Still There???

#2 in the Lenten Sermon Series:

“Dennis in the Corner”

 

Then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter,

“So could you not stay awake with me one hour?”

(Matthew 26:40)

 

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the Second Sunday in Lent, February 17, 2008

Volume 2 Number 33

First United Methodist Church, 605 West 6^th, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653

 

To guide us in our 2008 Lenten season I’ve introduced young Dennis Mitchell, a celebrity better known as Dennis the Menace, the creation of cartoonist Hank Ketcham. For years I’ve scanned each day’s newspaper, rarely failing to clip and save one particular genre of Dennis the Menace, what I call Dennis in the Corner.  The theme played out in these frames is Dennis being banished by his parents to sit facing the corner in his little rocker.  His parents want him to consider what he has done wrong, why he is being punished, and the corner functions to block out all distractions, leaving Dennis alone with his thoughts.  A good Lenten exercise, if you ask me. 

 

Liturgically speaking, Lent is the church’s experience In-the-Corner.  The forty days of Lent seek to engage us in private reflections in that intensely spiritual corner of our lives where we acknowledge our sin and seek redemption.  Lessons are to be learned in the silence of the corner. But our lives don’t always flow in rhythm with the church calendar, do they?  There are moments of spiritual disruption along life’s journey that no liturgical calendar can schedule.  These are moments – it may be at Christmas or in the middle of the summer, not during Lent -- when one of our own poor choices results in a fresh consciousness of our own sins, prompting us into our private corner of reflection, to seek repentance and forgiveness and, at last, restoration of fellowship with God.

 

In today’s Dennis In-the-Corner episode, we see Dennis daring to get up out of that chair and challenge his unseen mother, Alice.  He says, “I’m NOT gonna sit in this old corner any longer!” The next frame shows Dennis right back In-the-Corner with Alice now quite visible, having put Dennis back in that chair.  Dennis is now the picture of meekness, his challenging tone dissolved and a wonderful look of innocence on his face as he says, “I was just wondering if you were still there.”

 

Still There?  I’ve borrowed those two words as my title.  You see, our In-the-Corner moments share a common feature — Aloneness.  This is true of Jesus’ In-the-Garden experience we’ve read this morning.  Jesus sought some measure of companionship from his disciples, but they were unable to stay awake.  “Could you not stay awake with me one hour?”   These words demonstrate the isolation Jesus felt in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

 

We sang, “I come to the garden ALONE.”   And that’s precisely how we come to the Corner. Alone.  ALONE we deal with our sin and shame.  ALONE we seek forgiveness and renewed fellowship with God.  And yet, In the Corner we somehow sense that we are not alone, that one is walking with us.  “He walks with me and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own.” 

 

Somehow we know that, In the Corner, no matter how Alone we may feel, that God is Still There!  We Will Never Sit Alone.  Our psalter reading from Psalm 139 reminds us that God is Still There.  “O LORD, you have searched me and known me.  You know when I sit down and when I rise up.  You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.  Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.  You hem me in, behind and before (can’t you see Dennis saying that about mom’s seeming omnipresence?)  You lay your hand upon me.  Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there.  If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.  If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me.”  

 

And listen to verse 18 as the psalmist summarizes.  “I come to the end . . . I am still with you.”  You are Still There!  I will never sit alone.

“You’ll Never Sit Alone” was my first title for this sermon, a title slightly changing a New York Times op-ed piece by David Brooks titled, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”  I found Brooks article most insightful, leading me to understand better the disciplines of Lent though, to be sure, the article was not about Lent at all, but rather about the character of presidential politics. He intended to show that being a candidate for president necessarily morphs the candidate into an automaton.  The article opens, “You are running for President, which means you have sentenced yourself to social confinement.  It’s the opposite of solitary confinement.  From now until Election Day, you will never be alone, and you will never shut up.”

 

Now, if the prospect of Aloneness and Silence, the solitary confinement of our In The Corner moments, is an uncomfortable one for Dennis, the prospect of social confinement, of constant talking, should be terrifying.  Says Brooks of the presidential wanna-bes, “You rush into great halls and begin talking; you work the rope lines and keep talking; you get into the van with reporters, and you are talking still.  You become a mouth that shakes hands, but it’s not really conversation . . . when somebody asks you a question, your brain begins searching its internal hard drive for the appropriate 450 word speechlet response, which you have already repeated 200 times before.  You dare not utter an unrehearsed thought; you don’t dare veer toward candor. 

 

“You dominate every room you enter, and it is all about you.  The rallies are about you.  The ads are about you.  The strategy sessions are about you.  You begin to notice that as the image of you is magnified, the actual you becomes lost.  But there’s nothing you can do about it because the hopes of a party, of half the nation, rest on you, so you have to go on with your queen bee life.  You have to surrender yourself to your handler’s schemes.  You have to boast about your own character in a way that would be repulsive in any other context.

 

“You enter cavernous halls, always to the same music, the same waves of applause, the same introductory jokes, and you pretend it is all happening for the first time . . . and your procession out of the room is a series of five second bursts of intimacy.  Some encounters would be genuinely moving if you had time to stop and actually meet the person.  Presidential campaigning seems to have been designed to strip away personality.”

 

Brooks’ words offer a model worthy of consideration on this Lenten Sunday morning: 

If presidential politics means you’ll never shut up, our In the Corner moments mean that we have an opportunity to quit talking, to quit offering  excuses, to quit rationalizing our failings. In the Corner we are silent, opening ourselves to listen for God’s voice.

If a presidential candidacy means that we don’t dare utter an unrehearsed thought or veer toward candor, our In the Corner moments encourage  us to veer toward candor, allowing our hearts and minds to run in unrehearsed paths, honest with ourselves and God, trusting, at last, in God’s mercy and love. 

If presidential politics means “It’s all about you” (the rallies, the ads, the strategy sessions), to be In the Corner means it’s not all about you. 

If being a presidential candidate means that the actual you becomes lost as the image of you is magnified, boasting about your own character in a way that would be repulsive in any other context, our In the Corner moments are precisely opposite — it is the image of ourselves that we are breaking down and the actual you is allowed to emerge. 

If the candidate has five second bursts of intimacy which can never mature beyond niceties into real relationship, our In The Corner moments offer much more, the opportunity to develop a real relationship with God. 

 Yet, amidst all these opposites there is one striking similarity.  If presidential politics means “You’ll never walk alone,” to be In the Corner means “You’ll never sit alone.”  That statement may seem contradictory on its face.  Aloneness, as we said earlier, is what Lent is all about.  But is it not precisely that Aloneness which opens us to another, Unseen, Presence?  Is it not In-the- Garden, ALONE, that our hearts learn to sing, “He walks with me and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own.”

 

In the Corner, we learn to unmask the illusion that we are acting Alone, that it is all about us -- that our actions won’t impact others, and have no reference to that Unseen Other.  In the Corner we come face-to-face with the reality that the Unseen Other is Still There.  

 

Sources and notes:

“You’ll Never Walk Alone,” an op-ed piece by David Brooks, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 27, 2004.