Expertise

In Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”, we hear the story of Hank Morgan  a 19th-century resident of Hartford, Connecticut who, after a blow to the head, awakens to find himself inexplicably transported back in time to early medieval England at the time of the legendary King Arthur.

Hank is ridiculed at King Arthur's court for his strange appearance and dress, but quickly turns the situation around by banking on his knowledge of history. You see, he’d learned all about King Arthur’s courts and times during his school years.

Throughout the story, Hank is always muttering under his breath about the poor, ignorant people of King Arthur’s time. Don’t they know how superior life would be with modern conveniences? If only, Hank thought, they would do things my way. Wouldn’t their life be grand?

These poor simpletons don’t know what they’re missing. Hank believed he had all the answers, knew exactly the right path. And he was more than willing to take over. Hank believed his ideas were better, smarter, and the absolute correct truth.

Hank’s sin is a lot like our sin. Modern American’s identify with Hank because Americans are Hank. We may not be from Connecticut, or Yankees for that matter, but all of those, deep inside are like Hank.

You see, Americans live their lives like we’re in a giant Holiday Inn Express commercial. You know the one where the person is suddenly able to perform Brain Surgery. When everyone questions their knew found expertise -  “Don’t worry” they say, “I slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night.”

In our culture, everyone’s an expert. On everything. We’re all smarter than the University’s football coach “I never would have called that play.” We’re smarter than the judges on American idol. We’re know more about Dancing than Carrie Ann Inaba (whether we’ve ever danced or not). We know better how to run the world. President Obama (or Bush, take your pick) is an idiot. Why doesn’t he do… ..

Americans are all experts. Wouldn’t it just be better if everyone agreed with me? Wouldn’t everything be better if everyone would just do why I want? I know what’s best, I know what’s absolutely right. Americans all experts.

Hidden in the midst of all that expertness is the idea that our own, individual perspective on the world is supreme. Our world of the world is THE world view to have. Surely, we think, everyone must agree with me!

But God didn’t create us to be the same. God didn’t create us all to be alike, to be copies of each other. God wants us to celebrate our diversity!

We need diverse voices in the church, and in all our communities. Stories about the Holy Spirit are usually stories about how much God loves diversity, and how God gives more and more people the ability to speak.  In this gathering, the church, we need many voices. We need all of your voices.

Presbyterians have always believed in more than one idea. More than one perspective. Presbyterians usually go for the more understandable kind of diversity. The New Testament kind, I guess. We ask for the Holy Spirit to gather us together and to make this diverse group of people into a community.

It’s certainly tempting to try to be the masters of our own little universes. Sometimes we try to arrange our lives so that we will be like that single, solitary, self-sufficient monarch on a throne issuing orders that must be followed. Or we try to arrange our lives so that we just won’t need any kind of help from anybody. Or we get scared of the profound differences between us and our neighbors, and we try to control our neighborhoods or our workplaces or our churches so that we won’t have to be frustrated by the differences between us. It’s harder to work with differences. It’s harder to teach across a language barrier; to get along with new neighbors of a different culture; to understand the attitudes of someone from another economic class. It’s harder to understand our own children who are from another generation and raised in a totally different situation than we were. 

So this Ash Wednesday – let’s do something radical. Let’s repent of our sameness, of our expertness. Let’s accept more than one idea. Let’s acknowledge the Godliness of one another. Let’s repent of our “having to be right.” Let’s admit that sometimes We are wrong.

And then, let’s let God, be God.