Paul Walker “A Sermon for Control Freaks”
This is a sermon for Control Freaks. You may not think you are a Control Freak. But it is highly likely that you like to be in control – that you like for things to go your way. I imagine you like to think, well, if I do this, then that is going to happen. And if don’t do that, then this other thing won’t happen. Even if you do not self-identify as a Control Freak, I would bet that something in this sermon will hit home for you.
Many, many of you know and readily admit that you are a Control Freak. Or you certainly have someone in your life who will happily diagnose you as a Control Freak. You will also admit that having to be in control just feeds your anxiety and your uptightness, but your need for control is so great that you just can’t let it go and relax.
For those keeping score, here are some symptoms of a Control Freak. Why not see if you check a few boxes?
Control Freaks have a tendency to correct people.
They refuse to admit that they are wrong.
They are judgmental and critical about other people.
Control Freaks think they always know what’s best for any situation.
They want to / need to win all the arguments.
Control Freaks think they are responsible for everything, including and especially other people.
Any bells rung for anybody? Any bells rung for the person sitting next to you, even though they claim not to have heard the bell?
Trying to control things can lead to some, shall we say, interesting, situations. When I was in Birmingham at the Cathedral Church of the Advent. one of my tasks was being the chaplain to the Day School. My mentor Paul Zahl was the Cathedral Dean. He hired me and I was still a little star struck by him and the huge beautiful cathedral. At the beginning of my first day of work, I was to lead the flag raising ceremony outside the cathedral for the kids of the Day School.
The Advent in in the middle of busy downtown Charlottesville. As I was about to begin the ceremony, dolled up in all my episcopal togs, a Sysco truck pulled up to deliver food to the Tutweiler Hotel across the street. Of course, the driver left the truck running to keep the food refrigerated. The idling semi made a lot of noise.
who readily admits his propensity to control, told me to go inside the Tutweiler and find the driver and ask him to turn his truck off! Really wanting to please my new boss, I said something like, “Wait…what? You want me to go to the delivery dock, find the very big and burly Birmingham truck driver and ask him to turn his truck off for a bunch of 4th graders to watch a flag go up a pole? While I’m dressed in my tutu?” I was more afraid of the truck driver than my new boss, so I did not comply with the Dean’s request.
To some degree the greedy desire for control is an infection shared by all people everywhere. That’s because the locus of original sin is summed up in the serpent’s words to our first parents. Eat this fruit and “you will be like God.” God is the only one to whom control -and all its concomitant responsibilities – belongs. Just refer back to the aforementioned list for examples! So, whether or not you identify as a Control Freak, you are certainly on the spectrum, shall we say. That’s because you are both an inheritor as well as a purveyor of our universally flawed human nature.
To all of us, then, Jesus has this to say. “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.”
Well, what do we have here? First, someone scatters seeds. I’m no farmer, but I’m pretty sure you are supposed to plant seeds in ground that has been tilled or furrowed or cultivated or something. We scattered some grass seed a while ago. Not very well, I’m afraid. The patch of ground looks like a bad hair transplant gone wrong. We’ve done plenty of sleeping and rising, but the sprouting and growing has been spasmodic at best.
But then again, that is in the kingdom of Paul. Jesus, on the other hand, is talking about the Kingdom of God. Things are apparently different in the Kingdom of God. In the Kingdom of God scattered seed is plenty good for sprouting and growing. And note that the scatterer doesn’t do blessed thing except tuck himself into bed at night and get up to put his coffee pot on in the morning. No tilling, no weeding, no watering, no worrying, no nothin’. Just sleeping and rising. And I suppose, having a periodic gander at the crop. How does that sound?
And how does the seed sprout without any input from him whatsoever? Well, the answer is what may be the very best line in the bible. He does not know how. He does not know how. Pretty hard to control something you have no idea about, isn’t it? But, if you like me, that doesn’t stop you from trying! However, as Jesus says, the earth produces of itself. In other words – God does the work by Himself, without your help, without your input.
What is going on in your life right now that you are trying to control and can’t? If we are to trust the scripture today, then we can say with confidence, God’s got this. Who are you worried about? God’s got this. What problem or project or person are you trying to over-analyze, over-plan, over-do? God’s got this. The earth produces of itself.
What would it be like to trust that God has your life? And the lives of everyone and everything else? To be fair, Jesus says the guy grabs his sickle when the harvest comes, but that’s the fun part! It’s nice to be engaged in a harvest you didn’t grow.
The musician and author Nick Cave has a blog on which he responds to his fans’ questions. One guy was wrapped around the axle about turning 40. Some people told him he was in his prime. Others said he was an old man. He asked Nick how to cope with getting old?
Nick said, “My advice to you is grow and mustache and learn the electric guitar….and try to hang in there till your sixty. Then you’ll find you don’t have to worry about what people say anymore, and as a consequence life becomes a whole lot more interesting.
Entering your sixties brings with it a warm and fuzzy feeling of redundancy, through obsolescence, through living outside of the conversation and forever existing on the wrong end of the stick. What a relief to be that mad, embarrassing uncle in the corner of the room… with his belief in universal compassion, forgiveness and mercy, in beautiful humanity, and in God too.”
Sounds good to me. Universal compassion, forgiveness and mercy sound a whole better, and easier than correcting, judging, winning, and being a know it all. But you don’t have to be in your 60’s to give up on the control game. I mean, Jesus knew all about it and he barely made it past 30!
Well, the reason he barely made it past 30 is that the Control Freaks killed him. Those who controlled the religious and political hierarchy hated his cavalier ways. But before we blame them, remember the them is also us. We are all inheritors and purveyors of our universally flawed and controlling human nature.
But Jesus died for the Control Freaks. The only one who rightly claimed control, surrendered it all for us – we who have wrongly usurped control. The irony there is both supreme and grotesque. And yet, there it is.
As Robert Capon says, “God has solved all the world’s problems without requiring a single human being to do a single…thing.” Because our desire for control will persist, that will never be the way it works in your kingdom. But that is and always will be the way it works in the Kingdom of God.
Amen.