19 Pentecost A 08
September 21, 2008
Phil 1:21-30 (NRSV)
21 For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. 23 I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; 24 but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. 25 Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, 26 so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again. 27 Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel, 28 and are in no way intimidated by your opponents. For them this is evidence of their destruction, but of your salvation. And this is God's doing. 29 For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well-- 30 since you are having the same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.
The Rabbit
Fred Craddock was visiting in the home of his niece. There was this old greyhound dog there, just like the ones who race around a track chasing those mechanical rabbits. His niece had taken the dog in to prevent it from being destroyed because its racing days were over.
Dr. Craddock struck up a conversation with the dog:
He said to the dog, “Are you still racing?”
“No,” he replied.
“Well, what was the matter? Did you get too old to race?”
“No, I still had some race in me.”
“Well, what then? Did you not win?”
“Well, what was it? Bad treatment?”
“Oh, no,” the dog said, “they treated us royally when we were racing.”
“Did you get crippled?”
“No.”
“Then why?” Craddock pressed, “Why?”
The dog answered, “I quit.”
“You quit?”
“Yes,” he said, “I quit.”
“Why did you quit?”
“I just quit. Because after all that running and running and running, I found out that the rabbit I was chasing wasn’t even real.”
The Egyptians offered a fake rabbit to the Hebrew slaves over which they ruled. The slaves did not have to worry about food or housing. All they had to do was chase the rabbit, all they had to do was obey everything their Egyptian rulers commanded them to do. For many years, this arrangement was fairly comfortable. But when the Hebrews outnumbered the Egyptians, the balance was thrown off, and the Egyptians became frightened of the slaves. Harsh oppression ensued. The unbalance grew worse.
Enter God. A new rabbit was offered to the Hebrew slave: God’s kind. This was an authentic rabbit, a future shaped by God.
And then again in the history of Jesus’ ministry, two kinds of rabbits were offered: the one the religious leaders were offering, a kind of twisted version of the faith in which personal piety was all that was required and therefore the world as it was could be accommodated, with all its injustice and cruelty, or an authentic rabbit offered by Jesus: a world renewed by God.
And so Paul is in prison, rejoicing so much in his hope that some of his jailers come to believe. He even sees his imprisonment as evidence of the coming kingdom, just as he tells his beloved Philippians that their opponents are evidence that what they are doing is real. If the world is leaving you alone, you aren’t really preaching the good news.
This is why I say that in my own life, disillusionment was a gift. When I saw how fake the rabbits were that I’d been chasing, and when I saw how real the kingdom of God was, how much more real it was and will be than the world we have made, I was set free.
I somehow know that to accept what is true is always the doorway to revelation, to epiphany. To accept the train wreck of my life, this is the key to true liberation. This is God’s great gift to me.
This is the great privilege of the wilderness. Of suffering with Christ. Suffering with Christ is not enduring the ordinary pain of living. Suffering with Christ is recognizing the fake rabbit and changing direction. It is quitting the race everyone else is running.
And so I don’t have a Pollyanna hope that all is going to turn out well because God’s got the whole wide world in his hands, no, I don’t have that hope, because I don’t think the bible really says that, and I don’t think it’s even a given. I think it has been offered to us to enter into the struggle, and know in the struggle the pain of God, and in knowing that pain, discover the joy of God’s passionate love.
It doesn’t matter what the rabbit is, how good it looks, family, friends, wealth, a good lover, community, faith, God, country. Disillusionment is a gift. It’s when real living begins.
Faith begins when you stop knowing. I heard a wise man say in one of those twelve step meetings, “the farther I am away from my last drink, the closer I am to my next one.” I heard him say that and I heard a lot of far less-experienced members chide him for being negative, but he wasn’t being negative. He wasn’t even saying he was going to take a drink: he was saying his growing wisdom was in just how little he had to do with not taking one. He was talking about real freedom.
The longer I live, the less I know. The close to death I get, the more alive I am. The greater my loneliness, the greater my love. The more of my family slips away from me, the bigger my family gets. All the rabbits I’ve been chasing all my life, none of them were real. The reality grows with the slow fracturing of the illusions I spent most of my life believing in. Is that the coming of the kingdom?
Why waste time and energy trying to deny the truth? Why deny the truth about your successes and failures, your selfishness and your generosity, your coldness or your warmth? Why not just tell the truth to yourself about yourself? Why not get it over with, and be free? Why not tell the truth about your country, about what you really want, about the world and everyone in it, about the cold, hard hearts of most of humankind, including your own?
Why not live toward the truth that comes at the end so that the end ceases to be any worry? Why not be about things that the world will punish you for being about? Why not love someone who hates you? Why not help someone you don’t know? Why not go somewhere you know will tax you? Why not live toward the truth, and get in that wild river?
I love you all because the Holy Spirit is among you and you are welcoming her. I love you all because you are striving to be of one mind and one spirit. I love you because you are trying to quit chasing fake rabbits.
People wonder about hell. I’ll tell you what hell is. It’s knowing that you’ve wasted the precious thing God has given you, this unspeakably brilliant thing called life, on fake rabbits. Hell is when you see your life in trash pit, being burned, and you feel the burning, the burning of waste. You stand on the outside of the life that has been spent uselessly and you gnash your teeth in helpless frustration because you can’t go back, you can’t have it again, you can’t make it right.
Hell is turned loose in the world when a whole bunch of people get together on the race track and run after those fake rabbits, and knock each other over trying to catch them. We turn the world into a burning trash heap, and we cast ourselves into outer darkness, on the other side of what might have been. That’s the human kingdom the kingdom of God is coming to overturn, and it’s very powerful and it lays claim to all of us. We all belong to it.
Until we don’t. Until we’re ready to go wandering in the wilderness. Until we’re ready to give up the regular meal schedule for manna from heaven. Until we’re ready to work in the vineyard no matter what pay we might or might not get. Until we’re ready for the truth that God is king and no other. The only authentic rabbit is Christ and the kingdom of God he unveils.
When we, the modern Philippi, become of one mind in this, then the world will sit up and take notice, and maybe, just maybe, we will be offered the greatest gift: to suffer with the Lord.
Christ ever with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me
Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me
Christ to my right side, Christ to my left side
Christ in his breadth, Christ in his length, Christ in depth
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me
Christ in every eye that sees me
Christ in every ear that hears me.
—Breastplate of St. Patrick
Amen.
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