Keep your soul balanced
Greek cab driver Kostas helps put everything into perspective. Whether we’re grasping for control and superiority, or opining how tragedy could befall us, we need to remember that we are not the center of the narrative, and that we’ve got to keep our soul balanced.
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Transcript
In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Just a few thoughts on the readings from this morning.
Our cab driver’s name was Kostas. An incredible soul. We arrived, we thought, in time to catch our flight home, only to find when we got there that the gate was closed and we stood there thinking, “I don’t know, out of just sheer mental willpower, we could make it work.” But the nice lady at the counter said, “I’m sorry. There’s nothing that we can do. That flight is already closed and so you’re not going to be going home that way.”
So we regrouped in the food court, which felt like an appropriate place to regroup, calling our tour company, who had arranged this. After a couple of hours, she said, “I think I figured it out. We’re going to put you all on the flight at four to Madrid. You’ll stay the night in Spain, and then from there we’re going to have to split you up into three groups. One will go to Philly, one to Chicago and one to Miami. And then you’ll regroup in Atlanta. But you’re all going to come in at different times. And so you’ll have to figure out your transport back home.”
So we settled ourselves into that plan thinking that we would all be on the list. We got over to the counter and the lady, so nice, there’s nothing that she can do, one of them just broke down in tears. Honest to God. Broke down in tears. I held her hand and we said prayers at one point because this was not going well. I said, “This is not your fault. It’s been thrown on all of us.” But we sat there and she said, “you’re in the system, but you have no tickets confirmed. This flight closes in twenty minutes. There’s nothing that we can do.” So we missed that flight. At that point, my pulse rate was 320.
We went back to regroup in the food court. Beth figured out on her phone, she comes and she says “there’s a flight tomorrow morning that leaves at 10 a.m. with plenty of seats straight from here to Atlanta.” I said, “hold that.” I call our tour company, and she says, “at this point it’s looking like two days, most likely three, to get you all home.” And I said, “no, there’s a flight tomorrow morning at 10 a.m., we need to be on that flight where we all can get back. We can’t just hang out in Athens for three more days.” So she said, “All right, we worked, we got it, we got the seats.” She said, “We’re going to put you up in a nice hotel.” I said, “Is there a bar?” “Yes.” “We’ll be fine.”
So we go, we regroup, and we get cabs. We had to split up into cabs. Beth, Jim and Pat and I were in a cab. We sat down and–it makes me tear up even thinking about it–he turns and says, first thing out of his mouth, “I am so glad to have the chance to get to meet you all. My name is Kostas. I’ll be your cab driver.” And we tell him “we’ve had a pretty rough day, Kostas. We were supposed to be well on our way home, but we’re going to be here a little longer. But I think it will work out.” “No, no, no, no, this is what you have to do” he said. “You never know what life is going to have in store for you. You never know what’s going to happen. You have to choose,” and this was a phrase that he used “you have to choose to find ways to keep your soul balanced.” Well, at that point I had, I was in the front, I had my hand on his arm and I said, “Kostas, you have no idea how much we needed to meet you.” And so we talked for thirty minutes.
There is a little thing hanging on his rear view mirror that Pat or someone said that they liked, so he reached and got a pocket knife, cut it off and gave it to her and said, “lovely, you can have it here.” And he’s reaching to get a knife and I’m thinking, “keep your hands on the wheel, keep your hands on the wheel.” So he talked. We all talked about a reset after a stressful time when you feel like everything is out of control, nothing’s certain, you’re trying to figure out how to get your friends home and you end up in a cab, and the first thing out of his mouth is “It’s so wonderful to have a chance to meet you all. Here’s what I learned about life.” He said “My family owned a furniture store for almost 60 years, and we lost it in the downturn. And I drive a cab now. I get up and I start at 6 a.m. and I end at 10 p.m. every day to drive a cab. My wife works twelve hours a day. We’re doing this because” then he holds up his phone and he says, “this is our son, George. He’s in school and we’re so proud of him. We’re so proud of him.”
We got there, and we did the only thing that we could think to do. We said “can we take our photograph with you?” Because I think all of us felt we’re going to turn around and look and Kostas is not actually going to be standing there, and we’ll look at each other and wonder how we got to the hotel with this mysterious person named Kostas. The archangel Kostas. So we take our photograph with him, go and settle-in. But it’s that phrase that he used, “you never know what’s going to happen. You never know what life is going to give you. But we have to make choices and do things so that we can keep our soul balanced.”
