Sermon: Doors of Fear, Doors of Adventure

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Doors of Fear, Doors of Adventure †
Second Sunday of Easter

By Charles Rush

March 30, 2008

[ Audio (mp3, 5.6Mb) ]

r story begins with the ominous words of metaphor “and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear”. This lines stands in touching apposition to the wonderful image of the Christ from Revelation, “behold, I stand at the door and knock.”

In the movie As Good as it Gets, Jack Nicholson plays an eccentric writer named Melvin. Melvin is uptight as they come, focusing first on what is going wrong, and bristling with distance towards his neighbors. In the opening scenes of the movie, we see him entering his apartment in Manhattan. He has to unlock half a dozen locks, each with a different key. Once inside, he methodically locks them all again, with what we can tell is a practiced ritual. Then he enters his bathroom, runs the water until it is scalding hot, opens a new bar of soap, washes his hands, throws the fresh bar of soap away, opens another bar and washes his hands again.

Melvin's neighbor is a gay man that he detests. The neighbor comes to Melvin's apartment to inquire about his lost dog. Melvin speaks to him through a cracked door with the chain lock still secure. Little does the neighbor know that the dog is missing because Melvin has dumped it down the trash chute in the apartment.

Melvin is locked in his apartment, the whole of the outside world being a place of fear and danger. He sits in his apartment writing novels, spinning imaginary tales that he can control. The reality of the actual world is threatening to him beyond the imagining of it.

Doors are often like that. In almost every teenage horror movie, there is one scene where a beautiful young girl reaches slowly, ominously for the door, while the whole audience screams. As the knob turns and the door cracks open, the monster descends in a whoosh, blood covering the door.

My grandparents had a third floor in their spacious house in the deep South. There was a door with a stairway that led up to God knows what. My brother and I were sure that some character like Boo Radley (from To Kill a Mockingbird) was secretly housed on that floor. As small children, we would sneak to that door, dare each other to open it, slowly peer to the top of the stairs, and then run like the wind for Grandmother's lap in the kitchen.

Yet, one of the fundamental lessons of the gospel is that we need not fear. Jesus wants to come amongst us and grant us his peace. We are not alone. The Holy Spirit is with us. And the doors that are in front of us don't have to be locked for fear. They have been consecrated in a way. The Christ has turned them into portals to spiritual adventure. We have a hard time believing that in a way that affects our behavior. We, like the disciples, need not only to be empowered with the Spirit of God, but shooed out of the house to get going on our way.

Many of us are pretty much like Bilbo Baggins at the beginning of the Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Bilbo was rather contented in his home with his little rituals of breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner and the evening by the fire. He was quite happy until someone came to visit him and appeal to him for his help. Aid in this case would require a rather long journey. At one point, Bilbo thinks to himself that it would have been better had he not opened the door to this stranger. If he didn't know, then he wouldn't have to act, and he could stay in his home in contentment. But he does know and he can't stay. With a sigh, he shuts the door to his house, and starts off down a path that will lead him on a life changing adventure.

When you think about it, he is not all that different from Abraham and Sarah. We have no indication from the text in Genesis that they felt any lack in their lives. There is no necessity that they needed to fill a spiritual void or that there was some moral burden that they wished to redeem. They are simply in Ur when God comes to them with a rather risky spiritual adventure, the contours they couldn't possibly imagine in the beginning when they set off. They will be tested to the depths of their character and they will also know moments of awe filled joy. They will feel as abandoned as a fatherless child and they will sense themselves to be blessed by God and a blessing to others. None of this can they know at the beginning. But they start out through the door. Opening the door is a root gesture of the meaning and reality of faith.

We have no indication but that Moses was entirely content out in the desert in Midian. But one day, he senses the presence of God while watching a bush burning in the wilderness and he senses that God has heard the cries of his people enslaved down in Egypt. Perhaps Moses was still hearing them too. He had been raised, though he was Jewish, in the Pharaoh's home, with the best education and the finest life of leisure, surrounded by the cries of his people who labored in bondage around him. “I have heard their cries”, says God. “And I will deliver them.” Then comes his part. God says, “I want you to go to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go.”

When you think of the life of Moses, everything in his life had been preparing him for this moment. Who better to speak to Pharaoh than someone raised in Pharaoh's house? Who better to speak on behalf of his people in a language that the Pharaoh would understand? But Moses couldn't see this for the life of him at the moment. All he could see were the things to be fearful about. He could be killed. He couldn't speak articulately. He didn't have any military or religious retinue to accompany him like other people of rank and power.

