Autumn is Here
Vicar Michael Trice
Autumn is here. And I have proof. Not September 21st, no. You don’t need a weather reporter or a farmer’s almanac when you have a vicar, and I am happy to report that the arrival of Autumn splashed over our collective consciousness at precisely 7:48 AM in Shoreline this past Friday morning, when the skies opened up and cried buckets and buckets after a rather emotionless summer, apparently.
As it may have been to you, this was a surprise to me, and the last thing I really expected. Sure the reports called for rain, but my internal New Mexico translator interpreted this to mean ‘drizzle,’ not a kind of heavy rain as we experienced on Friday morning, not this deluge, not the kind that prompted Noah to confidently draw up anchor, no. And, it was in this fog of denial on my part, about the weather, that I made the decision to ride my bicycle to work on Friday, all fifteen miles from Shoreline to the top of Capital Hill. Now, I do this often but not with such quiet confidence about the weather. “It won’t rain.” I quipped, even if only in the chasm of my own mind, long before rain drops started falling on my head.
The reason I rode is because I needed to clear my head. I had spent last Thursday evening ruminating about these texts we’ve just heard – Deuteronomy’s rosy note about God’s declaration of the day the Israelites will perish, or the rebuttal in the Psalms that the wicked, sinners and scoffers will perish, or Paul’s recitation to obedience, with a hint of perish, or finally, — in the Gospel reading today – Jesus’ telling large crowds to hate life itself or fail at being a disciple. Hmmm.
And, in those reflective moments late Thursday evening, I thought of your faces, I thought of this moment, right now, and . . . wondered . . . can I preach on another text?
Here is what Jesus in effect says: Tear down all of your secure and trusted relationships like ripping out the eye beams from a building, on the one hand, and as Jesus continues, don’t build a building in the first place without plans for completing it. He is telling large crowds to tear down and build, take apart and construct anew, to let go and raise up, to allow something die in order to live anew. And then Autumn arrived.
I was on my bike Friday morning wondering about all of this when it arrived, and I missed the memo that apparently many Seattlelites are aware of, which reminds us all of how slick the streets are on that first major rain, when any residual oil creates a slippery sheen on roads. Well, seven miles from home, my bicycle slid, my tire hit an uneven groove, the tube popped. My bicycle faltered. And I landed thankfully on the grass. And that is when the sky looked down and said, like the Gospel today, land there on that guy.
It was impressive image. The sky – announcing the end of summer and the return of rain. Me – sitting on the side of the curb, without real rain gear, rummaging through my bag for my spare inner tube. I managed to get it the inner tube on, after a half hour of wrestling with the tire with wet hands and arms. But then I pulled out my spare bicycle pump – it’s just a spare – but it looked different, somehow rough, kinda, shredded. It looked like one of those number two pencils you chewed in 2nd grade, with the soft wood giving way between your young teeth. But this pump . . . this pump, I think, some large dog (my dog, Argos) must have found that pump some rainless afternoon, and chewed it like a milkbone . . . before my daughter discovered the egregious act and must have gingerly put the pump back in my bike bag.
Because, as I peered through the sheets of rain, and when I started to pump the inner tube, which I had wrestled like Jacob to fit it up and under the tire, the pump pushed air out . . . . sideways. Ruined.
Life is sometimes like a fall off a bike, drenched on the side of the road, every sincere hope irrelevant. Imagine that. Your baptism falling all over and around you, and here you are trying to save and build, to control the moment, it is the equivalent of pumping air sideways. The tire will never fill. You’ve been there, haven’t you? At that life moment when tires do not fill and the road is long ahead. . . and you have the reminder of your baptism.
I wasn’t angry. I felt like that unprepared king in the Gospel today, unwilling to wage war against myself, and ready to yield for peace instead. We reach a point in life where we surrender the anger because it earns us nothing and profits no one. (slow) I was sitting in a pool of water, thinking in that place, with the rain dripping off my helmet, staring at the broken pavement and streams of mud that . . . life teaches us how everything we think is rock-solid secure requires an inner wisdom about how fragile this all is too, which makes it all that more precious.
It’s called the blooming rose effect: the rose is beautiful because it is with us now, at this moment.
We can talk together, as we do, about God’s plans for us, our families, and the world but . . . this doesn’t mean t he sky d oesn’t open up unex pectedly . Life brings surprises. But the wisdom of rain is not defeatism. The wisdom of rain is that you are baptized come what may.
Sometimes we have to let go – I have to surrender my expectations and think about the future in a new way. And that is when I understood what Jesus was up to when he raised his voice and yelled to the crowds and told them: ‘to give up everything in order to be a disciple.’ That message is like the changing of a season in Jesus’ ministry. The long dog days of summer firmly behind us, the earth tilts on its axis a bit more, and autumn stretches its fingers like tree limbs with vibrant colors and rain, and more rain.
So, what would a disciple do next? Do you remember who first told you to stand up and walk? Who told you in the face of adversity to rise and be resilient? You picked up your bicycle in faith with your bruised body in tow, and walked the two miles to the store where you waited, for almost an hour, until they opened, and offered you help.
“What happened to you?” The attendant asked me. “I was baptized.” I said. “I’ll say.” He answered.
Finally, here is what Jesus said that I think may interest us most: “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” Now, what does that mean? A cross is nothing more than two beams, an axis point, and a specific kind of burden in this story. Jesus carries a cross on Golgotha. In this text, we carry a cross in a different way. In today’s stor y, the cro ss is not heavy, but rather it is meant to be light. The cross is our ability to surrender and build a new foundation as a disciple of the Most High. Sometimes it takes a rain storm.
Sometimes it takes a lot of rain to change our hearts, but we do . . . change.
Jesus isn’t being rude to the crowds; he isn’t being cryptic in the Gospel without purpose. He knows that some life lessons have to seep in and saturate the ground around us before we learn, really learn. So be a disciple and take it from me . . . don’t live in denial about the rain.