruption of his work, and is an interruption of his time with his disciples, with his closest friends, with his fellas. Yes, you can quote me, I just called the disciples Jesus’ fellas. I think Jesus sees his time with them as educational in nature, but I believe that Jesus also sees it as the Ministry of relationship. These are the people who will be put in charge of spreading his message and teaching, and spreading the reign of God very soon when Jesus is gone. The question that John’s disciples raise is a waste of Jesus’ time, and it gets in the way of his ability to enable his disciples with the Gospel of Wasting time. His fellas have to be confident when they face a world that has already rejected Jesus. They must be emotionally and spiritually ready to be among the people that killed Jesus, and would eventually kill them. They have to be prepared for the difficult and fantastic journey once Jesus is gone.

See, I believe in the Gospel of Wasting Time, because I have seen the strength it gives us to go through our lives. Or, I should say, I have been given strength for my journey because of the close relationships I have with you, and I know that many of you would go to great lengths to care for my family and me, because I have seen you do it. And I have known close friends who haven’t been able to rely on a community because they haven’t built relationships, haven’t properly wasted their time. I think of someone I was talking to this month, who used to be in one of my youth groups. We were talking about his love for the big religious philosophers, and we got around to many of them; Auleen to Nietzsche, Kant back to Aquinas, and of course, the big one, Kierkegaard. And he said, “You know, I don’t go to church much, cause what I really want is to talk philosophy, and most folks don’t want to do that. And worship is so one sided, the pastor talks, and there is no real opportunity for interaction. So I read my philosophers, and that has been my church since college.” And I strategically changed the subject. “How’s you mom doing.” She had just been through chemo for breast cancer. “She’s doing alright, seems to be recovering nicely.” “How are you doing with that?” “Well, it was tough on me. I was really worried about her.” “Well, I’m glad she’s doing well. If there’s anything we can do.” He said thanks, and we hung up after some further conversation. But I was left with this thought; books are great, theological and philosophical thought is important, it deepens faith and strengthens it. But books and philosophy don’t hold you as you cry when your mother is in the hospital.

You want to really get something out of church, out of the community of God’s family? You gotta waste some time. Here is the secret that we should let out; wasting time with God’s family, building relationships by meeting for breakfast, or lunch, or joining for a no-talent show, or gathering around the tables for Wednesday night supper, or meeting and talking while planting and tending a garden, or even trash talking by a bunch of people who by all rights play the worst cards I’ve ever seen, that stuff is fun. Isn’t that great? We get to invest in our future well being by having fun. We get to grow in our faith in a fun manner. We grow in God as we waste time with each other, either in fun, or in work, or by helping each other through the tough times. But when things are normal, we waste time together, and it is good.

I believe in the importance of wasting time, wasting time with God’s family, as a way to grow and as a way to live the life God intends for us, as a way to experience a little bit of the garden, and as our way to get back there for good.

George, I hope that was good enough for a protestant, but not so good that it would merit a collar. That’s an inside joke, I’ll make George explain it to you when you get to heaven. Mostly George, as always, I hope you got a good laugh. Amen.