Living with Interruptions

This is a copy of portions of a sermon that I preached last year during Lent, I got to thinking this year about how "the interruptions" are ruling my life again. It is good to remember the cross...

Living with Interruptions
Isaiah 58:8-9a
March 24, 2004
North Section CoB Lenten Series

I have a disclaimer for this evening’s message. And it is this: You can never play the role of a prophet until you have discovered in yourself that which you accuse others of.

It’s called the “But-First” syndrome. You know. It’s when you decide to do the laundry. So you start down the stairs with the laundry, but then you see the newspapers on the table, ok you’ll do the laundry.
But first, you decide to put the newspapers away. So on your way in to put the newspapers away, you notice the mail on the table. Ok you’ll put the newspapers away. But first you’ll pay that bill that needs to be paid. So you look for the checkbook. Oops... there’s the baby bottle from yesterday on the floor. Ok you’ll pay the bill.
But first you need to put the bottle in the sink. You head for the kitchen. Oh man, there’s the remote for the TV. What’s it doing here? Isn’t that normally attached to my husband’s hand? Oh well! You need to put the bottle in the sink. But first you need to put the remote away. Head for the living room and you step on the dog and the remote control flies out of your hand. The dog limps over to the remote and tries to eat it. You then remember that the dog needs to be fed. Ok you’ll put the remote away. But first you need to feed the dog....
So here’s what happens at the end of the day... laundry not done, newspapers on the floor, bottle on the table, bills unpaid, checkbook still lost, dog ate the remote control, and husband can’t watch television without the remote.... And when you try to figure out how come not a thing got done all day, you are baffled because... you know that you were busy all day!

“Your light shall break forth like the dawn”, says the author of Isaiah. You know, maybe not! I mean not with all these distractions and interruptions in our lives, can our light ever truly break forth? It depends, I believe, on our mentality.

Maybe we are as Richard Rohr says “in the middle of a 2nd Copernican Revolution. The first Copernican Revolution was during the 17th Century and was the realization that the earth is not the center of the universe; it is merely just a small dot in the mix of something much bigger. The second Copernican Revolution is the realization that I am not the center of the universe and that the world does not revolve around me”. And if we are honest with ourselves, anything that gets in the way of our “self” becomes the distraction that keeps us from ourselves.

Then Jesus, as he always does which is always too much for us, tells us what it means to be a follower. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who will lose their life for my sake will find it.” You see our life was never really ours, it is God’s. Yet we cling to our “selves” in fear that the image of God may indeed begin to reveal itself in us.

Here it is. The great interruption, the cross of our life, the thing that asks us to give up our own lives, which sadly enough most of us have never done or are willing to do. Sure many of us have given it up in our heads, but as we know this isn’t a spirituality of the head rather of the heart, the gut. In our culture and in the church today it is too much to ask of us to take up our cross and follow the victim, the lamb… and if we were honest we really wanted a lion. We can never take up our cross or deny our selves without first letting go of our lives. We tend to put off the interruption even in the language we use. We have chosen to only worship Jesus rather than to also follow him, because we know that the moment we choose to follow him, we will be asked to lose everything. And that my brothers and sisters is too much of an interruption in our lives. Therefore, it becomes safer to just worship Christ, which he never once told us to do, than to follow him which he told us to do seventeen times.

Henry Nouwen tells the story of a time when he visited the University of Notre Dame. He met an older, experienced professor who had spent most of his life there. The professor said with a certain melancholy in his voice, “You know my whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until one day I discovered that my interruptions were my work.”

Has the cross… maybe better said has your cross become a part of your work? A part of your life? Or has it merely become another interruption in your life, one that gets put off ‘til the next day then the next and so on. Your vindicator has gone before you, set his face to Jerusalem, and bore his cross, died so that you/we may live.

Brothers and sisters, Jesus’ death allows for us to live completely and wholly in the presence and love of God. And here comes the paradox: In order to live this abundant life we must move toward the fringes of our lives so that we may truly live from the center. So prepare… to live with the interruption. It’s about letting that great interruption become a part of who you are and who you are becoming in Christ. Then maybe just maybe your light will begin to break forth like the dawn. Rest assured…. It won’t be your light but the light of Christ that dwells within you.