Fences--A Sermon for 1st Sunday in Lent

How do you feel about limits? I think they are ridiculous. Last week at my first day at the Beach my ankle swelled up. No reason. Just swelled up—and painful. I hardly slept a wink that night—the pain would not go away. And I could hardly walk on that foot. My wife took me to one of these walk-in doctor places. When they saw me hobbling they brought out a wheel chair. This was getting more ridiculous. The Doctor wasn’t sure what had happened. After an x-ray he decided I did not have a break. He said maybe it was gout (which I had never had) or maybe arthritis (which I have never had) that inflamed my ankle. He sent me home with prescriptions and crutches. Crutches! I had never had these either. For someone who has barely been sick and never a patient in a hospital—this was a whole new chapter. I crawled up the steps to the condo on my rear end. I was not about to take the stairs with crutches—inside I plopped down on the couch. I never got to the beach—it was two blocks away and I never even saw the Gulf. I got home, saw the Doctor—and he confirmed the first Doctor’s analysis. I still don’t know what had happened to my ankle—but it is much better and I am mending.

But the limits this pain placed on me made me furious. I wonder if Adam and Eve didn’t feel the same way in our Genesis story for the first Sunday in Lent. God placed them in this beautiful garden. The place was wonderful and lush and they were the caretakers. And then came the rub: “And the Lord God commanded the man saying, ‘You may eat freely of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” They learned the hard way that life has limits. There was a great big: “Thou shalt not...” nailed to a tree. Which, I assume made it more tempting than ever. There are some lessons for us to learn here.

Creatures

First, I guess they had to realize that they were creatures. They were made by God—but there were limits to their lives. Creatures get sick, their backs hurt. Adam and Eve must have had falling outs like the rest of us. If they ate from the forbidden tree they would have to pay the consequences.

Carlyle Marney used to say there is a wall around our gardens. We can’t go but so far. Robert Frost understood this when he wrote: “Something there is that doesn’t like a wall...” And later in that same poem he would add: “Something that wants it down...”So we all-too-human creatures live in a world of rules and stop signs and red lights and commandments.

Personal

Sometimes these limits are personal. You wake up one day and realize you can't eat everything you want. You can’t smoke two packs a day without paying for it. And at work you really cannot burn the candle at both ends.

Sam Keen testifies to this hard truth. He was the author of several books and was a wise man. But in mid-life it all came tumbling down. This is what he writes in his book, Beginnings Without End.

“One rainy morning I awoke alone in an apartment in San Francisco with the realization that my marriage was finished, my wife had remarried, my children were living far away, my lover had departed and my academic career had been abandoned. My emotional capital seemed exhausted. My past looked infinitely richer than a future I might create. Depression lurked and easily invaded any empty moment. I had either to surrender to despair or mourn the death of my old life and find some way to begin again...

“I cry with the knowledge that I had added to the lump of pain that burdens the earth. I have injured my children. I live with loss but I am not longer haunted by illusions nor ruled by the authority of an absent god. By infidelity I learned that vows may be sweet bounds that tie us to the earth. Through exile I learned that I cannot live life without a home. By departing from the way pointed by my parents I learned how many of their values I cherish. I am no longer innocent. In my new and awesome world I build walls strong enough to shield me from terror of isolation I cannot live alone; thus, there are limits.” None of us can ignore the walls around our gardens.

Anyone who has ever been married realizes the limits in this relationship. I remember a marriage counselor who said that when couples get married they are given a plot of land. There aren’t many instructions. But they are given this land. After the wedding and the reception and the honeymoon they came back to their little plot. And if they pulled up two deck chairs and just sat there—nothing would change—ever. The marriage would never grow. They would always be as they were at that moment. But if they went to the garage and got the shovels, rakes and hoes and began to dig and compost and plant and water...one day that little plot would be a wonder to behold. But it will never happen in a day or a year. It takes a lifetime of work, energy, love and commitment.

Global

Limits also speak to this Garden we call a world. We’ve all been given this plot and if the world is to be a better place we will have to reach out, use our rakes and hoes and commitment and love here, too. I have a hard time with these folk that sneer at the green movement. The care of he earth is at the heart of this Genesis passage and runs like a thread through the Bible. This oil crisis in the Gulf which is fading too fast from our memory, is simply a symbol that we are more interested in greed than we are in our habitat. I wonder what we have learned from this enormous tragedy that will be with us for years and years to come.

Theological

Theologically we are all responsible. If the religious institutions in our country create health and well being we will have to work harder and it will mean we still have swim against the tides of so much in culture. We must do something about this mounting deficit that is killing America. But if we opt for only cutting those things that hurt the poor, the sick, the children and so many others—we will have hurt our garden for years and years to come. Will we speak for the voiceless or simply be concerned with our own kind?

In 1987 a play opened on Broadway that drew large audiences. It won the Pulitzer Prize that year and a number of other awards. The play was called Fences. It was the story of a black family living in Pittsburgh and began in 1957 between the Korean and Viet Nam Wars. The drama ended its story in 1965. A new world of opportunity for black folk was just beginning to open up. Part of the reason I think the play was so powerful was that it reminded a great many of us about the fences of our own lives. Like those black folk in the play in the fifties and we are we still trying to put fences around folk that are African-American, but a great many others as well: Muslims, Immigrants and anyone else who is unlike us. One critic speaking of the play said, “It was a rich portrait of a man who scaled down his dreams to fit inside his run-down yard.” This is the warning of our Genesis story: we can all settle for too little.

I’ve put my crutches up.They are consigned to the attic where I hope they will stay. And yet I know that there still is a wall around my garden. I will not live forever. There is less ahead than there was back there. We can chafe against the strictures of our lives and our time and we can make something special and enduring in this fenced-in place where we live. And I think it means that on this First Sunday of our Lenten journey we all still have some hard work to do.