Religion in Daily Life

 © By the Rev. Edward Chinn, D.Min.

Rector, All Saints’ Church

Written 14 February 2002

http://www.allsaintstorresdale.org

“Instant” is the word that characterizes the theme of our time. We have instant coffee and instant credit. We have instant communication by e-mail. We have instant conversations by cell phone. Medicines promise instant relief.

People hunger for instant relief from problems. When the great library in Alexandria, Egypt, burned in 47 B.C., one book survived. A man found in it a paper that gave the secret of the “Touchstone” – a small pebble that could turn any common metal into gold. It said the Touchstone was lying among the countless pebbles along the coast of the Black Sea. You could recognize it by its warmth. Other stones were cold. The man traveled there, started picking up pebbles, and threw the cold ones into the sea. Throwing the stones away gave the man instant relief from the problem of picking up the same stones again and again. One day the man picked up a stone. He found that it was warm, but he threw it away before he could stop himself.

People hunger for instant relief from struggle. A man noticed an emperor moth struggling to emerge through a small hole in its cocoon. After watching it struggle for hours, the man decided to give the moth instant relief. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The moth came out easily, but it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The little moth spent the rest of its life crawling around with that big body and useless wings. Later, the man learned that the struggle to get through the tiny opening was nature’s way of forcing fluid from the moth’s body into its wings so that it would be ready to fly. By giving the moth instant relief from that struggle, the man had deprived the moth of health.

People hunger for instant relief from the “Way” of which Jesus of Nazareth spoke and which he embodied. The Way was the path to inner transformation by “dying to the world of conventional wisdom as the center of one’s security and identity, and dying to the self as the center of one’s concern . . . This path of death is the path to new life, rebirth, resurrection life centered in God” (Marcus Borg). Jesus felt the temptation of instant relief from this road less traveled by the thought of buying people’s allegiance with bread; by the thought of interpreting the Bible literally as promising exemption from being hurt as a human; and by the thought of gaining political power by compromising one’s values.