“The Big Picture” is a term that came into use, as have many, in my lifetime – 1960, to be precise. The dictionary tells us that it means to get the entire perspective on an issue or event. I also discovered – thanks to the Internet (how did so much scholarship get done without it?) – that there is a discipline called Enterprise Architecture and for that discipline, “The EA big picture is defined as ‘The entire perspective on the scope and definition of an enterprise.’ It does not only describe the enterprise from a holistic consideration but also serve as the requirements to the operation solutions such as business processes and automation. . .” John Wu, the author of the piece I read also said, “The big picture of an enterprise is abstractive and invisible, it can only be comprehended with mind rather then eyes. A major effort of EA is to comprehend the invisible big picture and conduct explicit modeling technique for visualization. It can be a physical subject which is too large for human eyes to comprehend or it can be an abstractive subject which does not physically exist.” What Wu is talking about in terms of business is what all three of our readings today address. Isaiah, Paul and Luke try to get us, as God’s people, to see the BIG picture of God’s desire, God’s will, God’s vision for what He has created – us. And we’re to move from the abstract to the concrete in the process, because the big picture is to make a difference in how we live.
It’s not normally my way to tell a joke from the pulpit, but for some odd reason this one works for me. It seems an unscrupulous painter was out to get the contract for painting a local church. The bid he submitted was ridiculously low, but the trustees couldn’t resist the prospect of such a deal, so they accepted it. The contractor then watered down the paint to the point where, even with the low bid, he was making a goodly amount of money. Buckets of watery paint in hand, then, he went to work. When he finished, the church looked beautiful and he stepped back to admire his work -- and his deception. As he stood there, a storm blew up and rain came down in torrents . . . washing the paint right off the church and onto the grass. The painter was frantic and yelled out, “Oh God, what can I do?” To his surprise, a voice boomed out of the cloud: “Repaint! And thin no more!”
It’s a cute story, at least I think it is, and a nifty play on words and it captures the big picture fairly well. The tragedy is that too many of us resemble the painter in our faith life. We think we’re covering ourselves pretty thoroughly, but the paint of our repentance is often just a tad thin. We don’t like to think about it because when do we get the ‘guilts,’ but repentance, conversion, is more than a case of the ‘guilts.’ Jesus calls us not to guilt, but to abundant life, to fullness of joy in God and, ultimately, our faith-life isn’t about how we compare with those around us, but how we’ve exercised the potential God has given us.
When Jesus talked with those folks about repentance, he was trying to get at the core of faith life. They wanted to assign guilt, because in our mind-set every action needs to have a consequence. It’s easy to see how they could think that way. When Paul cites the examples of the Israelites, he alludes to the “murmurings” in the desert that led to disaster. Many who came to Jesus for healing saw some sort of connection between sin and illness. Over-and-over again Jesus says that there is more to this than a simple equation, though they just don’t seem to grasp the idea. Here the Lord’s words to Isaiah flash to mind, “My ways are not your ways and my thoughts not your thoughts.”
Peter Gomes, chaplain and professor at Harvard, puts his finger on something. He comments: The fact of sin is not at question, nor is the fact of death, and sin still has the capacity to lead to death. But it is not so much that sin itself kills as it is that the refusal to turn from sin, the denial of repentance, sets one up to lead a useless life and a meaningless death. Jesus is interested not in establishing the cause of death, but rather in determining the terms of a life worth living, and the only way to do that is to confess and repent of sin.
The goal of conversion, then, isn’t to make us feel bad about ourselves or to wallow in guilt. The goal of conversion is about accepting ourselves where we are and realizing that we are called to be different, to be renewed. Conversion is about having a life worth living.
I think that the word for ‘repentance’ or ‘conversion’ in the Greek, ‘metanoia,’ is quite powerful. ‘Metanoia’ means literally a change of mind. When Jesus calls people to conversion, he’s calling them to a radical return to life in God. To enter the experience of conversion is to move away from all those things that keep us from God. Jesus’ teaching and his very life proclaim an unconditional turning to God. Jesus isn’t just interested in people turning from things that are downright evil, he’s after a change, a conversion from anything that puts conditions on our living life in conformity with God’s will for us.
One does not accomplish such a change in direction by oneself. Any of us who have undertaken diet or exercise programs know that so-called ‘willpower’ is a shaky commodity and in short supply. What gets us to accomplish the goal, at least it is for me, is someone standing alongside us, encouraging us, and modeling the behavior for us. In the spiritual life this person is Christ. When we have an encounter with Christ, open ourselves to relationship with him, it makes a difference in who we are. In fact, we can’t encounter Christ authentically and remain the same, we can’t stay the same as we were.
Lloyd Douglas, Congregational minister and novelist, confronted this issue of the change meeting Christ brings in his book The Robe. The centurion Marcellus, who was in charge of the Lord’s crucifixion, returns to his wife Diana -- and there’s something very different about him.
“What I feared was that it might somehow affect your life -- and mine, too. It is a beautiful story, Marcellus, a beautiful mystery. Let it remain so. We don’t have to understand it. And we don’t have to do anything about it; do we? Let us plan to live -- each for the other -- just as if this hadn’t happened.”
She waited a long time for his reply. His face was drawn, and his eyes were transfixed to the far horizon. Diana’s slim fingers trace a light pattern on the back of his hand... “But it has affected my life, darling!” said Marcellus firmly. “I can’t go on as if it hadn’t happened.”... “What have you thought of doing?” Diana’s voice was unsteady... “I don’t know -- yet,” he replied, half to himself. “But I know I have a duty to perform. It is not clear -- what I am to do. But I couldn’t go back to living as I did -- not even if I tried. I couldn’t.” [The Robe, chapter 21]
Once we’ve seen the face of God, how can we return to what we’ve always seen? Even if we try, we can’t be the same.
Still, it’s important for us to realize that conversion isn’t something that just happens once and that’s it. As life is a continual process of growth and change so, too, is the Christian life. When we think of repentance or conversion, then, we need to move away from considering it as something onerous or problematic. We have to be more Pooh-like and less Eyore-like as Christians. Pooh is more positive. Pooh delights in creation – especially in honey. Eyore sees everything as a burden. How many Christians do we know go through life not as Pooh, but as Eyore; where everything is “oh my.” No more Eyore-Christians, beloved. Get over it. After all, remember, he’s an ass. Be more Pooh-like. Delight in creation. Enjoy the wonder of what God is doing. Understand that God is working in our lives and that’s the big picture. God wants this to happen not just to say, “you bad thing.” God wants us to grow, God wants us to develop.
Christian life, then, is about living life in a new and a God-ward direction, it’s a life of continuous conversion with each new day bringing new burdens, new restraints, no, new freedom in God. That’s the BIG picture. I can tell you that when it comes to making the changes I need to make to achieve what my physician thinks I need to do to be fully healthy, my attitude is not what it should be. When it comes to exercise, I am Eyore – I was frightened by a gym teacher in my youth. I see exercise, diet, and so on, as a real burden. I need a metanoia, a change of mind on this so that my attitude matches my goal: renewed health. That change isn’t going to come in a flash, it’s going to take time and effort – I’ve been working at it, but it comes slowly.
It’s no different in the life of faith. God tells us, through Isaiah, “My ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts.” If we’re going to attune ourselves to ways and thoughts so radically different from our own, we need to take time and work at it. Yes, everything needs a beginning, we’ve got to start somewhere, but the process takes a lifetime. Adin Steinsaltz, a Jewish author, puts it this way: Repentance does not bring a sense of serenity or completion, but stimulates a reaching out in further effort. Indeed, the power and the potential of repentance lie in increased incentive and enhanced capacity to follow the path even further . . . In this manner, the conditions are created in which repentance is no longer an isolated act but has become a permanent possibility, a constant process of going forward.
Because God’s ways and thoughts are so different from ours, God is more patient with us than we are with ourselves, or even with others. Like the gardener, God knows that it takes time for a life to bear fruit – God, after all, is the one who made the big picture. The wonder of God’s love for us is expressed in God’s patience with us as we try, and try, and try to become the people God intended us to be.
I ran across something Harry Winters wrote in Word and Witness that summarizes the Christian life of continuous conversion.
Daniel Pinkwater is a children’s author and occasional commentator on National Public Radio. For a while, he thought about being a sculptor. So he decided to apprentice himself to a sculptor. . . Every morning Pinkwater would show up in the sculptor’s studio and say, “What would you like me to do today?” . . . . And the sculptor would reply, “Do? Do anything you like.” . . . And then Pinkwater would search the studio all the rest of the day, trying to figure out what the sculptor wanted him to do. Pinkwater says, “After a while, I would figure out what task he had subtly set for me, and go about doing it.” . . . And then, after a year and a half, Pinkwater finally figures it out: “When you say I can do whatever I like, you mean that I can do whatever I like. I can I work. I can watch you work. I can take a nap. I can look out the window, get drunk, read a magazine, yodel, hold my breath. I can discuss Mozart with you, or get you to try to teach me to fence. I can invite my friends and have a party . . . So, actually, when you say I can do anything I like, you simply, literally, mean that I can do anything I like.” . . . And the sculptor replied: “I say so every day.” . . . Grace is like that. God says, “I forgive you freely. Simply believe. Simply turn toward grace and accept it.” Period. That is repentance -- turning toward grace and accepting it. . . Grace is God’s gift. We need not do anything to earn it. We only need to turn toward it and accept it. And then we live. . . . And live means, living eternally with God, beginning here and now. And to live means that all of our relationships change when grace becomes part of us. . .
When grace becomes part of us and each day of life is seen as an opportunity to grow and change, we know that we’re living the Christian life and seeing the big picture. Therefore, on those days when we’ve watered down the paint of our faith life and we’re exposed for what we are, God’s grace is there calling us to repaint and thin no more. God’s grace is there calling us to see the BIG picture of life’s potential achieved. God’s grace is there calling us to come and just be in God’s presence, delighting in who God is and delighting in the world God has made, accepting the grace of continuous conversion. Seeing the BIG picture, though, means opening the eyes of our hearts and it has to start somewhere and sometime. So, how about here and how about now?