Rev. Kevin M. Pleas

Isaiah 2:2-5

January 27, 2008

In days to come the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths." For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

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Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly reckless, I like to tease my wife about her German ex-boyfriend. Jorn, his name was, came to visit us for a few days back when I was in seminary. At the time, we were living in the unused parsonage of a Presbyterian church in Boston and Pam was in the last month of her pregnancy with our son, James, so you can imagine our lives were a bit chaotic. Jorn was, probably still is, a social activist, who came to the United States originally to fulfill his country's national service requirement. He and Pam actually met in Chicago during a protest in support of the United Farm Workers. Those were the days my friend.

Anyway, while Jorn was with us in Boston, he and I got into a couple of very interesting, somewhat intense conversations about his activist vision. He was convinced that we absolutely had to change the world, and the only way to do it was to work for change in social and political structures: write letters, get directly involved in politics, engage in peaceful protest and so on. I, on the other hand, have always been committed to the transformation of individual hearts and minds.

We argued our positions back and forth for awhile, neither of us gaining any particular advantage. About half way into it though, standing there in the kitchen, it dawned on me that what was really going on was that we were both trying to impress my wife. Finally, I said, in what I thought was a very generous offer of peace, that it seemed to me we were both right. We both had the same goal but came at it from different directions. If we were ever going to truly change the world, we would need to change both personally and politically. Pam told me I would have made a good politician, which I'm not altogether sure was a compliment. Jorn, for his part, went right on insisting that he was right and I was wrong. But that's o.k. because when all was said and done, I'm the one that ended up with his former girlfriend. So there!

We're so highly evolved. I know it's a funny story, but honestly, I didn't throw it in here just so I could strut around with all my tail feathers fanned out. I happen to believe this is a perfect example of how we get stuck. We like to talk about changing the world. It is a very enlightened thing for us to do, and very important. But usually, we don't get very far before we end up tripping over our own ego. All of our ancient tribal instincts are still crouching there just below the surface. If we're ever going to change the world, Jorn's opinions not withstanding, we have to figure out what's really going on inside ourselves.

Change is in the air though, isn't it; at least there's a lot of talk about change in the air. I've tuned into a number of political speeches lately and that word just keeps popping up all over the place. And no wonder. It appeals to us, this idea of change. There's a lot of unhappiness around right now with the way things are. We're not all unhappy for the same reasons of course, but we all seem to agree we want things to be different, and we're all lining up behind the candidate we think can best make it happen. And our political candidates from both sides of the aisle, being the savvy people they are, have picked up that ball and are running around with it for all their worth. Change is in the air, and we like that idea. It's been awhile.

And yet, while we find the idea of change refreshing, I'm not at all sure we trust it. It's not all that long ago the generation I grew up in was making a huge deal out of change. If change is in the air lately, it is nothing compared to the sixties. And it was all going to be so easy. All we needed was love. The answers were "Blowin' in the Wind." Crosby Stills and Nash were telling all of us that, "We [could] change the world. Re-arrange the world." Wasn't it just "dying - to get better."

But like all grand illusions, the idea that we had found the answers that all previous generations had somehow missed, was destined to come crashing back to earth in time. And crash it did. And our music reflected our disillusionment. The Eagles' wrote a typical song called The Sad Café that included these lines: "We thought we could change the world with words like love and freedom … but things in this life change very slowly if they ever change at all." People felt burned by the idea that we could change the world when it didn't turn out to be as easy as they thought it would be. Many, unfortunately, came to the conclusion that change itself was an illusion. They went from one extreme to the other. Where they started out believing that change was easy, they ended up with a very widespread impression that change was actually impossible.

The truth is, both of these extreme beliefs are equally false. It's certainly true that we can't change everything, but it is just as certainly false that we are powerless to change anything at all. I've been watching the wonderful nature series called "Planet Earth." What extraordinary filming. And one of the things that impressed me about this series, as we went through the early episodes, was that they made a point of not emphasizing all the bad news about how we're damaging the earth. So many nature programs seem to focus in that direction and it makes them hard to watch. Sure enough though, toward the end of the series there was an episode wholly devoted to just that message. Without going into detail, one comment that stood out for me was that we are currently experiencing the largest species die-off since the end of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

After watching this, I was talking with my son, James, about his reactions. His immediate response was that it was very depressing, and I agreed. But I said something to him that made sense to me and I thought I'd share with you this morning. Change isn't something we do easily. We don't change, usually, until we know deep in our bones that change is necessary. The fact that shows like Planet Earth are making us aware of how necessary change really is, is ultimately a very good thing, because we're not going to change the ways we treat the earth until we know we absolutely have to.

Part of the problem though, is that deep down an awful lot of people have lost faith in our ability to change. But allow me to point something out to you. These days, we know with absolute certainty that change is possible. We are in fact changing our world. Of course, most of the changes we're making have been, unintentionally, for the worse, not the better. Nonetheless, change is change, and it constitutes proof that change is possible. If we can change the world in a negative direction, there's no reason why we can't just as well change it in a positive direction.

I believe, as Jorn did, all kidding aside, that it is important to look at the social and political structures that are part of our lives. It's important to consider the ways in which they either support or hinder our progress and do what we can to improve them. But I will also continue to argue, that the most important change we need is the changing of our own hearts and minds.

We need to understand how our egos get in the way of our own best interests; the ways they prevent us from making the changes we need to make. One of those ways is through the false ideas we carry around ideas in our heads. Such as, that we are so small individually, that one person can't really make a difference. We are, as James said, no more than drops in the bucket. But, being the optimistic person I am, I believe that even if we are drops in the bucket, still, no matter how big the bucket is, it can only contain a finite number of drops. It's a big number, but it isn't infinite, which means that if enough of those little drops get together, they can have an influence out of all proportion to their size.

The change that we most desperately need, I believe, is the change of ourselves; the change of our thinking and our believing from those notions that get in our way to those that don't. So long as we don't believe that anything we do makes any difference, it can't and won't. But it's not all or nothing. We can change some things, but we need to guard against both the fantasy that change will be easy and the discouragement that follows from it not coming fast enough to suit us. We don't want to start imagining that we can just snap our fingers, sing a few love songs, and bring the world together. But neither do we want to simply give up trying.

We can choose to push in the direction of something positive, rather than cynically deciding that it makes no difference which way we push. We can make an effort to love and forgive the people in our own lives. We can pray for the world. We can pray that God will make known to us those ways in which we can be a part of the changes that need to happen. And we can hope. We can hold on to a vision of hope, The prophet Isaiah, that nations shall learn to beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. That nation shall one day learn not lift up sword against nation or study war any more. These things are possible, but in order for them to be possible, we have to first believe that they are.

There's a great old story from the wisdom traditions that I try to keep in mind. It is said that the Sufi Bayazid this to say about himself:

"I was a revolutionary when I was young and all my prayer to God was 'Lord, give me the energy to change the world.' As I approached middle age and realized that half my life was gone without my changing a single soul, I changed my prayer to 'Lord, give me the grace to change all those who come in contact with me; just my family and friends, and I shall be satisfied.' Now that I am an old man and my days are numbered, my one prayer is, 'Lord, give me the grace to change myself.' If I had prayed for this from the start I should not have wasted my life."

Change is possible. Change is one way of expressing the ministry to which we have been called . But in order to make it happen, we first have to believe that it's possible.

Amen.