Think Out of the Box With Jesus
The Rev. Dr. Daniel P. Matthews
Rector, Trinity Church
New York, New York

(This sermon is also available in audio)

My first position after being ordained in the diocese of Tennessee, was in a little town in the Cumberland Mountains called Monteagle. I'd never heard of Monteagle, but I got there and discovered it was a town of about 800 people. I was also told I was the first resident Episcopal minister ever in the history of that town. And I found a little house to rent, right behind the Greyhound bus station, and I began my work.

One day I went out to buy some things in a little general store there. That store had everything, even a drug store. I was wandering through the store, gathering the things together, when I noticed a person shuffle up next to me. You know how that is, when somebody shuffles a little closer and you don't want to look at the person, yet they keep getting closer. I finally lifted my eyes up and looked. This man was what we would call a street person. He had on several layers of clothes, the way street people often dress. His hair was disheveled, and he had a little beard of several days. As he got close to me, he looked at me and he said, "You're the new preacher in town." And I said, "Yes, I'm the new Episcopal minister in town." "I hear you come from California." And I said, "Yes, I was in school in California before I got here." Two or three other comments like that, which seemed very appropriate and natural.

Then he paused and began to go down into his shirts with his fingers, kind of digging down into his clothes. He got ahold of what looked like a chain, and he began to pull it out. Finally, he got his hands out in front of me, and he opened his hands, and right in his palm at the end of the chain was a crucifix. He held it right in front of me and said, "This is the most important thing in the world." Then he began to stuff it back into his shirt. He shuffled off.

About that time, the woman at the counter came over, and she kind of came up and said, "Can I help you?" I said, "By the way, who's that man with whom I was just speaking?" She looked over the counter and sort of stretched her neck. "Oh, that's old so-and-so. Pay him no mind. He's just crazy." That man had just showed me what was the most important thing in the world to him and to most of us. He'd just described to me what he and most of us believed. Yet she called him crazy. I was told when I got to Monteagle to stay away from a place that was about one mile from my new little church. Everybody in town said, "Now, you've got to stay away from that place. Those people are crazy. You just stay away."

This place was kind of a little conference center. It was kind of a small place, by a lovely little lake. But this conference center was not called a conference center. It was called Highlander Folk School. I'd never heard of Highlander Folk School, knew nothing about it, but the people in my parish said, "Stay away from those people. They're all crazy."

A week or so after I'd been there, lo and behold, I was in the post office where everybody gathered every morning to get their mail. (It was one of the big deals of the day for me, by the way.) I got my mail, and there was Miles Horton who headed this folk school. I said, "Oh, I'm the new Episcopal minister." He said, "Yeah, I'd heard you moved to town. Welcome." We talked a little bit about California and Berkeley, but with that, I went on my way. And I thought to myself, "He didn't seem very evil to me, but I better stay away from that place."

Another week or so passed, and I understood why I was told to stay away from that place. About three or four years before I got to Monteagle, a woman from Alabama came up and went through a week-long course at the Highlander Folk School. After she got home to Alabama, she acted on what she had learned at Highlander. Her name was Rosa Parks, and we still call her the mother of the Civil Rights Movement. But those people are crazy! They're crazy.

In our tradition in the Episcopal Church, you're a deacon when you're first ordained. That meant I couldn't do the main parts of the service. So during that period of the deacon servitude, a Priest from the Sewanee Seminary came to help. He was a brilliant young man who taught Systematic Theology at Sewanee. What a privilege it was to be with him. I was still single then and so he invited me to dinner many evenings. We would sit up late and talk about ideas. One night he said, "I would like to put a tape recorder in every single classroom of every class at the Sewanee Seminary. Then I could record every class, type it up, collate it and make a course for lay people that could be taught in their congregations. They would learn in their own local church exactly what we learned in three years of seminary.

A lot of people thought that idea was crazy. How many lay people would want to study exactly what you study in seminary? Why in the world would you want to do that? Well, he got a grant and turned on the recorders. It took him some years, but he began to collate it, put it together, and today we have what's called EFM. It stands for Education for Ministry.

It's the finest program for adult education that I know of. It's all over the country. We have two or three in New York. You study the same material that Bill [The Rev. Bill Kolb] and I studied in Seminary, and after four years you wind up getting a Certificate in Theology, in effect.

But the man who thought of that, the man who dreamed up the idea and got the energy going to make it happen, was called crazy. I've seen it over and over again in my forty-plus years where the spirit and life and excitement and enthusiasm, imagination and creativity of the gospel happens. The people who are right in the middle of that are often thought to be crazy.

It's kind of strange, isn't it, to think back and say, "When were things really going on? When were things really being creative? When were we pushing out and somehow really reaching out in unique special ways of caring, concern, mission, ministry?" If you really look back, when we were in the middle of it, some of us said, "You know, they're kind of crazy."

