from The Barrel

Sunday January 25, 2003
St. Andrew's Kirk
St. George's, Grenada W.I.




How good it is! How good it is to be in Grenada again! Twenty years is much too long a time to be away. How many times over those years, "in vacant or in pensive mood", scenes from this part of my experience have flashed upon my "inward eye"! Scenes of sitting among the old gravestones in the churchyard and looking down on the Esplanade, of sitting at the old fort and looking down on the harbor. Scenes of driving along the western side on a Sunday morning and crossing the bridge at the Concord River and looking down at the women doing their wash in the river.

How good it is to be with you, again! Life has a way of getting in the way of things that are important to us. For a long time I tried to maintain contact with many of you by mail, but both you and I let it languish. To be here today and to be looking at your faces again is a great and beautiful gift.

How good it is to stand in this pulpit again! I am grateful to your pastor the Rev. Mr. James for his gracious invitation to share this moment with you, today. I must warn you, though, as I warned him, that I have not preached a sermon for a while and my skills may be a little rusty.

In my retirement sermon two-and-a-half years ago I attempted to distill all that I had learned in my thirty-nine years in ordained ministry in three and a half words: "It's about people." After two and a half years of retirement I think that sentiment is as valid today as it was then. I still believe that it's about people, although in a slightly different way.

Funny thing about retirement is that I don't think as a preacher anymore. I am not forever preparing sermons in my head. I used to have three our four sermons running around in my head at any given moment. All I had to do was grab a-hold of one of them and start pulling. I saw sermon illustrations all around me in my daily experiences. Now I have been learning to be a regular human being, and it has been a very humbling experience. I don't want to go into detail about that, but I do want to try to share with you the essence of what I have learned in my retirement.

One of the most significant things that has been happening in my retirement is that I spend a lot more time at home. Prior to my retirement I was gone all the time. My wife almost had to make an appointment to talk with me. Now I am at home almost all the time. And the thing about being at home that much is that it puts me in contact with my wife not only for longer periods of time but with much greater intensity. And that, my friends, can either make or break a relationship.

Here is a story that illustrates what I mean.

One day the king called in his most trusted counselor.
"I don't know what to do," said the king, "the princess, my daughter, wants to marry a most disagreeable rogue. I know that if I forbid it, her resolve will only be strengthened. What shall I do?"
The counselor thought for a minute and said to the king, "Your Majesty, I have an idea that will almost certainly work."
"Please tell me what it is?" begged the king.
"If it pleases your Majesty, tell your daughter that she may marry whomever she wishes, but with one condition."
"What would that condition be?" asked the king.
"That the princess and the man she thinks she loves must be put in a room together and be locked in."
"What?" exclaimed the king, "are you crazy!"
"Tell the princess that she and this man must remain in the room for two weeks. All their needs will be met, but they will neither see nor talk with anyone else until two weeks have passed. If after two weeks they still want to marry, give them your blessing. If their love is not true, they will hate each other long before the two weeks are over, and wish to get out of there. If, however, their love is true, it will draw them closer together."

The truth is that living together in close proximity either destroys a relationship or binds it even more tightly. For the past two and a half years I have been learning how to live in relationship in a way that I had not in 35 years previously. I am pleased to report that after two and a half years that my wife has not tried to jump out a window, although I am sure she must have thought about it at times. In my retirement what I have learned is, that it's about relationships.

Several years ago, when one of our daughters was in a confirmation class I taught one of the other girls in the class said to her, "you're so lucky to have a dad like that; I think that he is such a wonderful man." To which my daughter replied, "That's because you don't have to live with him." How true! There are so many people who attract our attention, or elicit our admiration, but what are they like up close? How well do they fare in relationships? Would you want to live with them?

Living in relationship is not the easiest thing in the world. Yet, I have learned that it is one of the most important and fulfilling things in human experience. I believe that living in relationship is not only at the very center of what it is to be human, but, indeed, it is at the very heart of our spirituality. Spiritual life is essentially about living in relationship.
The epistle of 1 John puts it this way:

Anyone who says, “I love God,” and hates his brother or sister, is a liar; for he who does not love a brother or sister, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. 1Jn 4: 20

Yes, relationships are that important.

