“Still”

Matthew 22: 15-22, 34-40

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

Sep. 1, 2024

Somewhat ironically, this sermon is meant to be about stillness and integration. About the gravity that holds things together when they threaten to fall apart. The ironic part is that, for the life of me, I couldn’t get the sermon to coalesce. There’s no gently flowing story that’s going to carry us from point A to point B. Instead, the sermon this week came to me as a series of somewhat-disjointed images. And after struggling mightily all week to put them into a nice little coherent package - and failing - I decided that, perhaps, it was meant to be that way. 

And so, I present to you a sermon in a series of puzzle pieces. Breadcrumbs, maybe. We’re going to gather them up, and sit with them. I trust that the Spirit will continue working in each of us beyond the confines of this worship service. And maybe things will come together after all. 

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I had a teacher once who would end his prayers like this, “We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, the still point of our turning world.” 

I loved that phrase. Still do. “The still point of our turning world.” It’s a line from T.S. Eliot’s 1935 poem, Burnt Norton. 

The still point is that place we go when chaos threatens. That still space where the world can stop spinning on its axis for just a moment. That gravity that pulls us in and holds us tightly. 

My teacher called this still point Jesus Christ. Others have called it Love. Or Utilmate Reality. The Universal. Paul Tillich called it the Ground of Being. Some don’t have a name for it at all.

The still point. The place we go to when it feels like things are falling apart. 

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When I think about finding that still point, a very specific image comes to me. It’s so clear in my mind that I tried to find a visual of it so I could show you. But apparently it’s just an image I made up. Or perhaps one that’s come to me in dreams. Maybe from our collective unconscious. 

It’s a pencil sketch. Graphite in thick, stormy strokes on yellowed paper. Smudged around the edges. We are looking down as if from a high mountain. Or perhaps we’re floating in a cloud. Below us is a vast, barren plain. And in the center, a tiny pinpoint down on the ground is a man holding out one arm. Above him we can sense a great swirl of wind. Concentric spirals of air, rising up and up. And on the edge of the picture: a falcon soaring. Caught in the wind but about to break free and escape the picture completely. 

The man is in the still point. But the winds are swirling and the gravitational force of that still point is no longer strong enough: “Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.” 

If you’re a poetry lover, you may already know that the image of the man and the bird comes from the opening lines of The Second Coming, written by Irish poet William Butler Yeats in 1919. Written on the heels of the Easter Rising in Ireland, the close of World War I in Europe, and during the great flu pandemic (which almost killed Yeats’s pregnant wife), the poem captures the unease of the early 20th century.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity. [1]

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It turns out we are not the first humans to live through a period of great disintegration and dis-ease. We are not the only humans to see the falcon swirling at the end of the drawing, barely hanging on by a thread, and wonder, “Where is the still point? And how do we find our way back to it?” We are not the only people to read the daily news and shake our heads, wondering why the best of us seem to have so little conviction and the worst of us are so very loud about it. 

We are not the first to wonder just how we can hold onto our firm footing in the still point - while simultaneously living as citizens of a rapidly-swirling world. 

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The Pharisees may have been trying to trick Jesus when they asked this question about taxes, but it turns out it’s a question many Christians have struggled mightily with over the centuries. They asked, “are we supposed to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” In other words, “For those of us who claim membership in God’s Realm, are we ALSO citizens of the Empire we live in here on earth?” What does it look like to be a faithful follower of Jesus when you’re living in an Empire here on earth? 

Jesus’s answer is a bit shocking, really. You’d think he’d remind us that we are, first and foremost, citizens of God’s realm. The trap, of course, is that if he gives an answer like that - If he tells the crowd they don’t belong to the Empire and don’t have to pay taxes to it, he’s going to have his head on a platter. And so the answer he gives is much more complex and puzzling: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar, and unto God the things that are God’s.” 

Which is to say: we have to ask a lot more questions, first. We have to figure out what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar. We have to live as citizens of both worlds. We have to stand in the midst of the chaos, like the falconer, and plant our feet firmly in the still point, hoping to pull all the falling apart things back together. 

A little further on in the story, they ask another question of Jesus, “Teacher, which of the commandments is greatest?” And Jesus has an answer for this one. He doesn’t stumble. Perhaps this is his still point. The gravity that pulls him back in when everything is swirling. He says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

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The still point is that place we go when chaos threatens. That still space where the world can stop spinning on its axis for just a moment. That gravity that pulls us in. “Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Some have named this gravitational force Love. Or Utilmate Reality. The Universal. Aristotle called it the “unmoved mover.” Some don’t have a name for it at all.

That still place. The place we go to when it feels like things are falling apart. 

May we find it when we seek it. Amen. 

NOTES

[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming