Lessons
from the Zax
Or Listen to it Here after reading the scriptures.
Exodus 13:15a
And God instructed Moses to tell the people… “When Pharaoh stubbornly refused
to let us go, the LORD killed every firstborn in Egypt, both man and animal.”
Isaiah 46:12
And through the prophet Isaiah, God told his
people, Listen
to me, you stubborn of heart,
you who are far from righteousness.
Jeremiah 18:12
And God’s people responded to his prophet
Jeremiah, “But
they say, ‘That is in vain! We will follow our own plans, and will every one
act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.’ And so they did.
Hosea 4:16
And through the prophet Hosea, God told his
people, “The Israelites are stubborn,
like a stubborn heifer. How then can the LORD pasture them like lambs in a
meadow?”
Mark
3:4-6
When Jesus was in the synagogue, the Pharisees
watched to see if they could accuse him of something and he said to the man
with a withered hand, “Come here.” Then Jesus asked them,
"Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or
to kill?" But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and,
deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, "Stretch out
your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored.
Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might
kill Jesus.
Mark
16:14
And after the resurrection… Jesus appeared to the Eleven
as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn
refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.
Philippians 2:2
Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having
the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.
Zechariah
7:10-12
Do not
oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do
not think evil of each other.' "But they refused to pay attention;
stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears. They made their
hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that
the LORD Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the
LORD Almighty was very angry.
Good morning. I’d like to say a
welcome to our visitors in case I don’t get a chance to later because this is a
particularly challenging topic and sermon. I want to tell you that Wellshire
seeks to be a very welcoming and accepting place, as well as a challenging one.
And this community of faith will accept you for who you are, and challenge you
in your thinking constantly… as will this sermon. And my hope is that you are
seeking that. Because otherwise, the next few minutes could be very hard
indeed.
This morning, we read the Zax, our
final installment in the summer Seuss series and by far, our shortest read.
It’s timely that it landed this week. Not only does it come on the tail end of
our denomination’s General Assembly and the front end of a long national
campaign season, but it lands right on the week of the culture wars over
Chick-Fil-A. I’m sure you can identify North-going and South-going Zax in the
denomination and in the national political arena. It’s not hard to find shining
examples of those stuck in their tracks. You could do the same for the
Chick-Fil-A debate. But we’re not here this morning to identify characters and
culprits. We’re here to glean lessons from the wisdom in Seuss and Scripture.
I hope I’m not about to burst
anyone’s bubble. But if you read the Zax as a story of two brave Zax who stuck
to their roots, stuck to their principals and forced the rest of the world to
literally “bypass” them to make any progress, you missed the good Doctor’s
point. It’s not a story of example, but a cautionary tale… a tale far too
familiar. One always goes North and the other goes South and puffing his chest
up with pride, “I never,” said one,“take a step to one side.” The Zax are not a
victim of unfounded convictions necessarily. Perhaps they have very good
reasons for always going North or South. Perhaps in the Prairie of Prax, this
has to do with migration, survival, or it’s cultural, perhaps religious. Maybe
it’s a symbolic observance they don’t fully understand, but which gives meaning
to them. You’d be hard-pressed, even with theological training, to defend
communion or Easter or Advent or Ash Wednesday any better than a South-grooving
Zax.
But what Seuss stresses… and so do
our countless prophetic voices from scripture… is that it’s not the belief,
it’s not the conviction, it’s not the zeal that leads us to our demise. It’s
the stubbornness. What is the measure of prophet’s success? Whether people
LISTEN… Whether people HEAR. Time and time again, the prophets implore the
people to LISTEN. Time and time again, Seuss implores us to listen. Listen to the Lorax, he speaks
for the trees! Listen to Horton’s Whos because a person’s a person… [no matter how small]! Listen to the
Whos down in Whoville celebrating in spite of all they’ve lost! Listen to poor
Yurtle the Turtle or Sam I Am or a Star-Bellied or a None-Upon-Thars or a Zax
(regardless of orientation), or any
of the countless Seuss characters.
Or just stay stubborn. Stay stubborn
like the Israelites! Stay stubborn like a Sneech or Thneed-Maker or Horton’s
friends. Refuse to listen. Shout your own well-informed, Biblically backed,
personally proven, annecdotally approved opinion at the top of your
lungs! After all, being loud is the next best thing to being right!
OR… instead of rushing to your
Facebook page to post, tweeting your every thought and berating your opposition
in every form of public domain… slow down… find someone with whom you disagree,
really listen… ask them to do the
same… pray for and expect the Holy
Spirit to show up, and see what happens. Am I promising you’ll both walk away
agreeing on some sort of brand new middle ground? No. Am I promising they’ll
come around to your point of view? DEINITELY NOT! But it beats the alternative.
Do not, I beg you, be the person who causes others, who causes the next
generation, to have to build roads around you to make progress.
Rachel Held Evans, author and
blogger, wrote an infinitely wise post this week, in which she addressed both
Chick-Fil-A protestors and supporters. I’ll make the link available on my blog
today when I post the sermon. I’m going to share some of her main ideas. To the
protestors, she surmised several points… She said you can choose not to
patronize Chick-Fil-A without…calling
those who support Chick-Fil-A bigots and homophobes… without… making scenes that make life miserable for its employees… without… promoting one civil right
(marriage), while trampling another (free speech)… and most importantly, without… focusing all our efforts on a
boycott to the expense of more productive
conversations and actions. And she makes the same point to the supporters.
Droves of support ignores the pained cries of those who are so deeply offended
by this, people who are also believers, who also children of God. Your time
could better be spent.
I think what she says here is
profoundly insightful. She starts by addressing the vocabulary used in engaging
this issue. We too often label people, dehumanizing them in the process. They
don’t deserve for me to listen to them because they’re close-minded, they’re
operating with half a heart or half a brain and why should I waste my time? But
brothers and sisters, that’s not what we are called to do by the loving Lord
who took time to listen to the people everyone considered worthless and who
took time to listen to people of authority who wanted to kill him! We cannot
dismiss people. And we cannot use words that make it impossible to listen or
which mis-represent our opposition.
There are many of you in this room
who would consider yourself mature, open-minded, even enlightened. I won’t ask
you to raise your hands. In my youth group, we had a saying, “we do not use gay and stupid interchangeably.” You
would never use the n-word with a black person or the s-word with a Mexican.
You’d never call a gay person the f-word. And that’s good! But you might still
call the CEO of Chick-Fil-A a homophobe. And you’d be horribly wrong to do so.
The word literally means to be scared of homosexuals. And while I do not deny
that the basis of most hatred is fear, it is wrong to assume that someone’s
deeply held conviction, right or wrong in your
eyes can only be a result of fear. It is just as wrong to call a gay person
or advocate a heterophobe. It’s just as wrong to call a Muslim or even an
atheist a faithaphobe (not a word in spell check) just because they believe differentlythan you do. Not all beliefs
and deeply held convictions stem from fear. We have to change the discourse. We
have to change how we approach one another.
Do you approach people as a member
of the homophobic and bigoted vast right-wing conspiracy? Do you approach
people as immoral, permissive purveyors of the gay agenda? If you do, I’ve got
bad news for you. You’re a Zax. You are stuck in your tracks in the Prairie of
Prax. You’re not going anywhere and neither is your cause, your agenda, your
message or your world. It’s small, it’s unimaginative and it’s un-Christian.
NEITHER of those Zax would LISTEN, and if they had, perhaps they
could have found enough room for at least ONE of them to step sideways for a
moment. It only takes ONE of you to step sideways. And I’ll tell you something
else… grace… is not making your
opponent step to the side. Grace is whenyou
step to the side. (PAUSE) And stepping to the side does not mean stepping down,
stepping back or changing your heading, though maybe if you listen, your
heading could be altered… Stepping aside may just be enough to help someone
else see the image of a loving and grace-filled God in you that they missed
until now.
If you read the story of the Zax
over and over looking for a way to win arguments, you’ll search in vain. If you
read your Bible from cover to cover for years, looking for ammunition to take
down your ideological opponents once and for all… you’ll come up empty. The
story of both isn’t how to beat your
enemy. The story of both is how not to become trapped by your own stubbornness.
The Bible won’t yield the talking points you’ll need to convince your brothers
and sisters they’re wrong about gay marriage or anything else… Scripture will
show you how to love, how to listen, how to be led by the Holy Spirit… how to
step sideways… in other words…how to extend grace to others… as God has
extended grace to us.
Evans concludes her article with
these words… As Christians – conservative and progressive, gay and straight,
activists and slacktivists – we must direct our efforts instead toward bridging
this divide, which is going to take a lot of hard work, a lot of
disappointment, a lot of tears, a lot of compromise, a lot of honesty, a lot of
mistakes, a lot of apologies, a lot of listening,
a lot of forgiveness, a lot of meal sharing, a lot of gospel. In other words,
it’s going to take a heck of a lot more effort than either eating or avoiding a
chicken sandwich.
But the point of any Dr. Seuss book,
any lesson we’ve read this summer, and any lesson you’ll find in scripture is
not to simply depress you about the evil state of the world. The point… is to
learn and to grow and to make this world different. Brothers and sisters, I
can’t tell you what to do. I can’t use your imagination for you. It’s up to you
to find the opportunities in your life and to invite God to be present.
Un-stick yourself from your tracks and find a way to listen, to love and to
extend grace… even when it’s not offered to you. Amen.
