Shades of Blue

The Reverend Seth Ethan Carey

August 12th, 2007

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20

First Congregational Church, Glen Ellyn, Illinois

www.firstconge.org

630-469-3096

Somewhere—perhaps in a forgotten sub-basement of an IBM research facility, a supercomputer is collecting dust. It once represented the height of artificial intelligence technology, specifically designed to calculate strategic outcomes on a chess board. In 1997, it narrowly succeeded in defeating the Russian chess master Garry Kasparov in a six-game match. Thinking it best to quit while they were ahead, IBM immediately retired the machine.

They called it Deep Blue.

In the last ten years, advances in computer science have produced software and hardware that dwarf Deep Blue’s capabilities. I can’t even beat my laptop’s chess program on the easiest setting. Come to think of it, I can win a game of solitaire, either.

But now, programmers face a new challenge—designing computers than can play the Asian board game called Go, a game that many believe is the most complex board game ever devised. Like chess, the game involves black & white pieces that are moved around on a grid. But unlike chess, the rules allow for an average of 200 possible moves per turn, enough to baffle even the most cleverly designed computer software. And it seems that human opponents are routinely besting the machines.

Maybe that’s because humans are right at home in complex and confusing situations—perhaps more so than we realize. At a glance, our choices often seem as black & white as a game of chess, as clear as the deep blue sky. But it doesn’t take long to realize that the world we inhabit is painted with a million shades of grey.

***

Isaiah’s prophecy is a testimony to our confusion. Speaking through the prophet, God tells the people to stop sacrificing animals at the altar: “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.” But the people listening to this must have been dumbfounded. For centuries, animal sacrifice had been an integral part of their religious life, a ritual mandated by God. And now God was calling it evil? Now their hands were “stained with blood?”

It isn’t always easy to know what God wants from us.

And the older we get, the harder it is to know. We’re raised to believe that we can distinguish between good and evil, between black and white. And we always hope that the right choice will be obvious, even if it isn’t easy. But then we find ourselves standing on a vast grid in the game of life, with an infinite number of possible moves per turn, any number of them foolish, oblivious to how our actions might affect a given outcome—or if they will have any effect at all. Doing the right thing isn’t easy. But knowing what the right thing is can be even trickier. That’s why Isaiah doesn’t just tell us to do good deeds. He says, “Cease to do evil, and learn to do good.” The operative idea here is learning. Morality isn’t always common sense. It isn’t always black and white.

But every so often, you’ll see something so pure, so good, that it that transcends the grey scale. Every so often, you’ll see something in a pleasant shade of blue.

***

I want to tell you about a place called Edisto Island. It rests off the coast of South Carolina, floating in the Atlantic blue. In the late 18^th century, plantation owners began to harvest a great deal of expensive cotton from the islands fertile fields, relying on slave labor from Africa to get the job done. They made a fortune off of this lucrative exploitation, until the Confederacy was defeated in the Civil War and the slaves were set free. Shortly thereafter—like a sign from God—a plague of boll weevils swarmed the island and destroyed the cotton crop forever.

Once a hallmark of white prosperity, Edisto Island has become an icon of African American poverty. Thousands of freed slaves stayed on the island, and several generations later their descendants still live there, too poor to live anywhere else. The history of the island is evident in its crumbling graveyards and old ramshackle houses, a living testament to evils that we’d rather forget.

But there’s something special about the place. In a world of complexity, confusion, ambiguity, and uncertainty, Edisto Island feels different. It’s simple in its poverty, simple in its purity. It may sound naive, but Edisto Island just feels less complicated, less grey than the rest of the world. But maybe it just feels that way to me, because I traveled there with such good people.

It was the destination of our annual Senior High Work Camp this summer. We traveled there in force to paint houses and repair roofs, to worship alongside its people, and to fight the bad vibes of a land stained by slavery.

But in spite of the simplicity there was a mystery on that island, and it never did get solved. One of our major projects was for a woman named Janie Jones. She grew up on Edisto Island, and left to pursue a life in New York for forty some-odd years. But when her parents passed away a few years ago, they left her their house—the house she grew up in—and she returned to the island to care for it. But the years hadn’t been kind, and the old house was falling apart, in desperate need of a new roof. A new paint job wouldn’t hurt, either.

But when Janie told us what color to paint the house, I think we were all a little bit surprised. Janie wanted us to paint it blue. Not sky blue or navy blue or even pastel blue, but bright electric blue, a shade of blue that doesn’t exist in Glen Ellyn, least of all on houses.

Personally, I loved it.

But as you can imagine, some of us were curious as to why she might want to paint her house such an unusual color. So we asked her. Well, there are three sides to every story, and Janie gave us four. And herein lies the mystery of the blue house.

***

The first clue to the puzzle was probably also the most touching. She’d related it to Parks, who shared it with the rest of the group during our devotional time that night.

“That shade of blue was her grandparent’s favorite color,” he told us, “And she wants them to be able to see it from Heaven.” I couldn’t help but think to myself that if any color would be visible from that far away, this would be it.

But the next morning at breakfast, our contractor Mike told us a different story.

“Don’t say anything to the kids,” he said in conspiratorial tones, “But I’ll tell you why that house is really painted blue. When I asked Janie what color she wanted us to use, she looked around, pointed to a bottle of detergent, and said, ‘Paint it that color.’”

But that wasn’t the end of the story. Laura asked Janie why she chose that particular shade of blue, and Janie told her that according to the island’s tradition, the color was believed to ward off demons and evil spirits. I figured that was probably true, because the Pastor we’d met at church that Sunday was wearing a striking suit of the same electric blue color.

Truth be told, I loved the suit even more than the house.

And so the week went on, every inquirer getting a different clue to the mystery of the blue house. Finally, by the end of the week, I decided to ask her myself.

“It’s the color God chose,” she told me simply. At least someone knows what God wants.

So why did Janie really ask us to paint her house blue? What was the real reason? I suspect that every answer she gave was a part of the larger truth. But in the end, I guess it doesn’t matter why our group painted it blue. What matters is that they did it with gusto, giving of themselves for the sake of another. It was a good deed, as pure as blue water.

In a world of grey, where good and evil sometimes look like twins, it was good. It was one good thing in this broken old world; one good deed among many during that sacred week, when they painted, mended, cleared away debris, and repaired more than one roof.

In fact, they did such a good job that I’m thinking we could have saved a few bucks if we’d just asked them to fix our roof.

But then, this journey wasn’t about helping ourselves. It was about the privileged serving the poor. It was about fifty teenagers from an affluent Chicago suburb who humbled themselves before others, doing exactly as Isaiah, and Jesus, and every other biblical prophet has ever commanded.

And thanks to that bright blue house, I know God saw it—even from the throne of the highest heaven.

It isn’t always easy to know what God wants from us. But when you’re standing on the proverbial chess board and you don’t know which way to move, when the black and white tiles begin to blur into grey, just remember this: Every day, there is at least one good thing. There is at least one good thing you can do for someone. There is at least one good thing to be grateful for.

It isn’t always obvious, but it’s always there—painted in a pleasant shade of blue.