Requium for a Cell Phone

Galatians 3:23-31 June 24, 2001

 

 

Several weeks ago my old cell phone decided that it had taken enough verbal abuse from me and it passed on to whatever eternal reward faithful cellphones receive. I got a new one at the store and found, to my delight, that it was a fair amount easier to use. It had a convenient clip that attached to my belt and it was small enough not to get in my way.

About a week ago I began working in our back yard, working a slope that is next to a holding pond. I have decided to terrace it using small rocks and put a variety of plants in the terraced sections so that the rain won't wash so quickly down into the pond. Tuesday evening, putting a plant in its freshly dug hole, and working at an awkward angle, the cell phone squeeggied out of its holder, up in the air in an arc and made perfect swan dive right into the five-gallon bucket of water.

This was rather like scenes where time slows down because I was so astonished it happened. The cell phone splashed into the middle of the bucket and gracefully settled all the way to the bottom, I think with one small bubble making its way to the surface. Now this was no ordinary bucket of water. It was blue in color. Miracle Grow made it a dark blue. Now, I suspect that cell phones have no love of water but I am quite convinced they have absolutely no use for Miracle Grow. Even if they liked it, it would be most undesirable for a cell phone to grow.

So I lunged for the bucket retrieved the soaking cell phone and took it back inside for some drying out time. For a while it made a buzzing sound even when turned off so I knew the prognosis was at best guarded. The next morning I turned it on, it powered up, I was encouraged, but then it failed to find a signal. It didn't look good.

On Friday I took it back to the store and the clerk took it to the back room. When the clerk returned and asked "How did this get wet?" I knew my relationship with my new friend was over. No funeral, no eulogies, it was over.

Increasingly, we don't repair devices, we replace them. As I think of the landfill near Koch Refinery I drive past each time I come to St. Mary's, I know why the trucks have to line up. Ours is the disposable society.

Ours is a disposable society often in terms of human relationships as well. If a relationship is not going well, our cultural disposition is to find another relationship. Like cell phones, our tendency is not to repair but to replace.

 

Galatians 3

Our lesson today is from Galatians. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this letter from St. Paul in Christian history.

The central part of the letter is an exposition of the doctrine of justification by grace through faith. St. Augustine articulated well the doctrine of justification. Luther was an Augustinian and the rest, as they say, is history. Much of the Reformation was prompted by the claim that our relationship to God is not dependent on our behavior but is defined by God's act of grace in Christ. Period.

Interestingly, Lutheran and Roman Catholic theologians have reached agreement on the doctrine of justification by faith and the Roman Catholic Church has largely agreed that Luther had it right, even as they take exception to his tragic break with the larger church.

I think it is not too strong to say that the doctrines articulated in this relatively short letter transformed Christianity from a Jewish sect to the largest religion in the world. No small accomplishment for a six-page letter written by a Jewish man in 55 A.D.

In a nutshell the law defines our relationship goals and how it is we fall short of those goals, but it does not define a Christian's relationship with God. Our baptisms mean that God has promised that he will not give up on us. God is committed to repairing us, not replacing us.

We are not cell phones at the bottom of five gallons of water. We are people made in his image and purchased at the greatest price possible.

Today, we have heard the singular verse, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" so many times, I fear these singular words have lost their effect. But this one line did more to transform religion than perhaps any other line in human history.

 

Saving Milly

Saving Milly by Morton Kondracke, the political commentator and columnist most of you have seen. It is the account of the development by his wife Milly of Parkinson's disease. Other famous personalities suffering from Parkinsons include Michael J. Fox, Muhammed Ali, Janet Reno and Pope John Paul II.

Michael J. Fox wrote the preface to the book and has become good friends with the Kondrackes.

But it is also the account of the transformation of an ambitious Washington insider, consumed by politics, power and influence, into a man who now understands relationship is the hub of human relationship.

Morton Kondracke did not intend to marry Millicent Martinez. He intended to marry an Ivy League heiress whose connections and credentials might help his career. He was the consummate WASP and a graduate of Dartmouth, calculating each step of his carefully planned ascent. But Milly--a Mexican American, part Jewish, Roman Catholic by baptism, inner city Chicago kid and daughter of a radical labor organizer who grew up to be a dynamo--eventually captured his heart. She was anything but a WASP. But her love of life, her fierce determination to do the right and to make the world a better place, won him over.

They married, and loved and fought with each other passionately for twenty years. They had two lovely daughters. Then one day in 1987, Milly noticed a glitch in her handwriting; a small tremor which would lead to the shattering diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.

 

Quotation p. 128

 

One day in a restaurant, no longer able to speak at all, she painstakingly wrote out on the AlphaSmart device, "I have been thinking about dying. You make me very happy, but I wonder how much longer God is going to make me suffer."

When she feared that Mort, attractive, wealthy and powerful, would abandon her for a healthy, younger woman ... he held her more tightly than ever.

When the disease caused her to lose her youthful good looks...to Mort she was more beautiful than ever.

When she had lost the ability to speak...to Mort she spoke volumes about the meaning of love and the value of life.

When she could no longer walk...he would dance with her in her wheelchair and spin her around as if they were still dating.

When her medications caused her to gain weight and loose her youthful figure, and she worried about it, Mort responded, "Ah, there is more of you to love!"

When she painstakingly typed on her machine to him, "I don't know how you can love a mannequin," he whispered with eternal gentleness, "I love you more than I ever have."

Kondracke writes that even as her disease has sorely tested Milly's Christian faith, it has enriched his. He has learned that love in relationship is the most important part of what it means to be a human. Earlier in his life a disinterested Christian, he now is an active member of St. Columba's Episcopal Church in Washington D.C. We should be proud of this brother in the faith who is teaching the world the meaning of what St. Paul was speaking of when he said "we are all one in Christ Jesus."