Unknown Caller

Sermon based upon: Genesis1:1-2:4a; Matthew 28:16-20; Oops to Yeah Style; Sermon audio

(Oops) As I looked down at my cellphone I did not recognize the number. This is never a good sign, especially when the number starts with 866. I picked it up anyway. Then there was the pause, an obvious sign that this is not family, a friend, a parishioner, or anyone else that I want to hear. Still for some unknown reason, I held on the line.

The nasally voice on the other end finally came through, “Hello Mr. Olson, this is Debra calling our valued customers on behalf of Charter.” Without any room for me to interrupt, she kept going, “Sir, I have to let you know that this phone call is monitored for quality assurance purposes.” As she keeps going, I am wondering when she is going to take a breath, so that I can say I am not interested in whatever she is selling, but still she keeps speaking, “What we are doing today is making sure that you are getting the best services at this time okay.” For a second, I think this is my chance, but she keeps going on about bundling services and faster internet.  

Finally she has to take a breath and so the following words come out of my mouth: “I’m too busy at the moment to talk about this.” Before she even gets a response out of her mouth, “When would be a good time to…” Click! I hang up the phone! Conversation over!

“I am too busy.” The words shocked me when they came out of my mouth. Not that they are not on some level true, but “I’m too busy.” Yeah, I’m too busy to take this phone call from a telemarketer trying to get me to buy more, but “I’m too busy” keeps pushing its way out of my mouth, and I have reason to believe I am not alone.

(Ugh) Before answering that phone call for which I was really too busy to take, I was reading a post on the Harvard Business Review by Greg McKeown entitled, “Why We Humblebrag About Being Busy.” To humblebrag is to, in a subtle way, talk about how much time we are spending on this project, that presentation, or some other report. McKeown suggests that the even more disturbing trend is that when we get into a state of “toomuchness” we try to fight it by adding more. More technology to free us up, so that we can spend more time… scrolling through social media? More outsourcing our tasks to others, so that we have more time to spend… binge watching television series.

McKeown is not alone in his assessment. There are others who are pointing out that we are all too often busying ourselves with more and more programming (more soccer practice, more dance rehearsal, more youth group activities, more more more!) Instead of taking time to have rest from more activity, we are filling our free time with endless checking of facebook, twitter, Instagram. I don’t speak just as an observer, I am guilty of this all too often myself.

A youth minister in Birmingham named Stephen Ingram wrote an open letter to the parents of his youth informing them that their children are in a bad place. As he says, they are “more stressed, full of anxiety, depressed, suicidal, over committed, over medicated, over worked and over extra-curriculared, and it is killing them, sometimes literally.” Ingram informs the parents that their children will probably not go to Harvard, or play professional sport, but that is okay because when we finally stop pushing ourselves and busying ourselves and extra-curricularing ourselves to death, when we finally shut down the devices and turn off the TV and finally let ourselves rest we start to discover something that we cannot otherwise experience. We heard it earlier this morning… It’s where we started.

(Aha) God spent a big chunk of time, six whole ages according to Genesis, creating the earth, the stars, the sun, the moon, the waters, everything that crawls, walks, swims, or flies and even us human beings (made in God’s own image). Yet something happened when God culminated this very good work. “And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.” God rested. God didn’t do anything. God sat around, maybe God hovered, I don’t know, but God did not do anything. God just was.

My grandfather when he was still alive would just sit for hours at a time and he would look out his front sliding glass door into his patio area. He would watch birds and squirrels and the trees and the weather. He would not do anything, except occasionally drink a little bit of his bourbon. I never understood what he was doing because he wasn’t doing anything. Yet, he had figured out what God did on the seventh day. We are so addicted to doing that we have no clue how to sit and enjoy what God has created.

(Whee) McKeown and Ingram urge in their writings to engage in a disciplined pursuit of less. Find the essential things that are crucial for the joy of life, and sand away the rest. It will feel like when you clean out your closet and after packing up all the boxes with the clothes that you no longer wear you feel free. Somewhere in the midst of this freedom, where less is actually more… more joy, more peace, and more love for life… somewhere in this essentialist type of living is an opportunity.

Today’s Gospel is the end of Matthew. The Gospel ends with a commissioning: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” We hear Jesus saying to go and do, yet if we think this is all he is asking of us we are missing the context in which Jesus speaks.

Jesus has taken his friends up on top of a mountain. They are in the area of Galilee where so much ministry happens, yet they are called away from the madness of doing, so that they can be with Jesus. Some of them worship while others doubt, but neither can happen if we are too busy and preoccupied with group status meetings, progress reports, and even Sudoku apps.

(Yeah) Today is Trinity Sunday. When newly ordained ministers are thrown up into the pulpit, so that their bosses don’t have to explain the mystery that is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Usually there are some incomplete analogies that commit at least one heresy. I don’t like heresy, nor do I think the mystery is to be understood. Instead our task on this Sunday is not to comprehend the Trinity but to experience the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in relationship. The trouble is that most of our lives we are too busy to experience anything other than the most urgent email in our inbox or the most pressing voicemail left on our phone or the next meal for our family, the next bill to pay, or whatever is most crucial. We become slaves to the urgent such that we have no time to contemplate the great mystery of the Trinity.

I know for certain that God is not just two men and a bird, but who God is to each of us looks different. If we are too busy to understand that God is leaving us breadcrumbs on the trail home, hints at how we are to be in relationship with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, then we will never catch a greater glimpse of what a three-in-one God looks like.

God who is Holy and Powerful, intimate and empathetic, immanent and processing. God who is Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is trying to speak with you. Are you too busy to take God’s call? “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”