First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Ecclesiastes 1 and Luke 16

“You Bet Your Life”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

September 23, 2007

Late last month we took the boys and Zoe to the Wild Center in Tupper Lake. I was impressed by the décor and the rather hands on quality of each exhibit. Well, most exhibits that is, as they do ask you to refrain from touching the trout and the otters.

As a zoo board member I felt like I was there as a spy; but I quickly settled down and purchased a membership. Given our numbers it was only ten dollars more to purchase a year’s pass and when we came back the next day our membership proved handy.

On our first visit we were wowed by the big theater. The Wild Center has an auditorium with a screen that is almost IMAX. And that is big. On this almost IMAX we watched a film of the Adirondacks in each season. There was a lovely piece of music composed by a Crane school faculty member. The movie, the music and the center made me feel very North Country, very much a part. This was all good. This was the first trip.

And then, on our second visit we watched the “other” movie. This was one was called “The Flight of the Merganser.” I really, really wanted to watch this movie.

It may not be a good sign, but the merganser is one of my favorite ducks. If my son, David, were here he would probably correct me by saying, waterfowl. But that is a separate issue. I didn’t share my love of the merganser with the rest of my family, I just said, “there is another movie, we should watch it.” The title made them a bit skeptical. And its opening scenes were not the type to inspire. It was obviously a documentary, with one of those installed/remote cameras where you can watch creatures without them knowing.

This camera was installed in a bird box in Minnesota. It turns out this was a documentary on the Hooded Merganser, a rare North American bird. The film was about a mother and her clutch of eggs hatching; and it chronicled the first day of the ducklings’ life. David and I were seated in the front row, some fifteen seats ahead, but I could feel the stare of the others, thinking, “day one. Day one of a duckling? This movie is only fifteen minutes long.”

Soon, though, the narrator provided the reason for watching. The merganser, when it is born, leaves the nest on the first day. I can remember thinking, wow, one day and out. And then he reminded the audience that the ducklings are in a bird box thirty feet above the ground with a lake below. No sooner had he said that did the mother leave the box and fly down to the water.

Her departure started a real uproar: thirteen ducklings starting searching frantically. You could almost hear them questioning one another: where did she go? And then, on cue, she started calling. Soon one of the ducklings climbed to the opening and spotted her. As you might imagine, the duckling on a precipice paused. And then it was as if he gave a report to the others: the good news I found her; the bad news is: we are supposed to hurl ourselves to our death if we want to see her again.

I don’t know if a day-old duckling takes a deep breath and closes its eyes, but I did as it leapt. It seemed to drop like a lead balloon into the water. I held my breath until it popped back up. There was a palpable feeling in the theater of relief; it was a moment where no matter what, this one made it.

The entire movie, of which we were only half way through, is less than a sitcom (twenty minutes), but I was exhausted already. Then, no matter what, ready or not, one by one each of the ducklings followed suit- thirteen. I kept praying, hoping, holding my breath with each one. (I really got into this movie.)

When it was all over, the crowd sighed a cathartic release, and all you could hear were sounds of awe and delight. “The first day” we kept saying over and over. I still can’t believe it. You’re born and your mother says, “alright, out you go!" You need to learn to fly and swim now.” It’s just amazing!

The experts, of whom I have my suspicions, suggest that the human child doesn’t gain full maturity until 30. We don’t really face what the merganser does on its first day until our hair is starting to thin and we start saying things like, “man, I need to get back to the gym.” Thirty years, not days! Suffice it to say, we stay in the nest a bit more than a day.

Yet, unlike the merganser, which leaves the nest once, I have come to believe we leave the nest again and again. And even if we don’t reach maturity until 30, we’ve most likely left the nest a couple of times by then.

I was seventeen, riding a bus in the San Bernardino Mountains reading the Old Testament passage we heard today the first time I left the nest. The experience is as clear to me as if it were yesterday: there was a quality of light you get in the Western mountains that made the page almost too bright; I was seated next to a window and pretty sure I was the only person reading a bible on a bus full of teens; and I thought the sound of the word “vanity” had a special quality.

I left the nest when I read these words because they articulated a deep suspicion. There is a fleeting nature to happiness and meaning and purpose. It is not fixed or even sure. Years later I would spend months tearing apart the Hebrew of Ecclesiastes and with each new insight, new revelation, I was surprised by the way the first impression held sway. The author of Ecclesiastes does in no way infer there is no happiness, no meaning, or purpose in life; yet he does suggest all these things are fleeting, so when you have them, you better enjoy them.

How this was leaving the nest is really simple. As a young boy things seem endless, forever. Summer is a kind of world unto itself; a school year is a universe; and death was an idea. For me there was a long time where things were the same; they were what they were, and then they started to change. The opening poem of Ecclesiastes was the voice of the mother duck in the water saying, it’s time to leave this behind; it’s time to leave the nest; jump!

