Elmer's Toaster

The Holy Gospel According to St. Luke, the 12^th Chapter

Jesus said, "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!  I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!  Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!  From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:

  father against son

    and son against father,

  mother against daughter

    and daughter against mother,

  mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law

    and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."

He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, 'It is going to rain'; and so it happens.   And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, 'There will be scorching heat'; and it happens.  You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Elmer Snodgrass’ living room, looked “almost” normal. I say “almost” because, there was… this toaster. Yes, a toaster... silver with two slots where you and I would put the bread. But into Elmer’s toaster, there was a light bulb screwed into each of the slots. As we sat down, Elmer reached over and pushed down the lever. Nothing happened and Elmer gave the toaster a disgusted look. These days it would not have phased me and I would have never asked, but early in my pastoral career I had to learn many things the hard way…. including not to ask about things like shiny, silver, toasters with a couple of sixty watt-ers screwed into the slots. But back then I just couldn’t stand it, “Elmer, why are there light bulbs screwed into that toaster?”

“Well,” said Elmer with a nostalgic air, “When electricity came to town no one really had any idea what to do with it. It was new… strange… no instructions. The town just got electricity one day and electrical stuff showed up on the train the next. People just had to try different things to figure it out but my great grandpa… he KNEW the truth from the start! He KNEW you were supposed to screw the light bulbs into these slots and you would get light. Nobody believed my great grandpa, but he kept trying it until the day he died.”

“So he tried to get light from a toaster… his whole life?” I asked. “Yup, his whole life. Of course, he only lived that one day after electricity came to town. You see he wanted to read in the bathtub, so he set the toaster with the light bulbs on the side of the tub for light… tubs are slippery… And well... You know my great grandpa is a town hero because of that. No one’s ever taken bath with a toaster since… saved countless lives, my great grandpa did.”

“After his heroic death,” Elmer went on, “his son took up the cause and kept trying to get light by screwing light bulbs into toasters. He passed on the mission to my father who has now passed it on to me. People keep saying it won’t work, but it’s our tradition! Every Snodgrass has sworn to keep trying until we get a toaster to light up a light bulb.” “So, you’ve tried to get light by screwing a light bulb into a toaster for four generations?” I asked. “Yup, and nobody’s gonna tell ME that light bulbs don’t go into toasters. You aren’t! Are you?” asked Elmer. “Oh, no!” I said, with newfound wisdom. Then Elmer added, “But I won’t take a bath with a toaster…I’m not stupid.”

The lesson of Elmer’s story is the same as the lesson from the Gospel, “change burns like fire… or maybe it burns like a toaster in the bathtub.” Either way, it wasn’t that the Snodgrass family needed to do what they had always done MORE faithfully. What they needed to do was something ENTIRELY different! But for Elmer, logic wasn’t a part of this any more. It was tradition! It was “How Snodgrasses had always done it!” and it connected him with his family through the generations and even the THOUGHT of betraying his family like that burned like fire.

In the Bible translation called The Message, the first part of this lesson goes like this: “I’ve come to start a fire on earth - how I wish it were blazing right now! I’ve come to change everything, turn everything right side up!” Jesus came to change everything. Turn the world right-side-up so that the world would work as God created it to work… with grace and love and justice, not just for the wealthy few, but for those on the margins as well. To make that happen meant changing the world from the empire it had become, where only a few had everything and the many had nothing. It meant changing the world from what it WAS… into the Kingdom of God... where everyone had enough. THAT sort of change, Jesus knew, would feel like fire to those who had grown used to the world as it was. For those who had everything it would burn for sure… but it would even feel like fire to those who had the most to gain from the change as well. Even they, Jesus knew, would be upset, because even for them, right-side-up would be an enormous change from the up-side-down they had grown used to for generations. For everyone… change is hard.

This story then, is both thousands of years old and as new as today’s headlines. You can feel it, can’t you? We live in the middle of the burning fire of an up-side-down world being turned right-side-up. Traditions of racism, might makes right, money equalling power, toxic masculinity, white supremacy and all the rest are burning harder than ever to keep the world as it is, rather than have the world work as God created it to work. The change from up-side-down to right-side-up burns like fire.

So how do we live in this world that burns with fire with every headline? First, we need to remember what that burn is all about and hold onto the hope that the burn we feel is God at work changing the world! Next we need to remind one another that only God has the power to make God's will be done "on earth as it is in heaven.” You and I?  We can’t raise the dead or to turn the world right-side-up... but that burn means God is on it!

Once we remember that, we can set aside our worries about turning the world all on our own and get busy doing what we DO have the power to do in the world. Because while we can’t raise the dead or turn the whole world right side up, we DO have the power to create little, beautiful windows for others to glimpse the Kingdom of God wherever we find ourselves in each moment of our lives. Wherever we are, we have the power to create tiny, little, islands of  what God’s Kingdom is all about... places of peace, love, compassion, and kindness even in the most mundane places, even in the midst of a world on fire. We are called to do that individually, as we walk through our regular days AND we’re called to do that together as larger and larger circles as part of the Body of Christ. Rainbow chairs on our lawn become a window to God’s Kingdom.  Solar on our roof.  Together with Old Parish a giant A-frame on the AT becomes a window for us to show hikers a glimpse of God’s Kingdom.  

God’s got the whole world in those Divine hands and is changing it from up-side-down to right side up.  God’s got that.  Really.  Our part is to fill each other’s lives, and the lives of the people around us, with peace, love and hope, even in the middle of a world on fire. Our bit, together with whoever else wants to play with us… is to shine a brighter and brighter beacon of light… of hope.  To shine a light in the darkness for people who are overwhelmed with a world on fire.  To welcome them into our little corner of kindness, peace and hope and together pull back the curtains on that few so each day, that vision of the Kingdom of God grows larger and larger until the day God has finished making the up side down, right side up. Amen.