When I was in seminary I lived for a while with two wonderful women who were
kind enough to give me a place to rest my weary head. We shared some classes but are schedules were
different for the most part. Eliza also had a job and Kate worked with
disadvantaged youth so we weren’t always able to share our meals
together. But there wasn’t a week
that went by when we didn’t gather around the television to watch a
reality show on CMT called “Making the Team.” I wish I could tell you that it was an
important program about folks devoting their time to issues of social
justice…but no…it was 13 weeks of escapism about women vying for a
spot as a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader.
Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea…I have no
problem with the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
Those women are dedicated athletes who probably practice longer and
harder than the Dallas Cowboys. And just
like the Cowboys, their spot on the team is always up for grabs. This TV show documented their quest for squad
survival. And while I admit that we started watching it to poke a little fun at
them, we couldn’t help but get attached to some of them, especially to one
young woman in particular. Kelly was a 5
year veteran, but she was considered vulnerable because of her advanced
age…she was 24. Apparently
that’s ancient in cheerleader years.
We rooted for Kelly to pull it off one more time, and she made it
through all the elimination rounds … except for the last one. On the day
the spots were posted we watched her fight her way to the list, only to find
that her name was absent from the final roster.
To say that she was devastated would be a masterpiece of understatement. Sobbing, she told the interviewer, “But
I have no other dream.” It broke
my heart. Not so much that she
wasn’t going to remain a cheerleader, but that she had no
bigger dream. .
Pastoral theologian Andrew Lester thinks we all carry some picture around in our
heads of where we’re headed … who we’re becoming … what
we’re going to be when we grow up. He calls it our "future
story." He says our sense of the future is a big part of who we are
… bigger even than our memories of the past, where most therapists
concentrate their attention. When our future story is full of dread or
something happens to make our preferred future story impossible, we get messed
up for a while. That’s the technical term: "messed up." Lester
has built a whole therapeutic model on helping people straighten out their
future story. Our dreams drive us forward. Our goals guide us in a certain
direction. We may not always reach them, but they get us moving and if we
aren’t moving, well, we aren’t going to get anywhere, are we?
Of course, goals by themselves are not enough. Some people have unrealistic
dreams because they aren’t really willing to do what it takes to get
there. The highest goals call for the greatest sacrifice. Someone saw Michael Jordan, just before he
retired, shooting hoops before a game. They said, "Michael, I wish I could
shoot like you." He looked over and said, "No you don't. If you did,
you would be out here on the court 12 hours a day practicing." You see,
miracles are not immediate.
At least, the best miracles, the ones that make the most of us and do the best
for us are the ones we work hard to attain, assisted by God’s grace each
hard step of the way. You start with what God has given you, but you do
something with it. Where it comes to goals most worth gaining, there simply is
no substitute for disciplined, hard work. You have to be willing to stay at it
no matter how long it takes … no matter how hard it becomes … no matter
how impossible it may seem … no matter what obstacles stand in your way.
But if you’re going to spend that much time and energy and passion on it,
you better be sure the goal you have set is worth having after all.
What do you want? A lot of us would have trouble answering that question
because of the frustrations we’ve experienced along the way. We started
with a dream of what our life would be like, but it didn’t turn out that
way and we find ourselves still wondering what to do now. We worked to get an
education, spent years in a career, got all the stuff we always dreamed of, and
when we got what we wanted, we found that it’s not enough …
it’s not what we thought it would be … it wasn’t worth the
effort after all. That happens to a lot if people. Or maybe we were on our way
to our dream when something happened to made it forever impossible, and there
was nothing we could do about it. So the search began again.
A lot of people look outside all their lives for what they need to find inside.
They look for it in a career. Then they retire or they lose their job, and they
don’t know who they are. Or they look for it in having a family. But then
their kids grow up and move away or their marriage ends up in a divorce, and
they don’t know who they are. They look for it in wealth, in homes and
cars and clothes and foreign vacations, but they get all those things and
it’s not enough. They still don’t know who they are.
Life does that to our dreams. Suddenly … unexpectedly … we lose
something important to our sense of well-being, and according to Andy Lester,
part of what we lose is our future story. We aren’t going to be who we
thought we would be … do what we thought we
would do … enjoy what we thought we might enjoy. So for a while, we
don’t know who we are, because we have no clear sense of who we will be,
what might become of us. William Bridges speaks of life’s transitions -
we all go through them – and he says that when we finally have the
courage to let go of what can no longer be, we enter a neutral zone of
confusion and uncertainty for a while. In the neutral zone we have to dream a
new dream. It’s a profound time of creativity and possibility and
spiritual acuteness, but it is also a time of high anxiety, often accompanied
by depression and grief. It’s a time to depend on God as you decide once
again, what do you want?
What do you want? Somebody once told me, "You can have anything you want,
but you can’t have everything you want." That was good advice. But
we do want everything! "You can have anything you want, but you
can’t have everything you want. So how do you decide?
The disciples knew what they wanted. Jesus was trying to tell them what’s
coming. He was trying to explain what the world does to dreams like his, the
violent resistance they could expect to justice and goodness and including
everybody in God’s love. He was trying to warn them about the betrayal
and suffering and rejection and cross he will soon endure and his faith in the
resurrection beyond, but they didn’t get it, they didn’t want to
hear it, they were afraid even to ask about it. They wished Jesus would just
lighten up. They decided to ignore the subject. They started arguing about
"Who is the greatest?" He was talking about dying and they were
arguing about "Who’s the greatest!" They wanted to sit at
Jesus’ left and right hand in his kingdom, but they didn’t want to
be crucified on his left and his right. It wasn’t enough for them to be
in the top twelve; they wanted to be number one in the pecking order of the
universe! He was singing "Must Jesus bear the cross alone?" while
they were singing "When the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be
first!"
These guys were sure slow. As we say in
Most of our prayers take the form of telling the Lord what we want … what
we would do if we were God … how the Savior can serve us if he’s
going to be a good god after all. But shouldn’t we begin by recognizing
that God is God and we are not? Shouldn’t we begin by admitting that God
alone knows what is best and right and good for us? So maybe our whole prayer to God ought to be,
"Lord, what do you want?" Maybe when we’re starting off after
our dreams in youth, we should ask first of all, "God, what do you want?
Why have you created me and given me this particular set of gifts? What can I
do for you?" Maybe when life wrecks our hopes, and we move into that scary
neutral zone between a death and a resurrection, we should be praying,
"God what do you want? Show me the way now and I’ll do it. Open the
door and I’ll go through it. Here am I, send me. Let it be to me
according to your word. Not my will, but thine be done." And if you can’t pray that … if
you don’t want that … maybe you need to pray … God will give
you the faith to want that … to want most of all to do what God wants
… whatever it might be.
James seems to think the major source of our problems is a broken "wanter." He says we want the wrong things:
Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not
come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do
not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and
cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have,
because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in
order to spend what you get on your pleasures (James 4:1-3).
But he goes on to say, "Draw near to God, and God will draw near to
you" (James 4:7).
What do you want? Go ahead and answer that honestly to begin with. Sit down
sometime and write it all down. Make a list and check it twice. It will tell
you a lot about who you are. Ask yourself if what you’ve listed is really
worthwhile and worth the sacrifice to obtain. Ask yourself, when I get what I
want, what will I have? Will it really make me happy … fulfill me …complete
me as a person? Most of all ask, ask yourself this: "Is this what the God
who made me, the Christ who loves me wants most of all for me?" And if it
is, then go for it. But if it’s not, well maybe you ought to reconsider
what you want after all.
Of course, I know, it isn’t always clear. The way ahead can be like
driving through the fog in the dark. But even if you’re not sure …
even if you’re in that neutral zone of transition … even if your
future story doesn’t go much further in your head than where you’re
going to lunch when we’re finished here today … you can take a
lesson from the slow witted disciples we have witnessed today. Follow Jesus one
step at a time. Listen to him and let him set your course. Get things right on
the inside and work on being the person he calls you to be … wherever you
may go … and whatever you end up doing. He won’t steer you wrong.
Even if the way leads through betrayal and suffering and a cross, he will bring
you to the resurrection on the other side.
In his book, Theology of Hope, Jurgen Moltmann suggests that for the Christian, hope means
"Jesus Christ is my future." Or, as Andy Lester would say,
"Jesus Christ is our future story. And it will never change. We can depend
on it. We can depend on him. He's all we could ever want.
May we pray?
O God, our God, help us to want what you want for us. Show us what you want,
and where that is not clear, help us to remain willing, ready, attentive. Help us to trust you in the meantime and follow
Christ through the fog. O Lord, be our future story as we move forward in
Jesus’ name. Amen.
Rev. Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United
Nekoosa