Notice that the writer is talking about loving a brother or sister whom one has seen. It is all too easy to love people in general. "Love your neighbor as yourself" sounds good until you begin to apply it to a particular neighbor. It is all too easy to love people in the abstract. I love everybody in the world. I love the poor. I love those who are hurting and neglected. So long as they live at a great distance from me I have no problem loving them. It is the people with whom I have to live that I find it difficult to maintain a healthy relationship. Or to put it in more earthy terms, it is the people with whom I have to share a bathroom who put my love to the test.

Wouldn't our spiritual lives be so much easier if we could live as hermits on a mountaintop without daily human contact? Wouldn't our relationship with God be enhanced living in a cave where we could commune with God in the stillness of our solitude! If we could dedicate our lives entirely to God and live in a monastery or a convent and have time to pray and meditate all day, without the distractions of having to deal with other people or all the demands upon our time, we could be saints, too!

No, my brothers and sisters. The way to deeper spirituality lies not on the mountaintop. The way to a closer relationship with God lies not in a cave. The way to a richer life in the spirit lies not in a cloister! The way to deeper spirituality lies in the give and take of every day life with other people. We learn to live in communion with God in learning to live in relationship with one another. Yes, it is that ordinary and mundane.

When I was in active ministry I thought that one could not sustain a life of the spirit without regular church attendance. I couldn't understand how one could be Christian if he or she did not come to worship sing the hymns, and listen to my wonderful sermons. I thought that people who regularly absented themselves from Sunday morning worship missed out on the main essential of spiritual life. For some reason what Jesus said completely eluded me:

If you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift and go and first be reconciled to your brother or sister… Matt 5: 23, 24.

A relationship with God can only be maintained as we live in harmonious relationship with one another. Indeed, according to Jesus, all our works of piety are worthless apart from a harmonious relationship with our brother or sister.

As we said earlier this is not an easy thing to do. Indeed, it is more difficult than anything else I have attempted. The strange thing is that I did not pay much attention to it until after I retired. I was always too busy, or too tired. I had important things to do all over the country and all over the world. But the most important thing I had to do I did not even recognize. I neglected the most important people in my life and was busy helping other people.

Unfortunately, I am not the only person who has that difficulty. I think that clergy are particularly prone to that problem. In the care of souls we find ourselves caught up in something very intoxicating. The respect and love that others have for us by virtue of our office too easily goes to our head. We soon find ourselves working overtime to get more of it. It is an occupational hazard. We neglect our families, we neglect our own physical health, and we neglect our own spiritual lives. When I talk with younger brothers and sisters in the ministry I tell them that it is most important that they take time for their families. You can always get another church, but you only have one chance with this family.

The old saying, "Charity begins at home" is true. It is true that Love begins at home. At home is where we learn to love. Home is where we practice love until we become better and better at it. We learn living in relationship not in a cloister, but in the heat of our every day lives lived with others. It is probably the most difficult thing that anyone can ever do. Yet, there is no doubt in my mind that it is the most important thing that anyone can ever do.

Here is another thing I have learned: it helps when you have a good teacher. My wife has been a wonderful teacher. Over the years as I neglected our relationship because I was too busy or too tired, she worked unceasingly at maintaining that relationship. She kept reminding me of how important it is. But not only has she been helping me to strengthen our relationship, she has been helping me to live in relationship with that grandson whom I love but who drives me crazy. She has been helping me with that son-in-law who aggravates me almost past endurance. She gently reminds me, and sometimes not so gently, when I do or say something that may cause hurt to another. I thank God for her gentle and wise teaching.
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But, not even a gentle and wise teacher can make it happen all at once. I am far from being there. But, by the grace of God I say, in the words of John Wesley, "I am going on to perfection." In short, difficult steps, day by day, sometimes moment by moment, I am learning to live in relationship.

I realize that all this may not sound very profound, or theological. It is something anybody can think about. Indeed, it is likely something that you knew all the time. Yet, although it may not seem like much, I am beginning to learn that it is the most important thing in the world.

There are three things that last forever: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Cor 13: 13

And how is love best and most completely expressed, but in our everyday human relationships.

Well, that is what 65 years of life has taught me: that the greatest thing in the world, the most important thing in life, is our relationships with one another. That, my sisters and brothers, is what it's all about. It's about relationships.