If
Sermon, Jim Burklo, Sausalito Presbyterian Church
(Communion table is marked with a sign that says LOVE. ONLY IF speaks, and recoils away from the table. AS IF speaks, and approaches it.)
I’ll be satisfied only if my daughter gets accepted to Stanford.
But if I treat as if my daughter is perfect just the way she is, and surround her with unconditional love whether or not she ever gets into the Ivy League, then she’ll be more likely to thrive in life and in school...
I’ll be happy only if I get that four wheel truck with the king cab.
If I can drive my 1992 Honda Civic today as if it were the day when I bought it, joyful at having a new set of wheels, then maybe I can be plenty happy right now, while I save up for a new truck.
Only if my mate does what I want her to do will I give her any affection.
If I can treat my mate as if she is enough, as if she is gloriously good as she is and as she does, there’s a better chance she’ll enjoy life more, and enjoy me more, and if she’s happier, I’ll bet it will be easier for her to change.
Only if my political party wins the election can this country survive.
But even if my political party loses, I can act as if this country will survive and thrive – if I act hopefully and positively, making the changes I can make in society around me, acting as a citizen in a constructive and creative way, and others do the same, our causes for the common good might be advanced even more than if my political party had won.
Only if you wear the right clothes, and look a certain way, and make enough money, and take interest in the right things, and talk the right way, can you belong to my circle of friends.
I welcome you into my life, as if I already knew that you and I could find common ground, even though it isn’t obvious right now. By befriending you as if you are worthy of friendship, it is so much more likely that we can grow into friendship despite or even because of our differences.
You can get salvation only if you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior.
But because I live as if I had the same kind of hope and trust and faith that Jesus had, I am not very hung up on whether or not other people accept Jesus or do religion the way I do it.
As if?
Only if?
As if.
Several years ago, when I worked at Stanford, I spent a lot of time with a young student named Yoko. She was involved in the alternative spring break program I conducted, which was a way to spend your spring break in a service project instead of debauching on a beach someplace. Yoko was born in Japan but was mostly raised in the US, a devout and mindful Buddhist. One evening during the spring break trip, which was spent among the strawberry farmworkers of Salinas, she asked me if I’d ever read Anne of Green Gables. I said I’d never read it, but I’d watched the movie with my daughter. Yoko told me she had been re-reading it lately, for the first time since she was a young girl. She was again swept up with the magic and the allure of the story. It seemed so romantic and rich, the life of this 19th century Canadian girl in the Maritimes. Yoko told me that she then meditated on this experience she was having, re-reading the book and being so emotionally involved in it. Yoko said that from the point of view of the time and place it was written, Anne of Green Gables was a normal girl living a humdrum life, dealing with ordinary issues and everyday things. There was nothing much romantic about her existence at all, from within its own context. Yoko went on to say that her own life as a Stanford student, living in a dorm, going to class, eating in the cafeteria, studying in the library – none of it was any more or less magical or beautiful than the life of Anne of Green Gables. Yoko told me, with a glow in her face as she spoke, that if she could experience the magic and romance of existence of a girl’s life in 19th century Canada, surely she, Yoko, could experience her own life, as a Stanford student in California over 100 years later, as if it, too, were suffused with the same magic and romance.
Just telling this story brings me back to the magic and beauty of that moment, as if I were still there, looking into Yoko’s beaming face and hearing her profound words which then, and still now, make me feel as if my life, too, is suffused with magic and beauty.
“As if” - when we live as if our lives were charmed, touched by an alluring energy – that is the faithful life. “As if” – when we live as if we are blessed, chosen by God for a certain task in a certain time – when we live as if our lives have meaning and purpose – then something begins to happen. It begins to move from “as if” into “as it is”. Living as if – this is the life of faith.
Jesus lived as if the empire of Rome was fading and the reign of God was on its way on the earth. He lived as if justice was in the process of prevailing. He acted as if he could feed 5,000 people when he only had a few loaves and fishes in front of him. He acted as if there was a way he could help heal incurably sick people. He loved his enemies, as if that would somehow make a difference. He hung out with women and Gentiles and lepers and tax collectors and Romans in public, as if the social taboos against it didn’t matter, as if those social boundaries were about to crumble and fall. He even died as if he wasn’t going to be dead for long.
He lived as if the people who lived only if were going to change someday soon. The only if people – they were the Pharisees who said you can be clean and accepted only if you follow all the zillion little petty rules they had defined for their religion. You could heal people only if it wasn’t Saturday. You could touch people only if they weren’t menstruating or leprous or sick or Gentile or .... You could give somebody a hug, in other words, only if they didn’t need one. Jesus acted as if the Pharisees were dinosaurs howling their last.
And after he died, there was still injustice, there were still hungry people. There were still sick people. People still had enemies. Social boundaries that separated and oppressed people were as present as ever. The Pharisees were still there, living their only if lives. Or so it seemed to a lot of people. Except for a little band of folks who, demoralized at first after Jesus’ death, slowly regained their faith and their spirit and started living “as if” again. And very slowly, things began to change – because people lived as if they could change.
Steve Jobs tinkered with computer parts in his parents’ garage, acting as if a nerdy kid without a college degree could revolutionize an industry. Mother Teresa held the hands of impoverished, dying street people in India as if it would make any difference, and her example inspired thousands of others to serve the poor around the world – one of her nuns, in a blue and white habit, was with Roberta and me on the plane to Peru a month ago. Lance Armstrong pedaled as if life-threatening cancer was but a pebble on the roadway of the Tour de France. Rosa Parks said “no” when the bus driver told her to move to the rear, as if that would make any difference in the South in the days of Jim Crow laws. As if, indeed – as if life is worth living in the face of terror and disease and disaster, as if writing a letter to Congress would make any difference, as if serving lunch on Wednesday to homeless people at Sausalito Presbyterian would lessen poverty, as if there is any point in getting up in the morning when your life seems like it’s over the top, far gone, beyond repair.....
I swear, after that conversation with Yoko in Salinas, every time I ran into her on the quad at Stanford I felt as if I had been pulled out of everyday routine reality and delivered straight to the foot of the throne of God herself, straight into the kingdom of heaven. If a 19 year old kid could know that her life was charmed, charged with the electric energy of the divine, infused with purpose and meaning, why couldn’t I feel the same thing? I happen to be the stepfather of a supermodel, and I hear about what her real life is like. It is charmed, indeed. Magic. Her work consists of endless waiting, arduous makeovers, painful poses, jet lag, 18 hour days, excessive heat and cold, workmates who are often insufferable, having to smile when she is not necessarily in the mood to do so, and so on. Once we followed her down the red carpet at one of her movie premieres at Universal Studios, and there was something about the way that the workers pulled up the duct tape that held down the carpet, as we walked out of the theater, that put it all in perspective. Her life is, within her frame of reference, no more or less romantic than mine, than Yokos, than yours, than that of Anne of Green Gables. We are all graced with the chance to live as if our lives are charmed, moon-struck, star-dusted, misted with magic. As if we aren’t just living on the old earth, but are living in the emerging kingdom of heaven on earth – as if we are creating a new life for humanity, one full of promise for freedom and justice and compassion and creativity and deep communion with each other and with all of creation.....