Experience is what you get

“Experience is what you get” The Dover Church
July 17, 2011 –5th Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture: Psalm 86, Genesis 28:10-19a, Matthew 13: 24-30

“Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.” About four years ago, a video was flying around the internet called “The Last Lecture.” It was by a very impressive professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh named Randy Pausch. The first few times someone sent me a link to it, I discarded the e-mails, being jealous of my time. When the number of invitations exceeded six and most of those six were from people who didn’t spam me several times a week with devotional chain letters, I figured, why not? I’ll take a peek.
The video opened with Pausch, age 46, doing push ups in front of a packed auditorium. Then he stood up to applause and laughter, put a slide up on the wall and said, “my father always said, “point out the pink elephant in the room.” This slide is a cat scan of the ten tumors growing in my body.” He proceeded to point to them with his laser pointer. Once he was sure that we had seen them all, he continued, “I have pancreatic cancer and my doctors tell me I have 3 months to live.”
For the next hour, he spoke movingly and enthusiastically not about dying but about living, about achieving your childhood dreams. Two weeks ago I was poking around in the swap shop at our transfer station when I found the book version of Pausch’s lecture. As I read it, one of his bits of wisdom jumped out at me, which my hearing must have skipped over in the emotional experience of watching the video: “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.”
These words pulled me up short. I had to put the book down, and let them sink in. Then I picked the book up again, reread the passage and put the book down. I got out of bed and went to kiss my kids as they lay sleeping, petted the dog on my way back to bed, kissed my wife as she lay sleeping, thinking as I wandered through the dark house about the experiences I had been having which hadn’t been what I had wanted and how I blessed I felt to have lived them. I then reread the passage, thought about my life as your pastor and the experience I have gained in that capacity and the blessedness of all of you, put the book down at last, turned out the light, and prayed “experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want” as I was falling asleep.
I often wonder if one of the biggest obstacles in the way of people becoming Christians is some expectation of perfection, that believing in Jesus, that following Jesus is supposed to get us exactly what we want and yet doesn’t work out that way, either because of some deficiency on our part or Jesus’, that faith is supposed to make everything perfect: inner peace, harmonious relationships, clarity of thought and purpose, kind and generous behavior, to borrow from Jesus’ parable, “a weed-free life.” This goes for people in the pews as much as the people out there somewhere. “What’s wrong? Why isn’t this working for me? Why is my life so messy? Why am I so messy?” we wonder. But that’s misunderstanding the whole thing. Becoming a Christian, being a person of faith is not about living a weed-free life. It’s about not being alone in the weeds, about knowing that God in Jesus Christ is in there with you, guiding you toward spiritual maturity right there in the thick of things, living with that hope and confidence, by that grace and guidance, in that trust and non-anxious openness.
Take Jacob, our ancestor in faith. In our lesson this morning, he seems to be perfect, as seemingly weed free as one could possibly get, right there on the threshold of heaven. But this scene is just a moment in Jacob’s life. Jacob lived a life in the weeds if ever anyone did. For that matter, every major Biblical person, from Adam and Eve, to Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and his wives, sons and daughter, Moses, David and the mess he made of his life, all the prophets, the disciples, the Apostle Paul, weeds, weeds, weeds everywhere. They are in the Bible not because thyey were perfect, but because they show us how to live with God in the weeds.
Jacob and his brother Esau were twins. Jacob’s very name is a word play on the Hebrew word for “heel” jaqev, as Jacob was born grabbing at his brother’s heel, trying to get out first and into the privileged position of first born heir. Jacob’s father loved Esau best as the first born, an outdoorsman, a hairy, burly hunter, while Jacob was something of a smooth cheeked mamma’s boy, staying close to home and the tents. Jacob lived into his word play name, acting the “heel,” when he tricked first his brother, Esau, into signing over his birthright as first born for some soup, and then his elderly and near sighted father into bestowing his blessing on Jacob rather than Esau for a leg of lamb. We can imagine the weediness of it all: knowing your father’s first love is your brother; knowing that your brother’s resentment towards you is well-deserved; knowing that your home is not a place of security and unconditional love.
Being formed in such a home, Jacob goes even deeper into the weeds as an adult. First, tricked by his uncle into marrying Leah when he was in love with her sister Rachel. Then having to work for his uncle another seven years to gain Rachel’s hand. Then having two jealous sisters as wives, the less preferred having children and the beloved Rachel being childless. Then leaving his uncle’s home, nefariously taking most of his uncle’s prized livestock with him on his way. Paybback for those seven years? Maybe. Then having to face his brother who had not forgotten the past and might be looking for payback of his own. Then finally having a son by Rachel, only to love the boy Joseph obviously and preferentially, so much so that his other sons sold Joseph into slavery in their jealousy, telling their father that Joseph had been killed by wild animals. Payback? What a mess. I think of Jacob whenever my family feels uniquely and unfairly mine.
Between his father’s house and his future wives’ house, between one weedy thicket and another as it were, Jacob stumbles upon the threshold of heaven, a barren spot in the middle of nowhere, neither where he was coming from nor where he was going, just a place to stop and rest for the night. We can imagine his thoughts before sleep, a tug of war between youthful excitement about finding a girl and nagging unhappiness about the father and brother he had left behind. And then, suddenly, unsought and unexpected, he has a vision of heaven, of the very place where he has gone to sleep being the connecting point between heaven and earth. The Lord standing beside him, a young man all alone with a painful past behind him and uncertain future before him, speaking words of blessing: “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go…I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” And what has the Lord promised? all the things that Jacob may well have felt lacking in his father’s house. “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it.” Rightfully fearful, who wouldn’t be? Jacob exclaims, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God! Beth-el!”
“Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.” If Jacob had gotten what he wanted, he would not have found his way to this lonely place and into the presence of the living God. I know that this is true in my own life. Every bad thing that has happened to me or that I have brought upon myself, every sidetrack, stonewall, quicksand, dead end, every rejection and defeat, every missed mark and shortcoming, all of them have tripped me up. Every one I have resisted mightily and tried to fight my way through or around. But…and this is the all important but…every one of these mis-fortunes has lead to the good fortune that I now cherish. Looking back over my life, I find myself treasuring the experience that has come to me as highly if not more than the easy home runs, the coasting victories, the bouquets of roses which have fallen into my lap because I too have stumbled into God when I didn't get what I wanted, whereas I must have missed him in the rush of success. I would not have the life I love today, and that most emphatically includes my faith journey, if I had gotten what I wanted.
I still struggle with the misdirection of my spiritual, emotional and physical energy which I expend focusing on the weeds all about me, all the things that aren’t going my way, all the people who are working at cross purposes with me, all the unexpected twists and turns of life. As I have matured, however, I am learning to think of Jacob, to think of Jesus’ parable of the wheat in the midst of weeds, and let go of this mania of trying to find my way out of the life I find myself in. Now I struggle and strive to grow into the image and likeness of Christ exactly where I am. I try to look into the experience I get when I don't get what I want with a wondering and open heart. What does God have in store for me? I relax into my spiritual ecosystem.
"Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.” God’s promises of blessing to Jacob are God’s promises of blessing to us in Jesus Christ. “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go…I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Right here, and every place you might ever find yourself, right now, and every moment that you live and breath, the Lord is in this place.