Thanks Be to God – I Think
The Epiphany story of the Topsy Turvy world of Jesus continues …… with Luke’s Sermon on the Mount. Pastor Gary Johnson took us on a small tour of “the other side of the tracks” where the true message of The Sermon on the Mount is that “it’s rough stuff”. We say “Thanks be to God ….. I think”. These messages are Jesus proverbially “grabbing us by the lapels” and trying to shake the message into us. A good friend recently told me something I needed to here in very direct language. She likened the act as “a message perhaps I needed to hear – delivered like a sledgehammer – meant to shape me into a better person”. Often messages we are not ready to hear or want to avoid hearing must be brought to us repeatedly and in a “grabbing the lapels” type of delivery. So what’s this disturbing message? Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms that we are to engage those that society treats, on the whole, as marginal, “on the edge” or the outskirts of acceptability. Pastor Johnson shared yet another street-wise Detroit story – this time about Jimmy Kirkland, an outsider who nobody wanted to know or be with. The Forest Gump-like “nobody” who lived “on the edge” of our sensibilities. Jesus extols that “Blessed are The Jimmys” and “Woe to you (to us!) who have not these crosses to bear nor help our fellow disciples with theirs. Our inheritance in the kingdom will be lost for such indiscretions. Jesus reminds us that in the end, if what we have is only what we have managed to accumulate, then ours will be an uninhabited “salt marsh” where all is barren and nothing grows. And Jesus will “not be there”. Rather, he will be “in that place where those invisible to us have been all along … waiting for our witness, our help, an outstretched hand. Where ever these misfortunes lie, where we find those less fortunate and “with less” Jesus tasks us to feed them, nourish them, clothe them, attend to them, be with them, help them along, help them carry their cross! Jesus is tasking us to “see” Jimmy – and not only that, but to “see ourselves in Jimmy”. When we are “off message”, those at the outskirts of “our world” become invisible. Or, we become blind to them! As holograms passing through our field of vision, they are there, but we do not recognize them as needing us. We recognize neither their pain nor their lacking in the light of our plenty. We have lost the ability to see why they are not as different from us as we would want to imagine. We live in a society that shuns “the invisible”. Those people “on the edge of society” are those Jesus walks with: the unclean, the diseased, the mentally and emotionally ill, the annoying, the frightening, the dirty, the hungry, those dealing daily with the utter despair of their lives. These are the people who frighten us, who “belong where we won’t have to confront them”. Mary Chapin Carpenter wrote a song “Stones in the Road” in which she sings:
When we were young, we pledged allegiance every morning of our lives
The Epiphany story of the Topsy Turvy world of Jesus continues …… with Luke’s Sermon on the Mount. Pastor Gary Johnson took us on a small tour of “the other side of the tracks” where the true message of The Sermon on the Mount is that “it’s rough stuff”. We say “Thanks be to God ….. I think”. These messages are Jesus proverbially “grabbing us by the lapels” and trying to shake the message into us. A good friend recently told me something I needed to here in very direct language. She likened the act as “a message perhaps I needed to hear – delivered like a sledgehammer – meant to shape me into a better person”. Often messages we are not ready to hear or want to avoid hearing must be brought to us repeatedly and in a “grabbing the lapels” type of delivery. So what’s this disturbing message? Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms that we are to engage those that society treats, on the whole, as marginal, “on the edge” or the outskirts of acceptability. Pastor Johnson shared yet another street-wise Detroit story – this time about Jimmy Kirkland, an outsider who nobody wanted to know or be with. The Forest Gump-like “nobody” who lived “on the edge” of our sensibilities. Jesus extols that “Blessed are The Jimmys” and “Woe to you (to us!) who have not these crosses to bear nor help our fellow disciples with theirs. Our inheritance in the kingdom will be lost for such indiscretions. Jesus reminds us that in the end, if what we have is only what we have managed to accumulate, then ours will be an uninhabited “salt marsh” where all is barren and nothing grows. And Jesus will “not be there”. Rather, he will be “in that place where those invisible to us have been all along … waiting for our witness, our help, an outstretched hand. Where ever these misfortunes