Today's Sermon

 

"Curious: Who We Are Series"

 

Isaiah 42:18-20
¹⁸Listen, you that are deaf;
   and you that are blind, look up and see!
¹⁹Who is blind but my servant,
   or deaf like my messenger whom I send?
Who is blind like my dedicated one,
   or blind like the servant of the Lord?
²⁰He sees many things, but does not observe them;
   his ears are open, but he does not hear.

Luke 19:1-10
He entered Jericho and was passing through it. ²A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. ³He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. ⁴So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. ⁵When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ ⁶So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. ⁷All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’ ⁸Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ ⁹Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’

Curious:  Who We Are Series

            You might notice something funny about the quote on the cover of your bulletin: “Be curious, not judgmental.”  What’s funny is the attribution, “not actually Walt Whitman.” You can find that quote attributed to Whitman all over the place, but there’s no record Whitman ever said that.[1]  Try to find it in any of his writings.  You won’t. 

            Still, I love the quote, how it positions curiosity and being judgmental in opposition.  Curiosity isn’t just the opposite of boredom; it’s the opposite of being judgmental. One of the most important teachings of Jesus, one that may challenge us the most, is “Do not judge” (Mt. 7:1).  A space of nonjudgment exists totally outside the realm of so much of our known world.  To be nonjudgmental is to be entirely open and accepting of what is, which isn’t to be confused with condoning all that is.  Being judgmental writes a closed story based on limited information. Curiosity, which depends on not being judgmental, never finishes writing. There’s always more to discover.

            The curiosity instinct is in us from the beginning.  We learn to shut it down.  We know what it’s like to be around a young person with seemingly endless questions.  And, we may have been guilty of blurting out, “No more questions!”  Many schools shut kids right down, scolding those who can’t contain the questions bubbling up in them or teaching from the perspective of an artificially limited number of ways of doing things.  I remember leading a youth church trip through a simulation meant to help American teens experience life in the 2/3 world.  At one point, our group was given a supposedly open-ended challenge about tending livestock.  However, every creative approach the youth tried—and they were creative—was shut down until they took an obvious hint to build a fence with materials that had clearly been laid out in advance.  When I caught on to the gimmick I asked openly, having reach the end of my patience, “Was this the only solution that was going to be accepted all along?” to which the facilitator said, “Yes.”   

            “Then why the charade!?” I exclaimed incredulously.  It had been a hot and hard, exhausting week, which was fine when possibility and curiosity were fueling us.  The moment we realized it was all a farce and our curiosity was being wasted, all the energy drained out of us. 

            Being judgmental functions a little like that, artificially closing shutting down the possibilities of what else we might discover.  How many times have we rushed to judgment and missed out or come close to missing out on something amazing?   Where I went to college, there was an older man, who used to play a beat up acoustic guitar on the pedestrian mall near campus.  We passed him all the time barely stopping to notice as he played “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” – he was always playing “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.”  Every Friday a blues band that would play outside a restaurant and one Friday they pulled this guy up, handed him an electric guitar and had him play with them and he cooked.  The band shared that this man had once played with the famous bluesman Muddy Waters. You never know.  I grew up in a town with a world-renowned music school. The acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell moved there to go to high school and get a head start at the music school.  Well after becoming famous, he set up and played his Stradivarius in the subways of Washington D.C. and went unnoticed.  The point is not that there are hidden celebrities all around us; the point is there are stars shining all around us.  Every soul is playing music if we would but take the time to listen with a little curiosity.

            Listen and look.  The senses are central characters in the scripture passages from today.  The prophet Isaiah says, “Listen, you that are deaf; and you that are blind, look up and see!” (Is. 42:18).  Excuse the ableist language; Isaiah is urging the people to pay attention to what’s around, God’s way and wisdom all around.  The prophet accuses them of seeing many things, but not really observing them, having ears but failing to truly hear (42:20). 

            We are in a series exploring who we are as Christians.  Today we say we are curious, something not always associated with the religious, who, fair or not, are assumed to be closed-minded and all too sure of their way.  We say curiosity is a Christian value, one rooted in the art of noticing, looking around and listening attentively without being committed to assumptions about what we might find or just as bad, zoned out, glazed over, overstimulated to the point nothing captures our attention any longer. 

