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The Tail of God
Speaker: Rev. Matt Henry
Location: Whitney United Methodist Church
Date: April 12, 2009
I am a man fascinated by NDEs. That’s short for Near Death Experiences. No doubt, like me, many of you have probably read accounts of people who have died, and then have lived to come back and tell us about it. Have any of you read any Near Death Experience accounts? Raise your hand if you have. They all tend to have the same elements in common and it goes something like this. One dies in the body and then they go through a tunnel full of blackness toward a light that is bright but not blinding. And once they reach that light they are greeted by a crowd of people that probably look a lot like you, and they’re singing, and they’re singing “happy,” and they’re singing “we have been waiting for you all this time,” and “join us, we’re so glad you’re here.” And it’s one heck of a beautiful party and I’m told that the music is glorious, like music you’ve never heard before, although it must come very, very close to what we heard this morning, amen? And then what happens for some reason is that they come face to face with Jesus and Jesus says to them, “Not your time,” forces them to go back through that tunnel, breaking into the experience of everyday human life. And when questioned about it, they all seem to say, “I did not want to come back.” No matter how much of a loving family they’ve left behind, they seem to all say as one voice, “Man, it is so nice that people just want to stay dead and gone.”
Brothers and sisters, this morning we celebrate the mother of all Near Death Experiences, do we not? Except there are a few differences. This one is of a stark contrast. First off, we have a dead person who’s still dead even after he’s come back to life. Secondly, we have someone who’s experienced deep, deep emotional pain of abandonment by all his closest friends, a sense of disconnect and estrangement from God when he needs it the most, personal conflict with people who didn’t understand him, and a life full of loneliness and anguish and heartache in general, not to mention a really, really painful, brutal way of dying. Free from all of that, who’d want to hang around? But that’s exactly what happens here. Jesus dies but he lingers on the scene, waiting. For that matter, Mary is waiting around, too, to receive his body. But what’s he waiting around for? It’s a morning of waiting for something, friends, something to happen, and this is it. It is the onset of grace into human history, grace that, undeserved, unmerited, complete forgiveness and love of just who you are. I think this is why Jesus hangs around. He’s waiting. He’s waiting for you, and he’s waiting for me.
Now I need to tell you a little story of Levi. Levi is….well I guess I could say that Levi is the dog that has been entrusted to me. Now, my wife and I haven’t had a dog in 30 years and we weren’t looking for one either, to tell you the truth. A year ago in March my wife noticed Levi hanging around in a particular parking spot out here in the back parking lot, and he wouldn’t move. And he was looking across the street at the school and he was whining and whining. This went on for two days. So finally my wife felt so bad for him she went and got some cat food and took it out and put it down in the parking spot with water. For that he was very grateful. But when she would come and put it down, he would run away. And after she left it and walked away, he would come back and eat that food like he was starving and drink that water like he was incredibly thirsty.
Meanwhile, my wife went across the street to the school and asked everybody in the school, “Is this your dog?” and they all said, “Nope. Not our dog.” We finally figured that Levi had been abandoned by someone in our church parking lot. Probably pulled up in a car, kicked him out, and took off, and he was looking toward the direction of where the car had gone. We called up the Humane Society. They came out and they set up a trap outside….wire cage kind of thing….and it caught him. And at that time it was early March and it was bitterly cold, and it was freezing and the wind was blowing, and I will tell you the truth. I was afraid that he would die it was that cold. So, on a Wednesday night in the middle of choir rehearsal (much to the displeasure of our previous choir director, actually) I came in and broke up the rehearsal and asked a couple of these fine gentlemen if they would go out and help me hustle in the crate of this dog, back in the church kitchen where it was warm. Next morning the Humane Society was coming and, by gosh, that was what happened. David Hawk and one of the others went to get a hack saw and try to cut through the chain. That didn’t work but we got bolt cutters and cut this chain and took him and cage in the kitchen where he spent the night. And the next morning the Humane Society guy came to pick him up, so I unlocked the door, we walked in the kitchen, and here he was backed in the end of his cage. The man opened up the door….big, hulky man….opened up the door with a kind of a noose and said, “Come here, boy. Come here.” And he started growling….the man was fearless…. ”Come.”
Well, Levi is rather a good size and he’s very strong, so I stayed away to the side of the cage. But, for some reason (I didn’t even think about it) I just knelt down on the floor like this. The dog slowly came out and the man put the noose around him and then he want to do something else. The dog came out and turned around and looked at me, and then Levi slowly came over, and as he came over (I will never, ever forget the sight) he was just shaking because he was very afraid. He was shaking with fear, and he slowly came up to me, shaking, and he stuck his head right here and buried his eyes against my body so he could not see the world, shaking. And as they say in that “Jerry McGuire” film, “You had me at ‘hello’.” I started petting him and eventually he stopped shaking, and the more I petted him, finally the tail started to do this. So, the Humane Society man took him away and I thought, “That’s the last I’ve seen of you, my good friend. I hope you have a good home.”
And a month went by and my wife started going down there to play with him. Meanwhile, I was in a class at school, all the way back in New Jersey, and we were making daily phone contact. And she was telling me, “Oh, I went and played with him today and he was so much fun.” Levi, you see, is just about a year and a half. He’s full of energy and he doesn’t know his own size and strength. And during play time he went up and just nipped her finger, and just a little bit of blood, so she went to the front desk asking for a band aid. and, of course, the Humane Society went crazy. “We’re going to have to put him down.” And she said, “No, wait a minute, you don’t understand. We were just playing.” But they said, “Nope, we’re going to have to put him down.” And in her panic she called me on her cell phone in New Jersey and told me, “They’re going to kill him in 45 minutes” and I said, “No they’re not.” “You get on them.” So she did and the upshot was, they said to her, “Well look. Here’s the deal. We either put him down or you adopt him, but nobody else can because he’s bit you, even in play. You are the only ones who can take him out of this. She asked me on the phone, “What should I do?” and I said, “I don’t really think we have a choice, do we?” So, I came home the next day. We went down there, opened up that cage door. He saw me. That’s the story of Levi.
Levi, now, has a home with us. He doesn’t shake any more. You see, friends, Levi doesn’t know any Pastor Matt. He has no concept of that. I don’t believe he even knows any Matt, period. He has no concept of a man who blesses some and angers others. He has no concept of a guy who’s both pretty sharp and pretty dumb. He has no concept of a person who has to make fairly consequential and unpopular decisions from time to time. He has no idea of someone who tries as he might but cannot achieve perfection and mastery over himself. He does not know a heart that gets consistently broken and re-glued time and time again. All he knows is someone who is just happy to see him every time it happens. All he knows is I’m the guy who makes his tail wag and his tongue wash my face unabashedly, with grace. And all I know is that I’m the guy he waits for, the one worth hanging out with, the one that can do no wrong in his eyes because he sees my heart. All I know is he’s the most reliable, dependable thing I know. And in short, through him I get a reflection of God’s grace.
Now, my three cats are a different story all together. They have all the awareness of and care for others as do many 14 year old girls putting on makeup. (Mimics a cat washing its face with its paw) “Wha-a-at? “I didn’t do it.” No, my cats, they don’t hang out and wait for anyone other than maybe helping to relieve the global over stock piling of cat food. Their idea of economic stimulus is mass consumption of Science Diet and their notion of tarp ends with lying on my prize antique quilt than on their own bed. They are toxic assets, do you know what I mean? Yet I love them too, deeply in fact, but they are of the devil that’s for sure. Anything that hacks up a fur ball specifically on a stack of folded clean clothes waiting to be put away is no good. Grace and cats mix as well as oil and water on a hot skillet, you know what I mean? They mix as well as Southern Comfort and anything, know what I mean? Southern Comfort doesn’t mix well with anything. It wasn’t meant to. No, Grace is all about hanging out and hanging in and hanging on when you could just as easily and happily mosey on down the road on your way somewhere else.
Buddhists recognize Jesus as one of their own. In Buddhist theology they have what they call the Bodhisattva. Now, the Bodhisattva….first of all in Buddhist theology the idea is to achieve total enlightenment so that you can get into Nirvana. And what total enlightenment is, it’s an absence of all emotional suffering. So the idea is to rid yourself of all suffering so, through enlightenment, you can enter into Nirvana, a place much like Heaven. In Buddhism, however, they have a concept of the Bodhisattva. For them, Jesus is the Bodhisattva, and the Bodhisattva is this….one who has attained total enlightenment, in fact has entered Nirvana, has seen its glory and beauty and instead, rather than staying there, decides to voluntarily leave it and go back down into the muck of human existence and help others through their teaching and their compassion….pull them up out of the muck of human existence, up the ladder of enlightenment and out of suffering into Nirvana. For them, they realize that Jesus is the Bodhisattva.
Jesus is the one, friends, who remains connected to the crap of life in order to give us a hand and pull us through it, like two sets of footprints in the sand. Jesus is God’s tail wagging whenever he sees you, that know not your weakness and failings but knows you as that special one waiting to come back home for. It’s no wonder that God and dog are spelled using the exact same three letters. Grace is all about waiting around for the resurrection to occur in our lives. And Jesus is in the garden precisely because he’s waiting for Mary, and he’s waiting for you, and he’s waiting for me to find him. Don’t you want to spend some time with him? This morning we have a glorious opportunity to do just that.
These words I give you I speak to you in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.