Think Different

Think Different

By Matt Lindeman

Preached on Sunday, March 3, 2013 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Southport CT.

In 1997 I had nearly forgotten about Apple computers. I grew up with them as a kid in Nebraska, using Apple II e machines to play Number Munchers, (a math game) to operate Lego Robots during a summer enrichment course, and to play the ubiquitous Oregon Trail video game. I loved that game.

I hunted buffalo with a vengeance, and forded streams with reckless abandon. I remember that it was difficult to get to Oregon. Most of my friends and classmates died of either dysentery or smallpox before we even made it to Idaho, let alone Oregon.

Later on I remember writing my first emails on apple computers, exchanging emails with none other than a Serbian soldier in the middle of the conflict in the Balkans. Apple was a computer that helped me see into a bigger world than the one I could see from my diminutive perch as a seventh grader. By 1997 I had moved from Nebraska to California and Apple was in a tailspin. They were viewed as a laughable company manufacturing computers and technology that could not be viewed as serious tools, but rather toys.

Their world was in freefall, and their stock prices were among the least enviable in the technology sector. This was a time when IBM still made hardware, and where Microsoft and hardware companies Compaq, IBM and Dell ruled the world.

Apple had a choice. Change or die.

Forbes Magazine chronicles this transition in piece written by one of the creative advertisers who launched the campaign and cultural shift at Apple that helped turn the company around.[1] I remember it clearly. The billboards over San Diego were full of powerful portraits of some of the most influential icons of our time. Martin Luther King. Muhammad Ali. Albert Einstein. Cesar Chavez. Lucille Ball. Pablo Picasso. Amelia Earhart. Gandhi.

And of course two words at the bottom.

Think Different.

I think we as a people appreciate the value of the victory of an underdog. We love it when people make tough shots at the right moment in the game, when they win against long odds, even when those long odds are obstacles that we’ve arbitrarily put in the way of others.

The odds for Apple certainly were long. That’s why their story, and that of Steve Jobs is so exciting. Especially when life is complex. Steve Jobs was wary of this campaign at first, rejecting the script for their iconic commercial, but the eventually went for it.

They were so close to defeat that it’s hard not see the company as a plucky underdog, even when only a year ago it was named the world’s biggest company.

I wonder what it would have been like if Apple had instead written, Repent.

Repent for the assassination of Martin Luther King and Gandhi. Repent for the working conditions and discrimination that drove the work of Cesar Chavez to organize farm labor workers. Repent for the ways in which we failed for too long to recognize the comic genius of Lucile Ball or the heroic courage of Amelia Earhart simply because of their gender…

We love that moment of tension-that moment when it’s time to change or die. We love it at least when it’s someone else’s turn-those moments when it’s someone else’s time to think different. Its more difficult when it’s our turn though, isn’t it? Today’s Gospel highlights the urgency with which Jesus calls us to repent, because we simply don’t know what might befall us. We’re called to repent, to turn back to God. We’re called to Think Different. We’re called to change. We are called to metanoia:

Metanoia, the process of being changed, of seeing things with new eyes-to see things in a new way, hopeful that God will call us to something better. Some call this way of seeing, having “Soft Eyes.” not focusing too much on one particular moment, or experience, but pulling back, letting the peripheral vision pull in the subtle movements of God in the world, like Moses glimpsing God in a burning bush at his feet, or walking past him on the mountain top.

Having Soft eyes requires that we look at the challenges of our lives with a determination not to focus on what we’ve always seen, what’s front and center.

Instead, we soften our focus, and look for little flickers of movement out of the corner of our eye, like the stars in the night sky we’re unable to see by staring at them directly.

God surprises Moses in the form of a burning bush that was somehow not consumed, and surprises him even further by charging Moses to liberate God’s faithful people.

He didn’t go out into the desert looking for a sign from God in the form of a fiery shrub, but he did recognize a movement out of the corner of his eye. He stopped and paid attention.

He saw with new eyes. Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth is another example of an invitation to Think Different, to repent. To see the world with new eyes. Paul writes, speaking of the temptations that have plagued our ancestors in the faith, that “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”

Just last week, I wrote a paper on how damaging I’ve found it to be when people try to comfort others with a distortion of this text. People often try to be of help and comfort when they say to the grieving, “God doesn’t give us more than we can bear.”

