“THANKS FOR THE ADVENTURE”
UP

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
Luke 18:18-30

St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church

Rev. Gary Paterson

March 7, 2010

 

 

Yesterday I celebrated my first marriage of 2010 – great couple, Joanne and Damian; almost felt like adopting them, so wonderful was their energy. On the way back home, I just didn’t feel like CBC Saturday afternoon opera, so was twirling the radio dials until I hit a goldie oldie station and suddenly the car was filled with the music of the sixties.

To everything, turn, turn, turn,

There is a season, turn, turn, turn,

And a time for every purpose under heaven

Ahhh… the Byrds … anybody else remember that song? I found myself drifting back through the decades to West Point Grey United Church, to the Young Adult Group, responsible for Sunday morning worship. Alternative worship it was called back then. Remember, this was before the era of Powerpoint, so when we started flashing hundreds of images onto three screens up at the front, using three slide projectors no less, with the Byrds booming off the walls of the sanctuary,

A time to be born, a time to die

A time to plant, a time to reap,

A time to kill, a time to heal,

A time to laugh, a time to weep.

… well, we thought we were pretty special.

As I listened to the Byrds harmonizing away, I thought… this is a perfect theme song for the movie, “Up,” particularly for the Prologue, when we watch Carl and Ellie meet and become childhood friends, and then, in what must be one of the finest five minutes of animated film yet produced, we watch them marry, buy a house, discover they can’t have children, weep, laugh, dream of wild adventure – a trip to Paradise Falls in South America – a dream that never seems to materialize because of the ups and downs of life; until finally, just when Carl and Ellie have the tickets in hand, Ellie falls sick, and dies, and Carl is left alone at the Funeral Home. There has been time for birth and death; time for much laughter and love, and big hurt and disappointment; and there has been time for unexpected adventure. As the writer of Ecclesiastes suggests,

I know there is nothing better for [humans] than to be happy and enjoy

themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should

eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.

So ordinary; so simple; so good. You know that Carl and Ellie have lived well.

But then it ends, with death. The poet Mary Oliver has said:

To live in this world

you must be able to do three things:

to love what is mortal,

to hold it against your bones,

knowing your life depends on it;

and when the time comes to let it go –

to let it go.

It’s the letting go that’s difficult. Hard and painful. None of us is very good at it. Carl certainly isn’t. He shrinks into a little old man, boxed in, grumpy, grouchy, cantankerous, his life bound by the four walls of his house and his memories of the past. He is waiting, essentially, to die.

Now, I invite you to pause for a moment, and come with me to last Friday night’s gathering of Younger Adults at the Irish Heather pub in Gastown for an evening of Theology on Tap. There were about twenty or thirty folk crammed into a backroom, most with a beer in one hand, and the question of the evening in the other. Doris and Curt, our two Young Adult Ministry staff, were asking us to talk about Lent… what is it? Are we doing anything for Lent – what? And why? Is it important? It was a bit of shock to remember that we were actually in the middle of Lent – somehow the Olympics, with all their loud energy and excitement had pushed Lent into a dark corner.

I found myself trying to explain Lent as an opportunity to slow down, to ponder, to do some inner reflection about life, my own in particular. While people nodded in vague agreement, it was clear that most of us carried different memories, when Lent had been presented to us as a time to give stuff up. I remember my Mother suggesting that although we United Churchers didn’t really “do” Lent (back then it was more of a Catholic thing,) nevertheless, the idea of giving something up for Lent was an excellent one, and she thought that my brother and I should give up chocolate. See what I mean… Lent felt like a downer; my Catholic friends suggested that I was getting off easy with a six week chocolate-free diet – it could get much worse. It was one of those times I was rather glad to be United Church.

But our table conversation didn’t stop there, as we began talking about the gift of relinquishment, of loosening our grip on stuff, of learning to hold more gently, learning that when the time comes to let go, to let go. Not so much a downer, as if deprivation and suffering are good for you, just because – but rather, the act of giving up something for Lent becomes a symbolic reminder of a deeper recognition, that precisely because there is a time for everything in its season, there must be a never-ending “letting go” at the very heart of life. It has been said that anything you can’t let go of, can’t give away – well, it possesses you.

So what if Lent then becomes an invitation into an inner exploration of what possesses us, of what tethers us, leading to the question, “What do I need to let go of?” Lent may be a season to live into the questions that Rabbi Hillel asked long ago:

If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?

And if I am only for myself, then what am I?

And if not now, when?

Now, let me re-connect us to the movie “Up” – what if we were to see this as a Lenten film with an Easter conclusion, an exploration of a holy invitation to “let go” in order to discover … well, to use Jesus’ words for it… to discover eternal life, to enter the Kingdom of God, to have treasure in heaven, all various ways of suggesting that you will only find your life by losing it.

