Jack McKinney
Pullen Memorial Baptist Church
April 20, 2008 — Fifth Sunday of Easter
Text: Psalm 31:1-5
The Illusion of Permanence
Most jobs come with a boss or supervisor or at least some implied authority figure. And some of these authority figures end up being memorable. If you are a teacher you can probably think of a principal you really loved (or didn’t). If you work in state government maybe there was an elected official who came into your department and made your life better (or didn’t). People are memorable for all kinds of wonderful and not-so-wonderful reasons.
For Baptist preachers we have memorable deacons. Now let me be clear, the two deacons I am about to describe come from previous churches I served. The deacons I have dealt with at Pullen have all been, as Garrison Keillor might say, strong, good-looking, and above average. And they smell nice, too.
My two most memorable deacons were Donald and Harvey. Both of these men were incredibly dedicated to their churches. They both had generous spirits in the way they gave of their time and resources. But I remember them for different reasons.
Donald holds a special place in my heart because he took such good care of our family. We lived in the church’s parsonage, and Donald lived just up the road from us. He was constantly doing things for us that we needed done even though we didn’t always know we needed them done. One winter we experienced the worst cold front in my lifetime. The temperature was right at zero and the wind chill was much lower. Suddenly KaKi and I realized our pipes were frozen, but just as we came to that realization we looked out our window to see a mummified-looking man with a blow torch bent over the exposed pipes outside our house. Not only had Donald assumed our pipes were going to freeze, he knew exactly where to look to fix the problem. Such consistent acts of generosity were the norm for Donald.
Harvey was also generous and dedicated, but it came with a price. He called me constantly or dropped by the office to talk about the “crisis of the day,” which was often a crisis only in Harvey’s mind. His message to me was consistently one of two things: 1) what was I going to do to prevent the disaster that was looming; or 2) why had I not acted in order to prevent the disaster that had already occurred. Late one night he called me at home to discuss the crisis of the moment, which I wasn’t even sure was a problem much less a crisis. When Harvey wondered what I was going to do, I suggested we both go to sleep and maybe by morning the situation would have resolved itself. I could tell by the dead silence on the line that Harvey didn’t think much of that plan.
Looking back on these two deacons I realize now that I gave a great deal of time and attention to one but not the other. I thought about one of them and his needs a lot more than the other. My personal and pastoral energies were directed to one much more than the other. Which deacon am I talking about? Harvey, of course.
Donald was dependable, consistently gracious, and never seemed to have personal needs. There was a kind of permanence about Donald, an unchanging quality, and it was a delight to have him in my life. He was easy, and easy to take for granted.
I think of Donald when I hear the words we have read from Psalm 31. This Psalm is attributed to King David during a time of distress and persecution. He turns to God for rescue saying, “Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me. You are indeed my rock and my fortress.” The repetition of the words rock and fortress tell us all we need to know about David’s needs in his dire situation. He needs something dependable, something permanent he can count on in the midst of his trouble.
The image of God as a rock is found throughout the scriptures and the hymns of our faith. The regularity with which this image is used in our faith language speaks to the comfort it gives us. In a world where little seems consistent and dependable, the idea that God is as solid as a rock is a notion many of us cling to.
This yearning for a God who is permanent and unchanging is part of a larger emotional pattern in our lives. We long for people and places and things that we can count on and don’t have to worry about. But there are a couple of difficulties with this pattern. First, the permanence of anyone or anything is an illusion. Even the God of the Christian faith is hardly static and fixed. As many theologians have noted, to speak of God in Christ being crucified is to acknowledge that the suffering of God changes God. After all, how does anyone suffer and not be changed by the experience? (Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God)
The other thing we should notice in our search for that which doesn’t change is our tendency to take for granted those people and things we perceive to be consistently the same. We don’t mean to do this. In fact, the things we take for granted are often the things we have the greatest appreciation for. I’ve come to think of this as the “Donald Principle” in reference to my former deacon. That which is dependable, easy, and fulfills my needs is the thing I am most likely to miss as it undergoes subtle changes.
And when we combine these two things—the illusion of permanence and the “Donald Principle”—I think we find the roots of our current ecological crisis. This rock we live on gives off the illusion that it is solid and unchanging. And the resources we get from Mother Earth have been so dependable, so easy that we came to take it all for granted. And now, because our assumptions about the permanence of creation were so wrong, and our neglect so consistent, we find ourselves in a mess.
Global climate change is such an accepted reality that leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention recently signed a statement stating they believe human beings are responsible for this crisis. To put that in perspective remember it took the Southern Baptists 150 years to apologize for their support of slavery that was the reason the convention was formed in the first place. Once the Southern Baptists agree that a social or scientific truth is real it means it has been real for many decades.
And the reality is such a grave one that it will take a massive commitment on the part of public and private entities to prevent an environmental holocaust. Whoever the next President is of our country would do well to make the care of creation his or her greatest policy objective. Not only would that benefit the long-term interests of the United States; it would also help restore our standing with our neighbors around the world.
But the truth is we can have Al Gore spending millions of dollars on television ads to educate people about Global Warming, and we can have political leaders championing the cause, but the whole project will ultimately fail if all of us do not awaken to this simple truth. The rock that has been our refuge is changing. This planet that has appeared so stable, so giving is in fact incredibly delicate. We have abused her not because we meant to, but because we were lulled to sleep by the illusion of her permanence. But now we know. We know that our addiction to fossil fuels has led to an explosion of greenhouse gases that are heating the planet. We know that the icecaps that seemed to always be there are melting at an alarming rate. We know that the resulting rising of the oceans will bring devastation to coastal areas. The fantasy that the Earth will be the same yesterday, today, and forever has come to an end for many of us and must come to an end for all of us if we are to make the kind of concerted, universal effort it will take to reverse our ecological abuse and neglect.
And to be sure, there is a certain sadness that comes with the end of any illusion that has brought us comfort. When we lose someone in our life that we assumed would always be there, it is painful. To have to focus on the care of creation, rather than assuming the creation will always care for us, is hard. And maybe most challenging of all, to contemplate that the God of our faith, the rock of our salvation, is also changing—well, that is more than most of us can bear to consider.
But if we will risk letting go of our illusions of permanence then we may also let go of the tendency to neglect those people and places and things that we assumed were unchanging. And wouldn’t that be a wonderful shift in our lives? If we came to think of God not as this static, unchanging mystery but as the living, loving Creator of the universe, how might that change our faith? And if we thought of the Earth not as the unchanging rock that would always supply our needs, but as the fragile creation of which we are a part, how might that change our actions? And if we stopped thinking of certain people in our lives as unchanging companions or guides, but as sisters and brothers who have needs as well, how might that change our relationships? Deep appreciation is born and great love expressed when we realize we are not guaranteed anyone or anything forever.
Maybe that is why at Pullen we limit deacons to three-year terms. Their lack of permanence makes them easier to love and appreciate.