Dash & the Doorbell

“A Message of Good News featuring Dash, the Wandering Corgi” preached January 30, 2022 / St. Andrew’s, Glenwood & St. Paul’s, Poplar Springs by the Rev. Dina van Klaveren

For Scripture references, see: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Epiphany/CEpi4_RCL.html

I stopped morning traffic in the middle of Route 27 on Wednesday. There was a happy corgi in the road, trotting along, enjoying the sunshine and 17 degree weather, footloose and fancy free. Like most of you, I’m an animal lover, and I stopped the car, threw on the hazards and stopped cars to get this handsome corgi to safety. He came right to me, and I picked up the stout fellow and brought him into the car. I may have been thinking I’d keep him if I his owner could not be found! Not to be-  he had an informative tag identifying him as “Dash,” with a microchip, who lived on Route 27 about a third of a mile away. Dash’s ears perked up noticeably when I pulled up to his house and he hopped out of the car and waited for me by the gate into the front yard—looking back to make sure I was coming.

I opened the gate and Dash took a few happy steps, then looked back to make sure I’m still following. We continued like this up the long walk to the porch, where he stood, nose nearly touching the front door. Glad that all signs point to happy conclusion for Dash’s dramatic escape, I rang the doorbell. At the sound of the doorbell, Dash turned on me. His whole body shifted to protect the house, and he began to bark at me. 

Even though I stopped traffic for this dog, and even though he was so excited that I was walking with him up his walk to the porch, the sound of the doorbell means only one thing to Dash: intruder! Dash was suddenly alarmed, alert, fearful and protective. And I was suddenly concerned- was I safe? Do corgis attack? His human came to the door and was grateful, of course. Dash forgot I might be a dangerous intruder once his human was there greeting me warmly.

Here is what I’m pondering, thanks to Dash and his doorbell reaction: Who or what turns from friend to foe when I become alarmed, alert, fearful, protective? What rings my doorbells? What is that one thing that turns us against others just at the sound of it? Perhaps feelings of inferiority, a scary memory of being unsafe, anger at a past hurt, a judgement we have made about someone or something. For many folks lately, it’s political differences.

At the mention of a politically-charged issue, we forget to be interested in one another, curious and warm with one another. The doorbell dings and we turn on one another, which only moves us farther away from solving society’s problems, and let’s remember, that is the task of politics: to solve society’s problems.

Sometimes, a doorbell dings in our heart or head and we turn on God, much like the people of Nazareth in the text from Luke today. We become alarmed that God is not doing what we want God to do. We become threatened by a God who extends God’s love and mercy out wide, way beyond our small sphere, and we become fearful that we might lose some of God’s blessing when God extends it so broadly. We become protective, and we may turn on God.

Here’s the good news: God is not afraid of us. I was concerned when Dash turned to bark at me. God, being God, is not worried, not afraid of us, even when we try to throw God over a cliff.

God is God, and God does not fear us or the doorbells that send us into a protective and threatened stance. Jesus demonstrates in our text from Luke that God does not confine God’s work to our sense of territory. God expands beyond us, to outsiders and enemies until neither outsider nor enemy are words we can understand anymore, until those words disappear from our vocabulary. God slips through our fearful places, keeps on being God, keeps on revealing a love so powerful and plentiful it expands and grows beyond our ability to understand it.

We cannot stop God’s activity when it is not exactly what we want. We cannot hem it in. God expands God’s saving love beyond our fears, our protective reactions against one another. And that is Good News.

Many of us have learned to bark and show our teeth like Dash the corgi when our preferred ways of being are threatened. Even so, we have seen that God’s people, when we are focused on it, can follow the Gospel teachings and invite our fears and frustrations into that space of God’s expanding love. We can forgive others, forgive ourselves, accept the mercy and grace of God. We can forgive ourselves for growling and baring our teeth at one another, and do better going forward.

Be vigilant for what causes you to turn against another person. Let nothing separate you from the people of God, this, the Body of Christ. Let no political party affiliation or issue, no perceived differences among us, get in the way of working together as agents of this ever expanding Gospel love.

We have access to Scripture and a spiritual community of study, a way to make meaning alongside these ancient texts bearing Good News. Many of us have heard the writings of the Apostle Paul to the early Jesus followers in Corinth that were read today - telling us to consciously choose love. Paul did not write this for weddings. He wrote this for a community facing the threat of persecution, urging them toward union. Paul probably would not mind that we use this text so often at wedding services nearly 2000 years later, although he did expect Jesus Christ to return in his lifetime. Paul says to the people of ancient Corinth, and to us today, that love is the conscious choice we are called to make as Jesus followers. We choose to love. Despite the doorbells dinging in our head and heart. We choose to love, consciously, with great focus. 

We choose to RESPOND in love rather than to REACT in fear. God’s love is being revealed in your life, and you have a choice about how you will respond. Love consciously, in a way that expands your life and the lives of others, and bet set free from those demands we place on God, so that we might fully enjoy the love God is revealing to us, right now.