Sermon: The Wonder of Fulfillment in our Midst

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The Wonder of Fulfillment in our Midst

By Charles Rush

December 16, 2001

my colleagues have already pointed out, we are a little out of order this morning. Jesus is already born this morning before Christmas. I join a long list of Church bloopers, a few of which I share, actual bulletin announcements that needed an editor desperately.

The Lutheran men's group will meet at 6 p.m. Steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, bread and dessert will be served for a nominal feel. (I hope they meant fee, but I know some of these men).

How about this wedding announcement. “Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.”

And this from prayer concerns: “Barbara remains in the hospital and needs blood donors for more transfusions. She is also having trouble sleeping and requests tapes of Pastor Jack's sermons.

How about this Church sign: “Don't let worry kill you — let the Church help.”

Or this from an Associate Minister's sermon on tithing. He concluded by saying in great earnestness, “I've upped my Pledge — Now, up yours.” Maybe we could reword that.

I wanted to lift up this one theme from our text this morning that is a theme from the season of Advent, that of living to see fulfillment. We are told that Simeon was an old man who had prayed all of his life for the consolation of Israel. One day, this child comes to the Temple and he knows. How does he know? He just does… The scripture says, “he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, ‘You can let me depart in peace… for I have seen Your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples”(Lk. 2:28,29).

One of the great insights of the bible, spiritually speaking, is to live our lives looking for the moments of fulfillment in our life, celebrating fulfillment in our lives, remembering fulfillment.

I was recently getting my haircut. As my hairstylist was snipping away at my hair, it was falling on a black sheet. “Oh my God,” I said, “look at all that gray hair”… “That's a lot of gray hair. What am I going to do with all this gray hair.” She said to me. “Gray hair's not so bad… My husband died when he was 34. Every once in a while, I wonder what he would look like if he were still alive, probably salt and pepper and so handsome.” There was a long pause and I said, “Gray hair's not so bad.” Just then, I remembered the words of the great philosopher Jamie Akers, former member of Christ Church, who occasionally used to say, “quit your freakin whining Man.” The fact of the matter is that the promise of fulfillment is all around us. And for the most part, we don't take time to notice it.

In many ways, it is subtle and you have to have your eyes opened for you, like Jimmy Stewart… in It's a Wonderful Life. It is such a corny show but I watch it almost every year for this reason alone.

My father-in-law died when I was nineteen. I never met him. He taught psychology at UNC in Chapel Hill and then at Medical School. He was a broadly humane man, active in the Civil Rights movement in North Carolina. He had taught in Costa Rica and was very interested in the development of Central America. He was a great family man. He drove a Volkswagen bus, had five children, and had no mechanical ability whatsoever. So when the sliding door on the Volkswagen bus broke, he tied it shut with rope and all the kids got in through the drivers door. He loved having a whirlwind of chaos around him, lots of children and dogs all making chaos — the good kind. I can just imagine them all — 5 kids, two dogs, tons of beach gear, no air-conditioning heading to the beach for a summer vacation. He had the gift of making family and you can see it in every one of his children — they are all great people and all have big families themselves.

He died when he was too young. There were many times that I wished I could have talked to him because he would have been a lot of help. Particularly during those years when I was writing my dissertation and I was so poor, overworked, and all these people around me were just saying, “Aren't you finished yet?” “When are you going to get a real job?” I wish I could have called him up and talked to him. He would have helped me with some perspective and encouragement. I'm sure I would have enjoyed having a bourbon with him over the Holidays around the fire, talking about my kids. I'm sure we would have shared many of the same intellectual pursuits.

But, if he had lived, I never would have met Kate. That is the way that goes. Instead, we met a couple short years after he died, three of her brothers and sisters were still in High School and Middle School. I remember that they were just coming out of a long time of grief. When I came on the scene, Kate was very happy. It was a time of solid family joy. My mother-in-law thought I was a good thing for Kate. She is a wise woman. I remember that time as something of a new start, a new chapter for the family.

Years go by and all of these kids grow up, they all graduate college, start their own families, work through their stuff. A couple years ago, one of them buys a camp in the mountains of North Carolina. We started a new tradition, going there for Thanksgiving. There are 10 in my generation, counting spouses, and 18 grandchildren, half under the age of 8, most of them are blonde headed like their grandfather, but some are adopted from countries, far, far away. This Thanksgiving, 5 of my nephews (all about 6-7 years old) are dressed in their cammo, running in and out of the Main Lodge of the camp, playing army. Nana is calling them all to dinner and the combat is continuing indoors, under the Thanksgiving table, above it. Uncles are joining in, taking sides. There is a lot of chaos — the good kind. I couldn't help thinking to myself that my Father-in-law must be smiling that feeling of great fulfillment, even though he couldn't be there himself.

We have these fulfillments all around us, the trick is to be aware of them and drink them in. Instead, most of us can't see the forest for the trees. Most of us are like Dr. Rogerio Lobo, the chairman of the Ob-gyn department at Columbia Medical School. He recently held an interview in which he disclosed that he was reluctant to publish his current research because it didn't make sense. The research? Dr. Lobo found that “random groups of South Korean women had almost double the success rate with in-vitro fertilization if they had been prayed for by a group of Americans than if they hadn't been. Lobo said there was probably some variable he had not accounted for, but could not imagine what it might be.”[i] Dr. Lobo the Dodo? Like the knuckeheaded doctor, many of us are surrounded with blessings and the fulfillment of hopes and we don't even notice the obvious in our midst.

When is it that God has drawn close to you? Where have you been privileged to see the fulfillment of something you had long prayed for, long hoped for?