And so I did. And it was good. True, I did dwell on the relativity and transience of life too much for a time, but that is to be expected. Since then, there have been other moments, other leaps, from the nest. And this . . . this is what helps me balance our thirty years with the merganser’s one day.

I only remember one thing from our wedding service and that was the vows. Rev. Pulliam, the lovely man who married us, paused just enough with the questions of intent and the words of the vows so I listened and leaped. I remembered being surprised that Kathy did the same. Not out of mistrust or some sort of fear, but just a kind of awe. “Oh, you’re leaping too. Ugnnn.” It was a long flight from the box to the lake.

Another leap was sitting in a doctor’s office after Joshua was born. The nurse poked her head in and said, “Mr. Garry . . .?!” I thought, “what is my father doing here?” It took about fifteen seconds to climb to the top of the bird box and leap saying, “oh, that’s me.” I thought the same thing when someone said for the first time, “and now Rev. Garry will offer the benediction.” I sort of stalled and then thought, “oh, I’m Rev. Garry. Who would have thought?”

Our gospel passage today is all about a leap, a jump from a bird box to a lake down below. It’s hard to see it. Just like it’s hard to see a merganser duck make such a leap. Jesus didn’t use a remote camera or a voice over narration to capture the leap. He did what he often does: he buried his point beneath layers of misdirection.

John Calvin’s comments on this passage are worth a moment of pause. Calvin was writing in a time when people loved to read lots of things into the details of scripture. And for this reason, he kept saying over and over again, “look at what is really happening, don’t get lost in the details.” And this is great advice, great commentary. It is great because he said, the dishonest manager is making friends, and making friends is a smart way of securing your future.

I laughed out loud when I read this. Experience has taught me to close the door to my office when engaged in such research, lest the staff think I am insane. But I did. I laughed because I have preached this passage before, struggled over the details, but never really listened or understood. I needed to watch the flight of the merganser to get it: friendship, when you really trust it and hunger for it, is a leap from the nest of a bird box thirty feet above the ground to a lake on your first day of life. That is what it is.

At the very end of Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” he says this. No matter what you try to do; no matter what you try to provide for your family or for your community: you must trust your friends. Remember! At the end of the movie Jimmy Stewart opens a copy of Tom Sawyer and there is an inscription from Clarence and it says: “no man is failure who has friends.” This is the parable Jesus was offering. No matter how bad the manager; no matter how low his morals: friendship could save this.

If you are taking a deep breath and saying, well, now, hold on. He did something wrong. He was dishonest; he was devious; he was “shrewd.” Yes. He was. Yet, what if, no matter all these things, friendship could still save him? That is the basic claim of the parable. It is a tough moment and it leaves us as a merganser duckling looking at the lake and saying, “oh, no. Ummm. How about I wait for another?” Friendship, the kind that saves us, is a leap from the nest.

Sometimes I feel like I didn’t get the memo on this one. I must have been off somewhere in the wiles of medieval mysticism wondering what union really was, or reading Dostoyevsky too much wondering is life really that hard, and the fax came through and I never saw it. Sometimes I feel like I wish someone had just said to me, “having friends saves you in the end.”

If you ever get a chance to watch it, there is a lovely movie all about this. It’s called “Finding Forester.” If you watch it, you will find a young writer who is lost and an old writer who is terribly lost, and they find each other and become friends. And this friendship leads them to where they need to be. For the young writer it is much like passage from Ecclesiastes: he just needs someone to say, don’t make everything important for it will change and yet be the same. For the old writer, though, it is our gospel lesson. He must learn, and struggle with this, that friendship is not only a help, but it is what makes your life good.

The merganser leaves the nest but once. You and I . . . many times. Birth, death, marriage, a sense of self, independence: each of these are a moment where we are perched precariously above the lake and there is this voice, saying, “leap.”

Friendship, it turns out, is such a leap. It’s not our wife or our husband; it’s not something we had in childhood; it is people who say, “he’s my friend;” “I know her; she’s my friend.” Somehow this saves us; this redeems us.

As only Jesus can do, he goads us, chastises us, and commends us all in the same moment. The dishonest manager did not live a life to be lauded, but he did leap just at the right moment, understanding: friendship will save me.

I was so tempted to speak of the moment where children leave the house with this passage. The merganser leaves the nest the first day; I have two children who have left the house this year. That is big. But the flight of the merganser is not about our first departure; it is about how we must leap again and again.

Tomorrow we will have a service for Dr. Arthur Wright. We will give thanks for his life; we will struggle with the limits imposed upon our time under the sun. And, at a moment that is fleeting, a kind of chance amidst the spin, we will pause. In this pause we may leap, we may see and understand that “no man is a failure who has friends” or we may linger and think “I have time.” If you leap, well done! If you linger, don’t wait too long. For the joy of life is fleeting. The moment you linger too long . . . it is gone. Amen.