Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Running With the Squirrels

by Dave Wilkinson

Song of Solomon 1:6, Mark 6:30-32

March 25, 2001

A newspaper in Washington, carried the story of Tattoo the basset hound. Tattoo didn't intend to go for an evening run. But Tattoo had no choice. His owner unintentionally shut his leash in the car door and took off for a drive.

Tattoo was rescued when an observant motorcycle officer stopped the car but not before the dog reached a speed of twenty to thirty miles per hour and rolled over several times. Tattoo survived. Tattoo is okay. But he has not asked to go for an evening walk for a long time.

Do you ever feel like poor Tattoo? Do you ever feel like there is leash that ties you to your wrist watch or day timer. Do you ever have to run faster than your poor little legs were meant to go? If not, you are a rarity.

John Ortberg observes: "We will buy anything that promises to help us hurry. The best-selling shampoo in America rose to the top because it combines shampoo and conditioner in one step, eliminating the need for all the time-consuming rinsing people used to have to do. We worship at the shrine of the Golden Arches, not because they sell "good food," or even "cheap food," but because it is "fast food." Even after fast food was introduced, people still had to park their cars, go inside, order, and take their food to a table, all of which took time. So, we invented the Drive-Thru Lane to enable families to eat in vans, as nature intended."

Now it used to be that rhythm was built into life. You didn't have to plan for it. It was just there. People followed the cycles of nature in their work on the farms. And when night came it was time to put away the office work because you couldn't run a notebook computer using a candle. An active eighteenth century pastor like John Wesley might have preached everywhere over Britain. But as he traveled he rode a horse. He had no cell phone, no news radio, no ability to make a high speed dash to the next spot. He had automatic "down time" built into his schedule. He moved at the speed of his horse with his own thoughts and his communion with God to keep him company. As a result, he never complained about feeling burned out.

We don't have built in down time anymore. We do everything fast. And we have companies like DFS that promise to help us do it even faster.

Now I have no idea what DFS is or does. But they make clever commercials. You may remember their ad during the Super Bowl that portrayed a mythical running of the squirrels in some town in Spain. The closing message was, "Any consulting firm can help you compete with the large, ponderous bulls. We help you compete against the small, fast and agile squirrels."

We all suspect that we need a DFS -- whatever the heck it is -- because we all feel like we're competing with the squirrels. The squirrels are moving fast and we'd better move fast too.

The result of squirrel running is that we have no rhythm to our lives. When we have no rhythm we violate the way our Creator made us -- the Creator who told us to rest one day out of every seven. And when we ignore our creator's instructions, the spring eventually snaps. As one writer noted, "The trouble with success is that the formula is the same as the one for a nervous breakdown."

What happens when we run with the squirrels?

First, we never go deeply into anything because depth always comes slowly. Quantity of input cannot compensate for insufficient reflection.

I love what University President Benno Schmidt Jr. said in an interview with the New York Times about fifteen years ago: "If I can't put my feet on the desk and look out the window and think without an agenda, I may be managing Yale, but I won't be leading it. "

Perhaps one reason that Abraham Lincoln achieved the depth of thought he did is that he grew up with so little to read. David Donald notes in his biography that Lincoln grew up with access to very few books: The Bible, Aesop's Fables (which he virtually memorized), and a few others. "He must understand everything even to the smallest thing minutely, and exactly," his stepmother remembered. "He would then repeat it over to himself again and again -- and when it was fixed in his mind to suit him he never lost that fact or the understanding of it."

Lincoln himself often spoke of how slowly his mind worked, how even as an adult he read laboriously and out loud. His law partner William Herndon claimed that "Lincoln read less and thought more than any man in his sphere in America."

But today we have largely traded wisdom for information. We have exchanged depth for breadth. We are exposed to more raw information in one Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times than George Washington received in his entire lifetime. But we also do less with what to know.

Running with the squirrels also weakens our walk with God. Jesus was very aware of this problem. He repeatedly withdrew from crowds and activities and He taught His followers to do the same. When the disciples returned, their adrenaline pumping, from a busy time of ministry, Jesus told them, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while."

Jesus often had much to do, but He never did it in a way that severed the life-giving connection between Him and His Father. He never did it in a way that interfered with His ability to give love when. Jesus was often busy, but never hurried.

