Journey with Jimmy — As our journey continues

A sermon for the congregation of St. Saviour Anglican Church, Penticton BC  //  The Very Rev. Ken Gray

No sermon today can avoid mention of the recent death and enduring legacy of Jimmy Carter. As Joe Biden put it, “decency, decency, decency.” My gosh, Jimmy Carter is one of us, a Christian, a progressive evangelical voice, one who taught Sunday school well into his 90s; you needed security service clearance to attend. And many did.

Robert Reich summarized Jimmy Carter’s legacy this way: “Jimmy Carter was an optimist about human nature . . . Carter believed passionately in the capacity of human beings to create civil societies that would contain the beasts in all of us. Civilization would prevail over brutality. Humanity over inhumanity. Carter was a religious man who lived by this simple civil religion. He not only saw the good in others, but he practiced the good. He was far from the best president America has had, but he was one of the best and most decent people ever to serve as president.”

I love one meme presently circulating in particular: “An angel says to St. Peter in heaven: There’s someone here who really took ‘love your neighbour’ to heart.” Other memes illustrate similar themes; check my blog for the gallery.

Jimmy “walked the talk” in so many ways. He inspires us all to respond to the Gospel of light and love by making both real, in real time, in real lives. We can learn so much from him. I bet he is teaching a Sunday school class in heaven, right now. He could start with the Book of Isaiah:

“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Great and relevant words when you think about it. He could sing Linnea Good’s song:

A light is gleaming,
spreading its arms
throughout the night,
living in the light.
Come share its gladness,
God’s radiant love is burning bright,
living in the light.

He might quote Jewish New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine who focuses on Jesus’ exhortation to his disciples to be the “light of the world”:

“Without light, we have no plants, no warmth, no beacons. Next, just as salt can become so diluted that it loses its intrinsic character as salt, so darkness, as the Gospel of John puts it, seeks to overcome the light (John 1:5). “This little light of mine” can shine, but it can also be snuffed out . . . For the disciples, Jesus is the light of the world. Yet as he states in John 9:5, he is the light “as long as I am in the world.” The disciples therefore take up his role: acting as he instructs them.… They too can be the light of the world . . .”

I really appreciate the words of American Quaker, writer and theologian, Parker Palmer who in his New Year’s post writes:

“The burdens of adult life are real, but they are not the whole truth. Only by seeing life’s magic and mystery as well as its misery can we create a world that will serve [us and future generations]  well. So I’m heading into 2025 with an aspiration to [. . .] looking at life thru the eyes of a child—while using my adult awareness and power to do whatever good I can.

Buddhists call it “beginner’s mind,” a vital corrective to the cynicism that comes when we allow harsh realities to darken our vision and diminish our energies. It’s a way of looking at the world that makes fresh starts possible at home, at work, and in politics. As we move into the New Year, I’ll be reflecting on the “growing edge” of my life. What is yours and how do you hope to grow into it?”

Great question. For me and possibly for yourselves. For all of us, the journey continues.

So let’s hear about one particular journey, The Journey Of The Magi, by T S Eliot.

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill

beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt.

I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.