Rev. Paul Walker “The Road Back to Me?”

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 2:1 - 12

Most men dread the visit to the doctor for an annual physical. Nobody likes to be poked and prodded and stuck with needles. But more than that, the physical is a judgment on how you are doing. You’ve got to answer questions about your lifestyle,(still looking for the right “balance”) food and drink intake (too much), and exercise (not enough).  You’ve got to check the boxes on all the various things that are wrong with you.

Conceivably, you could answer the doctor’s questions in a way that puts you in a good light. But then there are the evaluations that can’t be nuanced: the scale, your lab work, your cholesterol count, your blood pressure. People avoid the doctor because nobody likes to undergo that kind of judgment. Obviously, this is a terribly stupid thing to do. The doctor is there to help you. If there is something wrong with you, then the doctor will help you get better.

Helping you get better is quite the industry in our country. I was struck by the title of a new self-help book – a book intended to help you get better. The book is about the Enneagram. The Enneagram is a way of identifying your personality type. I like the Enneagram, despite its odd name. It has its roots in Christianity and eerily accurate. It is a helpful diagnostic tool that reveals both your strengths and your weaknesses. It can help you understand the people you live with or work with. It flags your stress points and reminds you of your vulnerabilities.

There is a fatal flaw, however, in the way that some people interpret the purpose of the Enneagram. That flaw is revealed in the book’s title, which is “The Road Back To You.” The title is communicating the well meaning, broadly accepted thinking that goes something like this:

1) Deep down, you’ve got a divine essence

2) You’ve been separated from your true divine essence by something external: the hectic pace of the world, materialism, childhood wounds, etc.

3) You can reunite with your divine essence by working on your “spirituality”, usually by meditation, inner knowledge, dedicated effort. Once you do this, you will achieve an inner peace and be in harmony with the Divine Essence that unites all creatures. You will have finally found the “Road Back to You.”

In today’s reading from 1 Corinthians, St. Paul addresses people who (2000 years ago) had bought into this kind of thinking.  They were extremely impressed with their own spirituality. Paul comes to do a kind of annual spiritual physical for the budding congregation and finds terrible vulnerabilities: a man is sleeping with his father’s wife, poor people are not being welcomed into the fellowship, people are getting drunk at the church suppers that doubled as the Lord’s supper. All the while, the Corinthians are boasting about the spirituality that has put them on the Road Back to You.

The truth of the matter is that the Road Back To Me is not a road I want to be on. Just ask my wife! The Road Back To Me is a road that ends in selfishness, anger, lust, pettiness, and self-pity. And those are my better qualities. If the Road Back To Me finds me watching a UVA basketball game, you better not interrupt me or I will bite your head off.

Jesus teaches very clearly that out of our hearts comes that which hurts us and others. “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” The great teacher, Jesus, is saying this – not me! So much for the Road Back To Me.  Any kind of spiritual physical will reveal that there is something wrong with me – and you. Get me off that road A.S.A.P.

St. Paul wants the get the Corinthians off that road A.S.A.P. His plan for that wasn’t popular then and isn’t popular now.  Who likes to admit that there is something wrong with them? But, Paul offers the only hope there is for people in need.  He says, “When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”

Jesus Christ and him crucified. The great therapeutic self-help book of the 1970’s was called “I’m O.K, You’re O.K.” As we’ve said before, if I’m O.K. and you’re O.K., then what is He doing hanging on the cross? He is hanging on the cross because our true condition calls for a more drastic answer than a road back to you.

Let’s talk about loons for a moment. Have you ever heard a loon? If so, you will never forget it. Loons live on the lakes in the north.  When night falls on an Adirondack lake, for instance, a solitary loon cries out his piercing, plaintive, mournful plea. It echoes across the water and reverberates in the pine trees. The loon’s bereft cry will cleave your heart in two and leave you spooked and chilled. One bird expert suggests the lonely loon is pleading, “I’m here! Where are you? Where are you?”

Poet Mary Oliver writes the loon “cries for three days, in the gray mist, cries for the north it hopes it can find.” She says, “you come every afternoon, and wait to hear it….as though it were your own twilight, as though it were your own vanishing song.”

When Christ was crucified, he was crucified for us all. He represented each one of us and took upon himself all that is wrong with us and the world. Before the dark of death would descend on Him for three days, He cried out in his own bereft vanishing song, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” I’m here. Where are you?

Jesus Christ endured the desolation of our sin and shame to become for us the Road Back to God. “I am the Way”, he said before he was crucified for our sake.  We are given so much more than a dead end road back to ourselves. Elsewhere St. Paul says, “if anyone is in Christ, he (or she) is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Or even more powerfully, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”

Jesus Christ and him crucified is God’s answer to our plaintive plea – “Where am I? I’m here to give you new life.”

Amen.