And this means that following Jesus cannot be done at a sprint. If we want to follow someone, we can't go faster than the one who is leading. If we want to follow Jesus, we can't get all in a lather of impatience -- even about the ministry. For Jesus tells us that hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a sign of a disordered heart -- a heart that Jesus wants to heal.

We need the healing touch of Jesus because we live in a lethal environment. American society is filled with ideas and values and pressures and temptations about success and security and comfort and happiness that push in on us from every side. Our society is super- charged and we pay a price.

One writer notes an experiment done with mice a few years ago. A researcher found that it takes a high dose of amphetamines to kill a mouse living in solitude. But a group of mice will start hopping around and hyping each other up so much that a dosage twenty times smaller will be lethal. In fact, a mouse that had been given no amphetamines at all, placed in a group on the drug, will get so hopped up that in ten minutes or so it will be dead. "In groups they go off like popcorn or firecrackers," the writer observed.

Now we might hope that only a mouse would be so foolish as to hang out with a bunch of other mice that were going off like popcorn. Only a mouse would hang with other mice who were hopped up, going at a frantic pace in mindless activity, and put their own well-being and even lives at risk. But then again, maybe that describes the dangers of modern society pretty well. So the Apostle Paul says in Romans 12:1: "Don't let the world around squeeze you into its own mold" and that includes it's schedule.

A third impact of hurry sickness is that it hurry takes away from our ability to love. Strangers -- and sometimes even friends -- become obstacles to get past rather than people to love.

An airline pilot writes about an elderly couple who were flying first class. They were seated behind a businessman who was enormously frustrated with them. They had been just ahead of him in line at the gate, and again boarding the plane, and they moved slowly, but he was in a hurry. When the meal was served, they delayed the businessman again by having to get some pills from the overhead storage, inadvertently dropping a battered duffel bag. The businessman stood up. "What's the matter with you people?" he exploded, loudly enough for the whole cabin to hear. "I'm amazed you ever get anywhere. Why can't you just stay home."

To register his anger, the man sat down and reclined his seat back as hard as he could -- so hard that the elderly husband's tray of food spilled all over him and his wife. The flight attendant apologized to the couple profusely: "Is there anything we can do?" she asked. The husband explained it was their fiftieth anniversary and they were flying for the first time. "Let me at least bring you a bottle of wine," the flight attendant offered.

When it was uncorked, the old husband stood up, proposed a toast -- and poured the bottle over the head of the impatient businessman sitting in front of them.

Everybody in the cabin cheered.

Now I don't recommend the bottle of wine treatment. Jesus said, "Return no one evil for evil." But the businessman should have heard the message of the people's cheers -- the message that he had allowed himself to get out of whack. The most serious sign of hurry sickness is a diminished capacity to love. Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible. Love takes time, and time is one thing hurried people don't have.

Fortunately it didn't take a bottle over the head to get my attention. It didn't take a heart attack or an ulcer either. It was simply an awareness of a growing unbalance in my life that led me to say, "It's time for a sabbatical."

A little over a year from now, Carol and I will leave for a four month sabbatical in Great Britain. By that time we will have been here for almost sixteen years. This has been thoroughly discussed and approved by our Session and we have received a generous Clergy Renewal grant from the Lilly Endowment to fund both the sabbatical and any extra costs to the church while I am away.

Now as I have thought about this sabbatical and why it is important if I am going to continue to be effective as your pastor, I have been led to the Old Testament book Song of Solomon -- not the racy parts. A verse in that book has grabbed my attention; Song of Solomon 1:6 "My Mother's sons were angry with me; they made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept."

The woman who spoke these words was a Cinderella-type character. Cinderella you recall, had evil step-sisters who made her do the dirtiest jobs and kept her hidden from public view.

This woman in Song of Solomon, has angry brothers instead of evil step-sisters. These brothers make her keep their vineyards to the neglect of her own.

My story is different from hers and Cinderella's. I have no angry brothers or step-sisters who make me do something I don't want to do. Whatever I do as your Pastor, I do willingly and happily.

But as a pastor, my story is similar to hers, in that I am also a keeper of other people's vineyards. In my preaching and teaching and counseling, my work is to plant people in God's soil. As they grow in that soil my role is to water them and fertilize them and prune them, to be a spiritual companion with them through that long growing process. I am there to reassure them of God's presence and power and help and guidance and healing and hope throughout all the ups and downs, the good times and the bad, the steps forward and the steps backward of the growing process. I am there to share with them and rejoice in the harvest that God brings through them.