I think that there are many of us in this room who might wonder about that statement. Sometimes we are given more than we can bear. Many of us have been through horrific circumstances, especially this year when we have endured the challenges of a devastating hurricane, a punch that still leaves us gasping for air, as we now realize the extent of the damage done, not only to our building, but to our mission as a church that seeks also to be a house of learning and Christian formation for our community.

We’ve experienced the losses of family friends, and community members, and sometimes I feel like we’ve been given too much to carry. We’ve been given a school massacre in Newtown that gave us a glimpse of what evil looks like, and how close it can come to touching our own lives. Too much to bear. If we read this piece of scripture as if God is testing us, then it can be a very upsetting way to relate to God.

I’ve run into far too many people in the hospital, whether they be inpatients waiting for a kidney transplant, or the family of a patient in a trauma room, who have had to live with the image of God as a God who tests us to see where we break. From where they sit, it can be hard to imagine a way out, let alone look for it.

I think one of the most difficult things about human suffering is the way that it makes us feel that we are alone, isolated and disconnected from each other, and from God.

We believe in a God who suffered with us, for us, and for our salvation, not to test us, but to guide us, to save us, and that God is a God of love.

That God is the God that Paul’s letter is actually talking about, a God who accompanied his people out of bondage, and through some of life’s pitfalls, recording what went right, and what went wrong for the benefit of future generations of people of faith.

God provides us with the way out. God is constantly at work in our world, pointing toward something better, toward something holy, whether in everyday situations, or even the most devastating of disasters. I think we’ve seen glimpses of God at work in the string of difficult tragedies we’ve encountered.

The world’s response to the tragedy at Newtown, the check from a Rotary Club in Yosemite to help Trinity rebuild, the loan of a generator to help charge a cell phone.

Jesus shared a parable of the fig tree that for three years had not borne fruit, and the relationship between the owner of the land, and its caretaker, the gardener. The landowner sees the fig tree that fails to bear fruit, and asks the gardener to cut it down, but in a rare bit of clarity for a parable, Jesus goes on to say that the gardener makes a case to the landowner.

Give it a year. I’ll fertilize it, giving it the nourishment it needs for another year. Even with the axe at the foot of the tree, we’re given the opportunity to think different, to repent, to see differently. Lent is a time when we get to go deeper into praying about who we are, and what we’re called to do in the world. It is a time to recognize the ways in which we can see the world with Soft Eyes, looking for God’s movement in our lives, even in some of the most difficult times.

Our God is not a God who seeks to test us, even if this has been a very difficult and trying year. Today’s gospel contains both the hard reality of the fact that bad things happen to good people, people who offered sacrifice to God, people who died working in a tower.

We can relate to the tragedy of people who were lost in falling towers. We know too well of the slaughter of innocents. We also carry with us the weight of knowledge about the in which we have failed to bear fruit. Sometimes we find ourselves wandering in a vast, dry and lonely wilderness like Moses on that fateful day where he met God.

As we continue in our Lenten journey toward the cross, let us continue to pray for the courage to repent. To see the world differently, and respond to what we see.

This month, as we move into March, we ground our Lenten journey in mission and outreach.
This week, I invite you to go to coffee hour, to support our mission to Honduras by purchasing a pound of coffee, or a quart of chili, or both, and to listen to our friend Vanessa who will be with us to speak about her work with the Department of Children and Families in Bridgeport.

Next week, we’ll have the opportunity to come together around a meal, and to donate gently used housewares to help Immigrants and refugees find a fresh start. Each week as we get closer to Holy week and Easter, we get to continue to find ways to see our world with soft eyes, looking for the ways in which we can help each other out of our suffering…to respond to the world we encounter. In some ways these acts of compassion and mercy are acts of repentance, they encourage us to return to God.

Our God in Jesus Christ is the Gardener who asks for a second chance on our behalf. Our God is a gardener who can cultivate a bush that can burn in the desert, and yet not be consumed. As we approach God’s holy table today, let’s ask God for the courage to think different, and to bear good fruit.

Amen.

[1] Rob Siltanen “The Real Story Behind Apple’s ‘Think Different Campaign” Forbes, Dec. 14 2011.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2011/12/14/the-real-story-behind-apples-think-different-campaign/

Last accessed March 2, 2013.