But think of the rest of his life. The amazing trip that he made with his people; the way that they stretched and grew in maturity; the profound conflicts with themselves, confronting their moral weakness; making a covenant together around the Ten Great Commandments; being privileged at the end of his life to take his people to the edge of the Promised Land and though he was old and not able to make all the way in to the Promised Land, being privileged to stand and gaze out upon it at least once. I've been to a place that legend holds was where Moses viewed the Promised Land. It indeed provides a majestic vista over Israel from the South and is deeply moving. At any rate, to have that privilege is the last wish of Old Men who, when they know they are going to die shortly, want to make sure that they conclude their lives and not just quit them. And to be able to look out on the Promise of the future and know that you have led people up to this point is to know emotionally and spiritually that your life was worth living, the adventure was worth the trials, and that you had lived for a purpose that outlived you in a productive and fulfilling way. That is part of being complete, (the same word we get for being saved in Greek).

Or the wonderful short story in the Bible of the woman Ruth. She is not even Jewish but she was married to a Jewish man and after he died, it became apparent that her mother-in-law would not be able to live on her own and had no one else to take care of her. Ruth just offered to do the right thing and take care of her mother-in-law. The mother-in-law did not want to let her make such a huge sacrifice. She told Ruth, you are a young woman and beautiful. Go back to your people, you have fulfilled your obligation to me and been a fine daughter-in-law. Ruth comes back to her, with a wonderful compassion and tenderness, says, “Where you go, I will go. Your people will be my people.” How few of us ever have in-laws that speak in such a way? What a blessing. What love.

And they start off together on a journey that leads into completely alien land for Ruth. They have no resources. They are just women, without any men to protect or sustain them. But they get by. They take care of each other. And in the midst of all that difficulty, Ruth meets a man named Boaz and a love story unfolds that the Bible, in all its modesty, only hints at. But between the lines, it appears that there was plenty of snap, crackle, and pop. Way leads to way and Ruth and Boaz marry and things all come together in a startling way. When Ruth was old, she must have said, what I often say, “If you had told me, when I was a child in Mississippi, that one day I would stand on the walls of Troy with someone reading from the Iliad with me, I would never believe it…” [Or that one day I would be a minister… let alone a minister in a church in Jersey… or any church where gay men and women could share a simple prayer request for their family… it is those simple moments that catch me up every once in a while]. But once you start out on the adventure, all kinds of amazing things happen.

Despite that, most of us are rather like the disciples. We are locked behind our doors. We need Jesus to come breath his blessing on us and cajole us out of the door, on our way to the service that God would have us be about, and the life of abandoned investment that brings us through faith to our fulfillment.

Melvin, remember Melvin? He has to be cajoled out of his comfort zone as well. Like us, he has to be hassled and cajoled before he ventures forth. His gay neighbor gets badly beaten by a couple of thugs that come and burglarize his home. Melvin goes next door to express his sympathy. The unthinkable happens. In the rush of the moment, as his neighbor is being taken out to the hospital, the neighbors ask Melvin to watch their dog. Melvin is ashen with anxiety and dread, but he takes the dog nevertheless. The recuperation takes a couple of weeks. During this time, Melvin develops a relationship with the dog and soon the dog is the center of his life.

When his gay neighbor is released from the hospital, Melvin has to face the prospect of giving the dog back and he just can't do it. He really, really likes the little dog. So he does something even more radical, Melvin invites him to move into his apartment. A small miracle is taking place as Melvin is opening up to others. He is still an ass, to be sure, but there are substantive signs of change. He gets more and more involved in helping with his neighbor's recuperation. One day a strange thing happens. He gets all the way to the elevator to run an errand before he realizes that he forgot to lock his apartment door. He gets this puzzled expression on his face as though he is looking into a mirror and does not recognize his own visage. There is a long pause… It is like he has been stymied by a light-shaft of grace and compassion that has left him dazed for the moment. Befuddled by himself, he has become somewhat human. How in the world did that happen?

In that moment, the Christ comes to the disciples and says “Peace be with you”. Your defenses breached, your guard let down, you will be okay anyway. With the Holy Spirit given to us by the risen Christ, our doors of fear can be transformed into portals to spiritual adventure. A future we could not have imagined can emerge before us.

At the end of his long tale about Narnia, C. S. Lewis has Lucy and Edmund standing before the gates to Narnia in wonder. Finally, they say "Dare we? Is it right? Can it be meant for us?" But while they were standing thus a great horn, wonderfully loud and sweet, blew from somewhere inside that walled garden and the gates swung open.” Who knows? We just might be that lucky too. Amen.

† A version of this sermon was preached by Dr. Rush on April 22, 2001