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On A Fast Track to the Good Life

The Rev. Canon George M. Maxwell, Jr.
The Cathedral of St. Philip
December 20, 2009
The Fourth Sunday of Advent – Year C

Some time ago, Sally and I were riding around with a real estate agent looking for a house.  It will come as no surprise to you that my wife is an excellent judge of character.  It came as no surprise to me that I almost immediately liked the real estate agent that she had chosen.

As the day wore on, we began to talk about our families.  We were laughing about one mishap or another, when the agent said, “Yea, we have a family motto.  All of our advice to our children can be summed up in two phrases.  Never give up, and it’ll probably be all right.  If my daughter begins to complain that the job is too big for her, we say ‘never give up.’  And, then, when she hurts herself trying so hard, we say ‘it’ll probably be all right.’”

We laughed right past the next turn and had to circle back to find it.

Our stories are important.  We are formed by them.  They shape what we choose to see and how we look at it.  They model what we choose to be and how we feel about it.  They target what we choose to fear and how we react to it.

Yet, often, when we recognize that something new is happening in the world, we think that we have to get rid of all of our old stories.

In the early 1980’s, about the time that I started trying to learn how to be a lawyer, Fortune magazine ran an article titled “On a Fast Track to the Good Life.”  The article described a series of interviews with my peers – other folks just beginning their careers.  When I think about that article now, I can remember how excited we were to shake off the chains of the old stories.

We were doing a new thing.  Our story was about a race to the top.  It reflected a shared commitment to the promise of achievement – the value of financial independence and the power of our own abilities. 

We were confident in ourselves and were willing to work hard to make things happen.

We didn’t trust government very much, but we did trust in the power of business and markets.

We believed that the future belonged to the talented and the driven, and we were determined to be part of that group.

But, somehow, along the way, we lost our sense of belonging to each other.

We looked at the world and saw an increasingly crowded and competitive marketplace.  We feared that there might not be enough for everyone, so we put our noses to the grindstone with a growing sense of urgency.

We moved around more frequently and felt less like we were part of the community that existed in any one place.

We spent more time with people at work and lost touch with those who were weren’t doing the same things that we were doing.

We felt like we had to do it all ourselves and forgot about the experience and wisdom of those who had gone before us.

Mary tells a different story. 

It starts out the same.  She too is starting a new career.  She is going to be a Mother.

She too sees herself on a fast track to the good life.  You can hear it in her voice.  “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

But, she is not ready for the challenges that face her.  She is too young.  It is too soon.

Her story is about a race to the bottom.  And, she seems to know it.  “He has looked with favor,” she sings, “on the lowliness of his servant.” (Lk 1:48)

Mary is not afraid, though.  We may think that we have to get rid of all of our old stories when something new is happening in the world.  But, Mary knows the old stories better than we do.

She understands that the new thing that is happening to her is actually the incarnation of the old story.

Her song echoes the ancient song of Hannah.  Hannah, too, was an unlikely Mother.  She was too old.  Yet, she gave birth to the discerning prophet, Samuel.  It is Samuel who chose the unknown David to replace the mighty King Saul.

When you listen to the songs of Mary and Hannah, you can hear the voices of all of the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures.  You get the sense that they think there is something important about the bottom.  It’s as if they believe that you can’t fully understand anything until you’ve seen it from that perspective.  They are always describing a world that they have seen through the eyes of the least, and the last, and the lost. 

“He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”  (Lk 1:51-53)

It is, after all, Mary’s son who will grow up to say things like, “[b]lessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God”  (Lk 6:20) and “[i]ndeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”  (Lk 13:30)  And, it is Mary’s son who will take the place of the most lowly and forsaken of all, dying on a cross.

We weren’t wrong entirely.  Individual achievement is a good thing.  It’s just not the whole thing.  We also have to remember that we belong to each other.  And, we will never forget that if we remember to look at the world through the eyes of those who are least among us.

About a year and one half ago, in a small town in Washington State, a college softball player who stood only 5 feet and 2 inches tall did something unusual.  In a battle for a spot in the conference playoffs, with two runners on base and one strike in the count, she hit a home run.  The first one in her life.

Sarah Tucholsky was so excited that she ran right by first base without touching it.  As she turned to go back, she collapsed with a knee injury.  She ultimately managed to crawl back to the bag, but that was all she could do.

The rules, apparently, are pretty clear about this sort of thing.  Her coaches and teammates couldn’t help her or she would have been called out.  And, they couldn’t substitute another player for her or her homerun would have been reduced to a single. 

As everyone stood there, wondering what to do, a player from the other team stunned everyone by asking if she could carry Sarah around the bases.  There’s no rule against that, so she recruited a teammate and they asked Sarah if they could pick her up.  They put their arms under Sarah’s legs and Sarah put her arms around their shoulders, and the three of them rounded the bases, stopping to let Sarah touch each one with her good leg.

Sarah’s team went on the win the game by a score of 4 – 2.
As it turns out, the woman who decided to help Sarah had hit more home runs than anyone else in the history of the conference.  She didn’t know that Sarah was a senior or that it was Sarah’s first home run.  She wasn’t thinking about the playoff spot.  She was just trying to do the right thing.

She helped Sarah, she said, because Sarah deserved it.  Sarah had, after all, hit the ball over the fence. 

Our stories are important.  We are formed by them.  They shape what we choose to see and how we look at it.  They model what we choose to be and how we feel about it.  They target what we choose to fear and how we react to it.

Yet, often, when we recognize that something new is happening in the world, we think that we have to get rid of all of our old stories.

Mary reminds us that if we look at the new thing through the eyes of the least among us, we will recognize the meaning of our old story.  We will remember that we all belong to each other.  We will remember that, as Sarah’s story illustrates, we are all playing the same game. 

AMEN.

Comments? Contact George Maxwell at: GMaxwell@stphilipscathedral.org

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