Dreams and visions are so important. I love the line in Joel that says, about the days when God is present with us, “In those days, old men will dream dreams and young men will see visions”. What a great promise.

We know how important dreams and visions are to forming the world around us. I loved to watch the Olympic diver Greg Louganis, perhaps the best diver in history. He specialized in those complex, twisting reverse flips off the 10 meter platform. One time some kids were asking him questions and they wanted to know how he did that because he couldn't see where he was going. He said, “I have to see it all in my mind before I jump. Once I can see it, then my body will just do it even though I can't watch where I'm going until it is over.” The spiritual life of faith is like that. We are following a vision, given to us in prayer. Sometimes we can see where we are going and sometimes we have to follow that vision without being able to see. But the more that we live with the vision, the better our character is able to follow it without having to see where it is all the time.

That is why the content of our dreams is so important. We have the ability to alter the physical world through prayer, through our visions. We have that spiritual power.

Most of you know about it, you can feel it, especially negative spiritual energy. Several years ago, some people that I knew went through a bitter, contested divorce. At the end of many, many months, they both looked awful — in very different ways. But they had been living under the revenge curses that each of them were focusing on the other, and its toll was dramatic. That is negative spiritual imaging — negative spiritual energy.

Any one who has lived through a hostile takeover, a forced reorganization in your company, who has had to live through other people conniving around you, plotting to make you expendable so they could have your turf, knows how emotionally and spiritually exhausting it is to live in an atmosphere with damaging spiritual visions that are being manipulatively impressed on others. We have that spiritual power. And that is why, we have to use it for good rather than for harm.

We all have to develop visions for our vocations. We have to come up with immediate goals, long-term goals, and those are important when they are productive. What are the goals you would like to see in your life? What vision of family, community would you like to create? What legacy would you like to leave? These are fundamentally spiritual questions at their broadest level. The trick is to fit your proximate goals, your vocational goals and your financial goals, into this broader spiritual vision that is holistic.

The scriptures help us develop spiritually holistic visions — peace, understanding, grace, love, health, compassion. And they are very important. From time to time, I think it is vitally important to practice ‘living by the vision'. Take one person — perhaps your spouse, a child, a difficult co-worker or maybe a good friend that needs support. Take some time every day and focus on them. Ask God's blessing, God's grace, and healing. And then just watch out and see what happens. Direct things will happen and indirect things will happen. We are conduits of spiritual energy and we can direct the future, not control it, but direct it.

And from time to time, we can live to see fulfillment. A time to pause, give thanks, be grateful for the wonder… And if we are lucky, we can say with Simeon, “O God, now you can let your servant depart in peace.” We get to see the birth of a grandchild. We see the birth of a creative venture that really reflects who we are actually get off the ground and fly. We see someone we know that has struggled with relationships finally meet someone else that really, deeply loves them. We see a country that we have prayed for over decades finally do the things that make for peace in our time. We watch a new, creative outreach program get started where there was nothing and begin to change a community in need. We live to hear from a relative that wants to make amends for something broken a long time ago, and a new, unpredicted chapter opens before us. Fulfillment in our midst is wonderful, partly because it is usually unbelievable and filled with mystery when it happens.

We don't get to fully stop. Fulfillment is a resting time for a while. But there is no spiritual fulfillment that lasts for a long time. Our fulfillments in this life are fleeting. We have a fox that lives near where I walk my dog in the morning. I've heard the fox a few times but I don't get to see the fox but a couple times a year. You have to be up just before the dawn and the woods are quite a bother in the dark, are they not? But a couple times a year, never less than at a distance of 200 yards, that fox will stop on a ridge and look back at us. It is just a long pause really, that big bushy tail disappearing as quick as it appeared. But it is inspiring. Spiritual fulfillment is not quite that fleeting, but it doesn't linger, and it remains at a distance. It is not something that we get to stop and indulge for a long time. We can build a shrine to it to remember, but the actual sense of fulfillment usually catches up short, unexpectedly, like Simeon, who is in the Temple, when one day, there it is… a rich, compressed moment… and then it is on to something else.

But memories of fulfillment are important. Someone shared with me a conversation they had with a roommate from college from twenty some years ago. The roommate called to kvetch about his son. The boy was not going to Dartmouth. He was not playing sports. He recently came home with an enormous tattoo over back and shoulder that was plainly visible in short sleeves. And he was in jail. Dad was getting more and more worked up, the more he talked.

His roommate interrupted him and said, “I was thinking about that boy the other night… He has a birthday coming up soon, doesn't he?”

“Yeah, the 18th”

“Remember the night that he was born and you drove an hour from the hospital to give us the news in the middle of the night. What was it, three, four in the morning?”

“I remember”

“We sat on the front porch of the house and you had some rot gut tequila because you were still in law school. And I put that stuff away and got out the VSOP and we sat there on the front porch smoking Cubans, planning out the rest of our lives.”

“I remember.”

“And my wife came outside at dawn and asked what in the world we were doing. And what did you say.”

“I said, ‘I'm the luckiest man alive'”.

Advent is a season of waiting. We are waiting for the fulfillment of God's promises in our midst. Let us open ourselves to spiritual vision that is substantial, that will make others whole. Let that vision fill our hearts and our minds. Let us focus on it with others that will share the vision with us. Let us become the channels by which God brings the values of the Kingdom into reality in our midst. With Simeon, may we be able to say, “Now let thy servant depart in peace.” Amen.

[i] From Chuck Shepherd's “news of the Weird” in Funny Times, December 2001.