So I was thinking about the readings for this Sunday, thinking something’s going to present itself in our time there to help me write my sermon. And Beth and Pat and Jim were like, “Kostas wrote your sermon for you.” But he did. He did. And here’s what I learned and will always learn from him. It’s that phrase, “What do we do? What choices can we make to keep our soul balanced?” So if you look at your readings, the Gospel reading for this morning and the reading from Joel actually lay out a fascinating tension that we find ourselves in that speaks exactly to what Kostas was saying about how we can do certain things to nurture our souls and keep them balanced.
So look at the Gospel reading. This pesky man standing there saying, “thank God I’m not like all of those other people.” And then he has a list. That’s who’s on his list. The truth is, we all have our list. I have my list. “Thank God I’m not like those people” and I can tell you who they are. Some of them are in my family. “Thank God I’m not like those people.” Meaning, “thank God I’m the best. Thank God I’m the best. And they all wish that they were like me.”
So I was looking last night at that moment when Nicolaus Copernicus first came up with his theory, so to speak, that the Earth is not actually at the center of the universe, but the Sun is, and everything orbits around the sun. And I thought last night, “you know, we may have scientifically proven that the Earth rotates around the sun, but the truth is, we think that everything still continues to rotate around us.” We do. We may know what the scientific laws are and how the planets actually move, but the fact is, we all think that life still rotates around us. We still place ourselves at the center of the universe. “Thank God I’m not like them. They wish they were like me. I’m the best.”
So that first posture, if you will, that we see in the Gospel, is grasping this tension that we find ourselves in grasping, holding on to power, control, whatever it is that we think we need to validate ourselves over and against someone else. We all have a list of who those others are. We do, and we’re challenged and convicted always to become aware of that. How we grasp onto our own sense of entitlement. “Thank God I’m not like them.” So that’s the grasping side of the tension.
Look at Joel. Fascinating book. The backstory of Joel, you might have heard in the reading these references to hoppers and grasshoppers and locusts. So Joel wrote in the context of a plague, and everyone was trying to figure out “How can this happen to us? How can this happen to us? The grasshoppers have infested us. Our crops have failed. We’re all struggling. The way that we thought life was going to go, nothing worked out that way. Now, look, we find ourselves here. How do we make meaning of where we are?” And Joel says this: “It won’t always be this way. This is where you are now, and you should acknowledge it and be honest about it. Don’t think that you have to cover it up or smooth it over. But it won’t always be this way. There will come a point,” Joel says, “when God says I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. There will come a point when you will realize that God’s presence is always with you, and you’ll dream again, and you’ll discover again that hope was always there, is always at our fingertips, closer than our very breath.”
So whereas the first man in the Gospel grasped, Joel as a prophet says, “be receptive, don’t grasp, don’t try to grasp onto control and place yourself at the center, but be receptive and open to the ways that the spirit flows and moves in your life. And by doing that, you will rediscover the hope that has always been with you.”
That, I think, is what Kostas was talking about with his own life. Find ways to nurture and cultivate that sense in yourself so that your soul can stay in balance. Your soul can stay in balance.
We’re going to celebrate two baptisms of two incredible souls, and nothing brings this truth closer to home, I think, than a baptism service. Because what we do in a baptism service is we de-center ourselves. We may think that a baptism is all about the people being baptized, but it’s actually not. We’re not the subjects of our stories. We’re the objects. And we forget that. During these moments when we can celebrate a baptism, we see how the spirit has been alive and at work in each of our lives, sometimes in such confusing ways that we can’t get our minds around them. Thanks be to God, we’re taken outside of our minds and can rest in this deeper sense of our hearts and can give thanks.
So we think that it’s about us. But the truth is, it’s about God, and we’re on the receiving end of a whole lot of grace. So as we prepare to celebrate these two baptisms and in the weeks to come, let’s be reminded of that. Be honest about where we are, what we feel, what we struggle with. Don’t have to cover any of that up, but we resituate it in a much bigger story that we can give thanks to God for.
Amen.