That's what happens when you follow Jesus. Remember that story, incident, when Jesus was walking along the beach, and he saw a couple of brothers, Peter and Andrew, and he said, "Follow me."? And they did. He walked down the beach a little farther, he saw another pair of brothers, James and John, and he said, "Follow me." And they did.

Can you imagine what their dad, Zebedee, who was standing right there said? It doesn't record it in scripture, but I'm sure he said, "You guys are crazy. The boats are all paid for. We've had them in the family all these years. The fishing is good. What in the world has gotten into your mind?" But they followed Jesus, because that's what happens when you hear the Call, ever so slightly. Just move a little bit out into following Jesus and hear what the person you work next to, or the person across the street, or the person you play bridge with says, "Where did you get that idea? You aren't serious, are you? You don't really mean that, do you? How in the world would you ever . . ." Those are all forms of saying, "You're crazy."

I love the story of the English bishop who said, "Everywhere St. Paul went he created a revolution. Everywhere I go they serve tea." There is a difference, isn't there, and you and I have lived much of our lives in the tea circuit. We know what that's like, and we know that it isn't following Jesus.

In New York we have that wonderful Central Park, and it is wonderful. It's just fun to walk on the street with Central Park on the side. I heard a story the other day of a man who was walking down the Central Park sidewalk, the busy traffic and the noises. He was with a friend, who is a naturalist. The naturalist said, "Oh, stop. Wait. Listen. Hear the crickets?" The man said, "Crickets? I don't hear any crickets. There are not any crickets. I hear the buses and the cars and the people going by and the noise of the city." The naturalist said, "Yes, yes. Just listen. You can hear them. Listen. Just listen." And the man said, "I do not hear any crickets," and he began to laugh. So the man who was the naturalist reached in his pocket and pulled out four or five quarters and dropped them on the sidewalk. Immediately, everybody stopped. The naturalist then said, "It's all according to what your ear is tuned to, what is important to you."

Do you hear the voice of Jesus saying, "Follow me"? Not if you're not tuned in. Not if you're not willing to be a little bit different, a little bit out of the norm, a little bit separated from the tea-sipping set. If you follow Jesus, you're going to be just a little bit different.

A couple of months ago I got talked into bringing in a consultant in Trinity for our senior people. So about 35 of the senior people at Trinity spent a whole day with this consultant. The theme of this consultant's message (he said it over and over again, and it's a popular expression. If you don't know it; don't admit you don't know it) the theme was: "Learn to think out of the box." You've heard that haven't you?

We spent all day learning to think out of the box. We did little things like taking a bunch of toothpicks and putting them together in some sort of form, thinking out of the box. Some of the exercises were very helpful and very interesting. It cost a lot of money. Maybe it helped. I'm not sure.

But I so remember one comment after the day was over. A young black woman who works at Trinity, I think she's Pentecostal, came up to me, and she said, "Dr. Matthews, you know, all you need to do is listen to Jesus, and you're way out of the box." I thought, "And I could have saved $20,000 or whatever it cost." It's a popular expression now. I even think it's in advertisements now:"How to think out of the box."

Following Jesus is thinking out of the box. It always is. It's never very practical. It's never very logical. It doesn't make a lot of sense as the conversation does make sense when sipping tea. It doesn't make a lot of sense to turn the other cheek. It doesn't make a lot of sense to love your neighbor. It doesn't make a lot of sense to forgive people who have hurt you. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. It's a little bit crazy. It's out of the box.

But, of course, what you and I are going through right now in this land, it's so scary for every one of us. Frightening, deeply frightening. Some of us have never been so frightened in our lives. We were in a meeting in New York just the other day. The officers were sitting in a conference room, and a truck outside backfired. We all jumped, and then we began to feel self-conscious. "Oh, excuse us," we said to a person at the meeting, "you see, since 9/11 we're all jumpy." We were all deeply self-conscious about how embarrassed we were that we jumped out of our chairs with just a loud noise. You can't ride on the subway without the subway train stopping--and it stops all the time between stations--but now when it stops, everybody says, "Is this the next one?"

This is a scary, scary time in Memphis, in New York, probably even in Monteagle. It's a time when we need people like you and like me to think out of the normal box of how we deal with life and its problems and begin to try to say, "How do we think about this in relationship to following Jesus?" Try it sometime. Just risk it the next time you're with some friends. Just be bold and think out of the box with Jesus. We've never needed it more than we do right now. We've never needed people to think like Jesus might think more than we do right now. We've never needed people to think differently than we've been thinking while sipping tea. It's the way we get to a new place, by thinking out of the box. God bless us as we try to hear, "Follow me." Amen.

Copyright 2003 The Rev. Daniel P. Matthews

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