lie, where we find those less fortunate and “with less” Jesus tasks us to feed them, nourish them, clothe them, attend to them, be with them, help them along, help them carry their cross! Jesus is tasking us to “see” Jimmy – and not only that, but to “see ourselves in Jimmy”. When we are “off message”, those at the outskirts of “our world” become invisible. Or, we become blind to them! As holograms passing through our field of vision, they are there, but we do not recognize them as needing us. We recognize neither their pain nor their lacking in the light of our plenty. We have lost the ability to see why they are not as different from us as we would want to imagine. We live in a society that shuns “the invisible”. Those people “on the edge of society” are those Jesus walks with: the unclean, the diseased, the mentally and emotionally ill, the annoying, the frightening, the dirty, the hungry, those dealing daily with the utter despair of their lives. These are the people who frighten us, who “belong where we won’t have to confront them”. Mary Chapin Carpenter wrote a song “Stones in the Road” in which she sings:
When we were young, we pledged allegiance every morning of our lives
The classroom rang with children's voices under teacher's watchful eye
We learned about the world around us at our desks and at dinnertime
Reminded of the starving children, we cleaned our plates with guilty minds
The starving children have been replaced by souls out on the street
We give a dollar when we pass, and hope our eyes don't meet
We give a dollar when we pass, and hope our eyes don't meet
And the stones in the road fly out from beneath our wheels
And then a voice called to us to make our way back home
Yes ….. “We give a dollar on the street and hope our eyes don’t meet”. Have you been there? I sure have. Why is it at that moment, I avoid Jesus’ “grabbing my lapels”; why do I not hear The Voice saying “feed them, attend to them, be with them, help them along. We remain in that society that shuns the invisible; we are NOT like them, we do not want to see them, or even be near them. The "rough stuff" message is "Woe to us" when we do this.
Jesus is walking around “handing out glasses” that fight the invisibility! Mother Theresa sure had a pair. I occasionally wonder HOW she managed to wear them constantly. She once said
“Places like Calcutta can be seen all over the world if you have eyes to see.”
She also said
“The dying, the crippled, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved, they are Jesus in disguise.”
Mother Theresa lived “on the other side of the tracks” in the slums of Calcutta. She wasn’t averse to serving at the Rescue Mission; you could find her attending to those “at the edge”; she did not “see them as marginal", but she did SEE them. The people who take three buses to work, who work three jobs to “keep it going”, bag our groceries, wash our cars, clean our floors, empty our wastebaskets, bus our dishes. She “heard Jesus” when he said “If you want to find me, THIS is where I’ll be!”
After service today, I went to George Webb’s in downtown Tosa to have a bite with my kids. My daughter, Carmen, thanked the waitress, Emma, by name for bringing us our food. Thoughts flashed to an evening when Pastor Gary Johnson told me “there’s no sound on the face of this Earth more beautiful than the sound of your own name!” As a teacher, I know this is true, but I struggle with “making it happen” still. We had a booth right by the door so we could see everybody leave. Lorin, my son, said goodbye to patrons leaving irrespective of what they wore or how they appeared. He high-fived a man in a ragged coat as he was leaving the restaurant. It struck me that this person was not invisible to the children. Perhaps this is why Jesus loved the children so. Tom T. Hall once sung a country western ballad called Old Dogs and Children and Watermelon Wine:
I was sittin' in Miami pourin' blended whiskey down
When this old grey black gentleman was cleanin' up the lounge
Uninvited he sat down and opened up his mind
On old dogs and children and watermelon wine
Old dogs care about you even when you make mistakes
God bless little children while they're still too young to hate
When he moved away I found my pen and copied down that line
'Bout old dogs and children and watermelon wine
Yes …. God bless little children while they’re still too young to hate!!! The marginals of our society are NOT invisible to them. They see nearly everyone as not very different than themselves. In the Caldecott Award winning children’s book, The
Polar Express, only the children can hear the ringing of the Christmas Bell, the sound of which has long fallen silent to the adults. Children can hear the bell and feel the magic and they can see that to which we have long since become blind.
