Now, in a sense, the story of the great flood and the deliverance of Noah and his ark-ful is an instance of our Creator rebooting: humanity was off to a rocky start, and after numerous attempts at fixing it, God felt like the best thing to do was just turn the machine off and start over. And since that rebooting, aside from some occasional glitches, the system has been operating more or less in the right direction. So behind this convergence of an ancient story and modern technology there is some essential wisdom for you and me to consider: sometimes in the course of our everyday lives you could say we just need to reboot, back up and take a breath, step away, shut down and start over, go back to step one. Maybe sometimes we just get ahead of ourselves and get into such a twist that it’s best to just go back to the beginning.
In his slim and succinct theological volume “Mere Christianity,” C.S. Lewis wrote, “We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. We have all seen this when doing arithmetic. When I have started a sum the wrong way, the sooner I admit this and go back and start over again, the faster I shall get on. There is nothing progressive about being pigheaded and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world, it is pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We are on the wrong road. And if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.”
Personal rebooting—going back—makes sense whether one is religious or not. Across the culture, sometimes the need to back up and back off is painfully obvious. Last Sunday Barack Obama was speaking at Wesleyan, and on my way to church I passed a house in front of which the owner had posted a hand painted sign that read: “Drop dead Obama; you, too, Kennedy.” Partisanship aside, if your politics have become so intense that you wish death to your opponent, it’s time to reboot, to go back to the beginning and get priorities straight. Anytime a disagreement, or argument, or feud with another person reaches the point that one has sleepless nights, or unbearable tension, or fantasies of revenge, it’s time to reboot, time get some distance and dig into the real issues. If you’re afraid to go to the mailbox because of the bills you’ll find, or have maxed out yet another credit card, or just spent your kid’s college fund on a new boat, it’s time to reboot; time to step away, reorganize financial priorities.
And because it seems that even God is not above going back to square one, this need to reboot every now and then has special relevance for people of faith like you and me. Our willingness to start over from time to time is essential not just for crisis moments, not just for when things go awry, but for how we choose to be disciples of Jesus Christ on all the more ordinary days. Willingness to start over is how we keep close to God, how we maintain a disciple’s posture of humility and gratitude.
Jesus himself went away to places of solitude specifically to rest and reset and reassess, to draw nearer to God after being pushed and pulled in so many directions by the people around him. In the church we baptize as a means of starting over fresh with God, whether it’s infant baptism or adult baptism. Sue and Paula have shown us this morning the power of a conscious choice to allow the grace of an ancient sacrament to mark a significant turning point in their journey of faith right now. Through baptism an infant starts from the beginning with God; an adult is setting all the life experience that has come before into a new understanding, a new perspective. It’s the best kind of rebooting.
And when we celebrate Communion in a few moments, we’re also going back to step one, resetting to the most basic elements of the life of discipleship: as creatures of flesh and blood, after a month of winding tight with work and chores and personal dramas, our bodies and souls need Christ’s presence among and within us in the tangible form of bread and cup. Indeed, our Sunday worship as a whole is the way we reboot spiritually: every week, we come into a sanctuary, a place wholly different from the weekday world, we shut down our normal pace and priority and get back to level; we reestablish the connection between our souls and God’s spirit, we set the preceding week aside, go back to faithful step one in life: gratitude and humility. Worship is our reset button.
And even church families need to reboot from time to time, to back up, see the bigger picture, and reset priorities: if our care for this church building, for example, ever begins to eclipse our care for people, it’s time to reboot; if you begin to associate coming to church primarily with going to business meetings, it’s definitely time to reboot; if the Board for Christian Education can’t find church school teachers because teaching the faith to our kids is too much of a commitment, it’s time to reboot; if debate and differences over political and social issues ever begins to threaten the covenant we have as followers of Jesus Christ, it’s time to reboot. When we spin ourselves into confusion about our priorities, it is a mature discipleship that will step away and start over from the beginning, not as an admission of failure, but as a witness to wanting to get it right for God’s sake.
In church or in life, whether we’re encountering so many familiar moments when our sense of proportion and priority has fallen out of whack, when our stubbornness to change is escalating problems and conflict; or when we’re simply trying to better nurture the still small holy voice inside to be more our guiding influence each day, the waters of the flood remind us that sometimes the faithful thing to do is to just turn off the machine, step way back, breathe, reboot, and allow God to reset us, to give us a new beginning. It takes wisdom to see and courage to do, but it as C.S. Lewis said, sometimes “Going back is the quickest way on.” May such wisdom and courage be ours, today, this week, and always.