            When Jesus enters Jericho a man named Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector, shows up.  He wants to see and hear.  By now most of you know tax collectors were hated and for good reason. Tax collectors were notoriously corrupt, instruments of the empire.  They exploited the people.  Zacchaeus is short, limited you might say, so he goes to great lengths, climbing a sycamore tree to catch a glimpse to cast his eyes upon Jesus.  He wants to know.  He is curious about this one who is teaching such wonderful things he had to hear for himself, doing such amazing things he had to see with his own eyes.

            Jesus, in turn, becomes curious about Zacchaeus, this one in the tree.  Maybe that is Jesus’ superpower as much as his ability to heal. Maybe that is at the source of his ability to heal, the ability to see, recognize, hear and understand.  Jesus doesn’t close off Zacchaeus’ story prematurely. He invites himself into Zacchaeus’ space, his home, so he can hear Zacchaeus’ story told on his own turf in his own terms.  That’s what curiosity is, really exploring another’s world.  Zacchaeus is happy to welcome him, Zacchaeus who is trying to push the bounds of his own limits, moving beyond presumed corruption, giving generously to the poor, pledging to make up fourfold any amount he has defrauded. Notice at the end of the passage, Jesus refers to him neither as a corrupt other nor as a reformed one, but as a member of the family, the household of Abraham.      

            Do you see what curiosity opens up in people?  How many times have you heard questions asked that weren’t about opening up, but making a point, catching the other somehow rather than earnestly exploring.  When we grow up, we can lose the ability we had as children to want to know more so badly we can’t wait our turn. 

            The world badly needs our curiosity.  The election is just days away.  Let’s not pretend it’s not.  It is an emblem that we have lost the art of being curious with one another, and it’s not all our fault.  In fact, it’s a mistake to put the onus entirely on the individual.  There are those who have made a lot of money designing things to rob us of our open-ended, earnest curiosity of another.  It is up to us, however, to take that back, shut out that which shuts us down to one another, not just through individual but collective action.

            Do you know what’s interesting?  Some of those who are involved in the tech industries, which may have contributed to our animus toward one another, show that in their own lives and that of their loved ones what they want most is curiosity and the creativity that flows from it.  I have seen more than one accounting of Silicon Valley executives talking about how they do not put computers in the hands of their children at the youngest of ages because coding is something you can learn, tech skills can be acquired in adulthood.  What the industry needs and what the world needs is people who are critical thinkers, creative thinkers, and both of those are grounded in curious souls.  Look and you’ll find stories such as the one inThe New York Timesabout a thriving Waldorf School, a famously “analog” form of doing education on the peninsula[2]or an article in another publication about tech executives who aggressively limit screen time from their own children because they know the capacity of that technology to numb their senses.[3]

            Using our senses, being curious with them, is our path through our most significant challenges, our most difficult conflicts, our path to empathy.  To put it theologically, our curiosity as much as our scriptures will lead us to God. 

            My favorite moment in the acclaimed TV series Ted Lasso, highlights curiosity as a value, and today we are calling it a Christian value.  By now, many of you know about Ted Lasso, a loveable aw-shucks American football coach, coaching soccer abroad, out of his territory.  In one scene he is in a pub playing a high-stakes darts game against the insufferable ex-husband of the owner of his team.  The man is gloating over his ex-wife, trying to humiliate her. 

            The overconfidence and lack of paying attention, even caring to know, does the man in, but not after a dramatic comeback.  It’s his final turn and Lasso has to hit three straight bullseyes to win.  As he approaches, relaxed as can be, Lasso launches on a monologue:

Guys have underestimated me my entire life and for years I never understood why – it used to really bother me. But then one day I was driving my little boy to school and I saw a quote by Walt Whitman, it was painted on the wall and it said, ‘Be curious, not judgmental.’ I like that. (Throws triple 20). So I get back in my car and I’m driving to work and all of the sudden it hits me – all them fellas that used to belittle me, not a single one of them was curious. You know, they thought they had everything figured out so they judged everything and they judged everyone. And I realized that they’re underestimating me – who I was had nothing to do with it. Because if they were curious they would have asked questions. Questions like, ‘Have you played a lot of darts, Ted?’ (Throws triple 20). To which I would have answered, “Yes sir. Every Sunday afternoon at a sports bar with my father from aged 10 until I was 16 when he passed away... (Throws triple bullseye to win).

            The funny thing, remember, is Walt Whitman never said that.  Gosh, I wonder who did.  I’m curious, which is the beginning of many good things.

            Amen.

 

[1]https://www.charlotteobserver.com/charlottefive/c5-people/article275467806.html

[2]https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html

[3]https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-execs-screen-time-children-bill-gates-steve-jobs-2019-9