Just as Jesus admonishes us to “go to the edge”, he offers us the example of children who “go there readily and without hesitation or fear or unease”. As I was watching my kids eat and listened to the scuttle butt of snippets of conversation in the restaurant, the radio was playing “In the Arms of the Angels” from the movie City of Angels. This movie was a remake of the German director Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire in which God’s angels struggle with their existence between the human and the divine. The radio played in the background at George Webbs:
Spend all your time waiting for that second chance
Yes …. God bless little children while they’re still too young to hate!!! The marginals of our society are NOT invisible to them. They see nearly everyone as not very different than themselves. In the Caldecott Award winning children’s book, The
Polar Express, only the children can hear the ringing of the Christmas Bell, the sound of which has long fallen silent to the adults. Children can hear the bell and feel the magic and they can see that to which we have long since become blind.
Just as Jesus admonishes us to “go to the edge”, he offers us the example of children who “go there readily and without hesitation or fear or unease”. As I was watching my kids eat and listened to the scuttle butt of snippets of conversation in the restaurant, the radio was playing “In the Arms of the Angels” from the movie City of Angels. This movie was a remake of the German director Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire in which God’s angels struggle with their existence between the human and the divine. The radio played in the background at George Webbs:
Spend all your time waiting for that second chance
For the break that will make it ok
There's always some reason to feel not good enough
And it's hard at the end of the day
So tired of the straight line, and everywhere you turn
There's vultures and thieves at your back
The storm keeps on twisting, you keep on building the lies
That you make up for all that you lack
It don't make no difference, escaping one last time
It's easier to believe
In this sweet madness, oh this glorious sadness
That brings me to my knees
In the arms of an Angel fly away from here
From this dark, cold hotel room, and the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie
You're in the arms of an Angel;
may you find some comfort here
The song is soulful, singing of ALL of us ... that we are , none of us, except by God's grace, very far from “the edge”. Sometimes out personal struggles arew invisible to all but the angels; the angels invisible to all in the movie are ever present, though. Perhaps Jesus was “grabbing us by our lapels” on The Mount and trying to shake some sense into us. Letting us know we are angels for each other. That we are the strength for one another on our individual spiritual journeys. Jimmy Kirkland tried to be visible, “but he should have known better”. We are called to be angels to the Jimmy K’s who nobody wants. THEY are the blessed on this Earth. Blessed be Jimmy, Blessed be those who are invisible – may we “put on our glasses”, listen like the children, and may we FIND them. It is in crawling into the slums of Calcutta for Jimmy Kirkland, that we are saved from the salty, barren wastelands of a life lived blind and deaf to our fellow travelers on their spiritual journeys. And it is when we realize we are more like those we shun than we often imagine that our eyes are opened, our hearing restored, and we become as the children …… who Jesus welcomed with open arms.
may you find some comfort here
The song is soulful, singing of ALL of us ... that we are , none of us, except by God's grace, very far from “the edge”. Sometimes out personal struggles arew invisible to all but the angels; the angels invisible to all in the movie are ever present, though. Perhaps Jesus was “grabbing us by our lapels” on The Mount and trying to shake some sense into us. Letting us know we are angels for each other. That we are the strength for one another on our individual spiritual journeys. Jimmy Kirkland tried to be visible, “but he should have known better”. We are called to be angels to the Jimmy K’s who nobody wants. THEY are the blessed on this Earth. Blessed be Jimmy, Blessed be those who are invisible – may we “put on our glasses”, listen like the children, and may we FIND them. It is in crawling into the slums of Calcutta for Jimmy Kirkland, that we are saved from the salty, barren wastelands of a life lived blind and deaf to our fellow travelers on their spiritual journeys. And it is when we realize we are more like those we shun than we often imagine that our eyes are opened, our hearing restored, and we become as the children …… who Jesus welcomed with open arms.
No comments:
Post a Comment