I'm not complaining. There is nothing I would rather do. But the balancing act, for me as a pastor, is to be as attentive to my own vineyard as I am to others.

And this I have not done. Somewhere along the way working in other people's vineyards became a substitute for working in my own. Other people's vineyards somehow became more interesting for me, more fulfilling, more fun. I've gotten out of balance between the needs of the church including the organizational needs and the building needs and the needs of my own soul. It's not that you have put inappropriate pressure on me. I am well able to put it on myself.

This is why I need some extended time to find a better balance between helping nurture your vineyards and my own. I don't want to give up working in other people's vineyards. Not at all. I love this congregation. But I need to find a way to keep my own vineyard healthy at the same time -- and you need for me to do that.

That is the reason for the planned sabbatical. We plan to spend a lot of time in various retreat centers in Britain for reflection, prayer, reading and simply being. Some of these like Iona of the coast of Scotland are pretty remote with little to do.

I need that nothing to do because I am a type double A personality. If I can find something to do I will do it . God, on the other hand, wants me to be still, to stop and listen. I request your prayers because that will be very hard work for me.

In fact, I am already being made aware of the dangers I face.

One danger is that I will try to be too organized and efficient and scheduled about slowing down and listening to God. Part of me wants to make sure that I plan the best possible sabbatical to make sure that the congregation isn't cheated by my use of time and the Lilly Endowment gets a big bang for its bucks. The competitive part of me wants other Lilly Endowment Pastors to say, "I wish I'd done Dave's sabbatical."

But my other, more sane side remembers that I am doing this to be open to God's agenda for me. And His agenda might be for me to waste time and to have absolutely no championship sabbatical accomplishments to list.

The other danger is that we won't gain a thing from these four months if I come back just to fall back into the same pattern. What happens there needs to be translated here.

In fact, I need to start now. I can't wait for another year. I need to stop running with the squirrels here and now. You do to.

You and I can begin to overcome hurry sickness and we can do it immediately. For the rest of this Lenten Season between now and Easter, April 15, I challenge you to join me in a powerful spiritual discipline called "slowing."

Slowing involves cultivating patience by deliberately choosing to place ourselves in positions where we simply have to wait.

Over the next month deliberately drive in the slow lane on the freeway. Yes not swerving from lane to lane will cause you to arrive five minutes or so later than you usually would. But you will find that you don't get nearly so angry at other drivers. Instead of trying to pass them, say a little prayer as they go by, asking God to bless them.

Eat your food slowly. Force yourself to chew at least seven times before each swallow. Seven is a good biblical number. It could have been worse. It could have been 144 thousand.

When you are at the grocery store, look carefully to see which check-out line is the longest. Get in it. Let one person go ahead of you.

Go through one day without wearing a watch.

The list could go on, but you get the idea. We must find ways to deliberately choose waiting -- ways that make hurry impossible. As we practice them, we should tell God we are trusting Him to enable us to accomplish all we need to get done.

We may want to begin a particular day by praying over the day's schedule -- meetings to attend, tasks to perform, people we will be with -- and placing it in God's hands. Through the day we could take five- minute breaks if that is possible, close the door to the office, and remind ourselves that one day the office and the building will be gone -- but we will still belong to God.

We also need extended times alone. I try to withdraw for a day or two every few months. In fact, this sermon was completed last month at a wonderful Franciscan Retreat Center attached to the Santa Barbara Mission. It has been partly shaped by fountains, palm trees and bells.

Of course I was being productive. I mean, I wrote this sermon didn't I. I'm not cured yet. I was actually pretty pleased with how quickly I banged out the outline for this sermon on slowing down. But we also need the freedom to be unproductive.

One great obstacles to extended solitude is that

it feels like a waste of time. This happens because we are conditioned to feel that our existence is justified only when we are doing something. As a Franciscan priest at the Mission observed: "We don't have the faith to believe that God loves us even when we aren't performing."

The pressure to hurry is not the voice of God. God never created you to run with the squirrels. He created you to walk with Him, grow deep in Him, and express His unhurried love for people. And if you are going to follow Him you know you can't move any faster than He does. If you trust Him, you know you don't need to.