So… there’s Carl… trapped by memory and gripped tightly by the way things were; desperately needing to let go, although he does not recognize it, immediately. It is only when crisis arrives – when Carl is about to be shipped off to an Old Folks’ Home – that he knows that this may be his last chance. Even at age 78, it is not too late to take off into new adventures; to go for it; to take a chance on the new.

The moment of exultation comes when a thousand and one helium balloons explode out of the chimney of Carl’s home, with enough whimsy and strength to rip the house from its foundations and send Carl into a magnificent journey that is both up and in. He floats over the city, through the storm, over the rainbow one might say, into an Oz-like land, full of strange creatures, talking dogs, enemies and challenges, and the opportunity of self-discovery….

Up, up and away, my beautiful, my beautiful balloon….

There is something magical, so appealing, about simply letting go and flying off, an opportunity to re-imagine your life, to experience adventures that you had safely avoided for so many years. A poem… “High Water Mark” by David Shumate:

It’s hard to believe, but at one point

the water rose to this level.

No one had seen anything like it.

People on rooftops;

cows and coffins floating through the streets;

prisoners carrying invalids from their rooms;

the barkeeper consoling the preacher;

a coon hound who showed up a month later,

forty miles downstream.

And all that mud it left behind.

You never forget times like those;

they become part of who you are.

You describe them to your grandchildren,

but they think it’s just another tale i

n which animals talk and people live forever.

I know it’s not the kind of thing you ought to say….

but I wouldn’t mind seeing another good flood before I die.

It’s been dry for decades.

Next time I think I’ll just let go and drift downstream

and see where I end up.

You can feel the pull, can’t you? You, and the river flood; you and Carl and the helium balloons. Ulysses, with his twenty-three year journey from Troy to Ithaca; Huck Finn, floating down the Mississippi; Bilbo Baggins off to confront dragons; and Jesus… inviting us to let go, to follow him into an adventure of a lifetime.

Remember Jesus’ conversation with the rich young man, the one who wanted to know how to experience eternal life, the one who had a whole lot of stuff that kept him firmly planted into the status quo. Let it all go, says Jesus; or rather, “Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor… then come, follow me.” And do you remember the next line? – “But when he heard this, he became sad; for he was very rich.”

Now, this passage has a way of getting under my skin. Probably because I’m rich… a month in India convinces you of that very quickly. So I feel skewered…. it’s going to take a lifetime of Lents to let go, I suspect. But let me stretch the story a bit, not to get out of the challenges of wealth, but to take Jesus’ invitation even deeper, so that the command to “sell everything” asks us to take a look at whatever it is that blocks us, that prevents us from following our deepest dream … and then, to let it go. Wealth… of course; and the illusion of security it brings. But maybe we need to let go of fear, or guilt; maybe complacency or cynical despair; or, as with Carl, memories of days gone by… the way it was.

Carl has a dream – to take his house, his and Ellie’s house, down to Paradise Falls, and perch it right on the edge of the cliff, right above the tumbling waters. The impossible dream… the kind that can nudge you into action.

You’ve got to have a dream,

if you don’t have a dream,

How you every gonna have

A dream come true. (“South Pacific”)

But what Carl doesn’t know – and I think Jesus did – is that letting go and following the dream will change you.

Which is, in fact, what happens for Carl. Ironically, he discovers that even as he follows his dream, and actually achieves it, he must also let go of that dream. You see, he gets to Paradise Falls, and he pulls, drags and floats his home to exactly where Ellie had always imagined it to be placed… great view; perfect view. But…. Carl has also been challenged to pursue a second dream, one that has emerged in the very adventure itself. Kevin the Bird and Russell the Wilderness Explorer and Doug the Dog all need his help, and he must be willing to confront the power of evil embodied in Charles Muntz, Carl’s childhood hero, a fellow adventurer, but someone who has held onto his dream for so long that it has become twisted, self-serving and obsessive.

The moment comes when Carl makes his choice… there he is, in his house, at Paradise Falls, and suddenly he begins to drag everything out of his house, throwing it all away, in order that he can become airborne once again, free to move, choosing to help others. And so the grand finale has two old coots in a fight to the death, or perhaps, in a fight to discover meaning for themselves, for their lives. Carl is helped by the talking dog – “Yes, I am your master, you are my dog.”; a rolly-polly kid and Big Bird of the Jungle. He discovers the power of human connection, of friendship, of re-engaging life. “UP” is a great “buddy movie”, despite that fact that seventy years separate our two heroes; but they belong together, a husband without a wife, a son without a father.

Eventually they return home…and here’s where hints of Easter slide into the film. Because once back home they discover that you can have adventures back in Kansas, and that it is in the ordinary, supposedly boring activities of everyday life that you can find joy. What is an adventure of a lifetime? Must you travel to exotic, faraway lands? Or can it be found by committing yourself to the people you love… like Ellie, like Russell, like yourself? Found by letting go? Found through the grace of God, who keeps offering us new opportunities to let go and discover that for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.