Return to the Yellow Brick Road

 Return to the Yellow Brick Road

A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Randy K. Hammer, August 8, 2021

Matthew 14:22-33; 2 Timothy 1:7; reading from Frederick Buechner

A few weeks ago, we watched a PBS American Experience episode on the life and work of L. Frank Baum.  Now, if I had not already given you a hint in today’s sermon title, the name L. Frank Baum might not have immediately rung a bell.  The American Experience episode title was “American Oz.”  After trying his hand at a number of unsuccessful endeavors, L. Frank Baum struck gold when he began writing and publishing the series of “Oz” books in the early 1900s.  Baum would eventually write 14 novels in the Oz series.  After his death, an adaption of his first book in the series, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, became a landmark and classic in American cinema when the movie was released in 1939.

Of all movies we have ever watched, The Wizard of Oz is, perhaps, one we have seen most.  I remember as a child myself being invited by the minister of our church at the time to go to their house on a Sunday night to watch The Wizard of Oz on their new color television.  What a treat!  And when our daughter was small, it was her favorite movie.  We had to watch it every year when it came on television.  If my memory serves me correctly, in the mid-1980s we even bought a new color television set (as our old one had died) the week before the movie was to air on Sunday night so our family could watch it at home in color.  Indeed, The Wizard of Oz has long been an American icon.

However, one thing I did not hear, or something I missed in the PBS special that chronicles L. Frank Baum’s life and a fact I uncovered in my own research that shouldn’t be overlooked, has to do with two troubling editorials he wrote regarding the killing of Native peoples following the death of Sitting Bull and the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. Such a discovery I found to be very disturbing, and I almost decided to abandon this sermon because of it.  But in 2006, two of Baum’s descendants apologized to the Sioux Nation for any hurt their ancestor had caused them.  And to Baum’s credit, his views may have changed before his death in 1920 (30 years later), and for years he had been a staunch supporter of the Women’s Suffrage Movement.

At any rate, the beauty and inspiration to be found in The Wizard of Oz still stand in spite of any grave flaws the creator may have had. The themes to be found in The Wizard of Oz struck a chord with the American public at a difficult time in American history.  In the early 1930s, America was in the midst of the Great Depression.  And the movie was released on the threshold of major world upheaval as Hitler was beginning his campaign to take over Europe.  They were times of longing and uncertainty.

But since watching the documentary a few weeks ago, I have been thinking about how the themes and messages of The Wizard of Oz might also strike a chord today as we continue to live with the challenges and uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic.  And, since this is a Christian sermon, I found scriptural references to back it up as well.  If you will trust me, I will take us there and arrive at a scriptural foundation in the end.

But first, think of Dorothy, who has been exiled to a strange land and her greatest and only wish is to go back home to her Kansas farm that previously she had taken for granted and despised.  Now, she wants nothing more than to return to that simple, familiar place.

Speaking of exile to a strange and unfamiliar place, that in itself is a biblical theme we see in the Hebrew prophets and the psalms.  The Jews, too, found themselves picked up and carried off to a strange land, and they left us some very moving literature about their longing to go back home.  “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion” (Psalm 137:1).  I can just hear those Hebrews repeating to one another: “There’s no place like home; there’s no place like home.”

Cannot we identify with them?  And with Dorothy?  Don’t all of us long to escape from this strange COVID-19 land (recently complicated by the delta variant) to which we have been exiled for so many months?  Isn’t our greatest wish to get back “home” to the former time and life we may have previously taken for granted?

And consider Dorothy’s companions down that Yellow Brick Road and what their greatest wishes were.  The Scarecrow’s greatest wish was a brain.  How many times have we felt we didn’t have the brains, didn’t have the knowledge we needed to see us through the challenges we have faced?  Not only throughout this pandemic, but at other times in our lives as well?  As church leaders who feel responsible for the safety of others, we long for the brains, for the facts, for the knowledge of what is the best course of action until we work our way through this pandemic and make it back “home” to the place where all of us long to be.

I’ll share a secret with you: When we were in the process of moving to Oak Ridge and the United Church 13 years ago, I questioned whether or not I had the brains for the job.  I knew that Oak Ridge and this church were known for having a lot of scientists and people with Ph.D’s, and I worried that my sermons would not be intellectual enough to pass muster.  So, when I first arrived, I gathered a committee of five members to serve as my sermon advisory committee to give me feedback on my sermons each week and let me know if I was hitting or missing the mark.  Like the Scarecrow, I wished for the brains to do the job!

Consider the Cowardly Lion.  His greatest wish was courage.  How many times over the years have we, too, longed for the courage to face what we needed to face and do what we needed to do? 

Enter the gospel story we read earlier that has Jesus and Peter as the central characters, with Jesus calling out to the disciples “take courage!”  There is a lot of symbolism and hidden meaning going on in this story that was familiar to the early church when it was actually written down.  The boat in this story was being “tortured” by the violent waves.  In early Christian symbolism, the fledgling Church was sometimes pictured as a boat being tossed about on the rough seas of conflict and persecution.  In biblical thought, the sea itself is seen as a symbol of chaos and trouble.  As the story begins, the disciples are alone in the storm-tossed boat, far from land.  But Jesus comes to them in the darkest part of the night.  So, when Jesus calls out to the disciples to “take courage,” it was intended as a word of comfort to the Church to “take courage” in the midst of whatever troubles or persecutions were filling them with fear.  The assurance was that the Spirit of Jesus was walking the rough waves of life with them. Jesus says, “It is I,” an allusion to the great “I AM” description of God (Exodus 3:14).  In other words, in their darkest hour, the divine presence – revealed to them in Jesus – made Himself known to them.  When Peter begins to sink, he cries out with a prayer common in the early Church – “Lord, save me!”  The entire story has post-Easter overtones, serving as an assurance to the early Christians that whatever their troubles, persecutions and fears, the living Christ was present with them in the midst of the storm.  As biblical commentator M. Eugene Boring reminds us, “Faith is not being able to walk on the water – only God can do that – but daring to believe, in the face of all the evidence, that God is with us in the boat, made real in the community of faith as it makes its way through the storm, battered by the waves.”¹

And then there was the Tin Man, who wanted a heart. And the Wizard reminded the Tin Man that “A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.”  That’s a different way of looking at things, isn’t it?

 In commenting on The Wizard of Oz, writer Frederick Buechner observed, “To one degree or another we’re all of us Tin Woodsmen . . . just as we’re all of us Scarecrows and Cowardly Lions, too.  We all have our moments of feeling out of place and left out.”²  And I would add, all of us have moments when we feel different, inadequate, ill-equipped.

Well, I promised to end this sermon on a solid scriptural foundation, so here it is.  I remembered the verse from the Second Letter to Timothy that seems to sum up the themes of The Wizard of Oz, the biblical story, and this sermon.  To read it again, the author says, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”  In other words, in place of fear, God gives us courage to face what we need to face.  Regarding a heart, the love of God infills us and flows through us in the way we live, relate to others and serve in the world.  And where there is love, there is God, and where God is, there is love.  And regarding brains, well, the biblical writer refers to that as a “sound mind.” We live in faith that we will have the brains we need to meet the challenges we need to meet and make the decisions we need to make.

Whether it be the Yellow Brick Road, the road of life, or a storm-tossed boat on the sea, we walk by faith that we are not alone and that we will be given the courage, the heart, and the brains to walk the path before us.  Amen.

¹M. Eugene Boring, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VIII.  Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995, pp. 329-330.  ²Frederick Buechner, The Clown in the Belfry.  P. 63.