Trading Survival for Life

During the bishop search process in Lexington, Ginger and I visited several different churches and diocesan ministries.  One of the places we visited was St. Andrew’s Church in Lexington, an African American congregation with a proud history just down the street from the Cathedral.  A small group had gathered in the undercroft to meet the candidates.  There were maybe six or seven people.  Most were women.  All were (how best to put this?) of mature years. 

The conversation was not very upbeat.  They talked about how the congregation was aging and there wouldn’t be any more children to be had and how they, therefore, couldn’t possibly grow.  I expected someone to say, “Will the last person to die please turn out the lights.” 

I listened to what they said and thought about it.  And then I asked one of them, the one who seemed the most pessimistic and also the oldest, but also the ringleader, “Mrs. Smallwood, haven’t you ever heard the story of Sarah?” 

Mrs. Smallwood thought a minute.  Then she started to chuckle, and finally she said, “Yes, I know about Sarah.  But you’re not Abraham.”

A few years later I visited St. Andrew’s.  They gave me a present.  It was two framed photographs of all the children in the congregation.  And there were lots of them.  St. Andrew’s is, for me, a place about hope. 

I know that I am not Abraham.  I also know that whatever happened at St. Andrew’s had nothing to do with me.  But I am sure that the story of St. Andrew’s and all the children one will find there on a Sunday morning now has everything to do with some choices the people of St. Andrew’s made along the way about how they would live.   

Not too long after that first visit, one of the lay leaders of St. Andrew’s had an idea.  It must have seemed like an outrageous idea at first.  It was that that small congregation of mainly older people could take on the ministry of refugee resettlement.  I would not have been surprised if they just thought it was too ridiculous to try.  Instead they worked with Episcopal Migration Ministries and they began to become involved with Congolese refugees.

They helped prepare places for them to live.  They helped with finding jobs.  And they invited the Congolese to church.  They didn’t insist, of course, or link what they were doing to church attendance.  They just invited.

And for those Congolese who accepted the invitation, they provided transportation on Sunday and to other church events.  It wasn’t at all easy for this fairly small group of aging Episcopalians.  Faithfulness rarely is.

And the Congolese had a gift of their own for St. Andrew’s.  They brought a new culture and a new language.  And they brought their children.  St. Andrew’s began to have children again, the first time in many years.  The people of St. Andrew’s remembered the story of Abraham and Sarah.

But it was not the only thing from the Bible they remembered, I think.  I think they also remembered the words of Jesus from today’s gospel:   For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mk. 8:35).  Somehow, the ministry of refugee resettlement offered them to stop worrying about their own survival and instead to find life.  They put their anxiety about what would happen as they aged aside and decided to identify with some of the least in their community, those who had fled from persecution in their homeland and had nothing at all.  And the more the people of St. Andrew’s devoted themselves to the people of the Congo, the more they all thrived.  Life returned, and it returned abundantly, bringing the children with it. 

What they had done was take a risk with survival in order to find life.  “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”  (v.36)

Peace,

The Yellow Raincoat

Like most children, I suppose, I had a high priority to be like everyone else when I was little.  My parents were not sympathetic. The symbol for me became my raincoat.  My mother bought me an all-weather coat, which made me look, well, like a smaller version of my dad and made me stand out like a sore thumb around all the other kids.  All the other kids had a standard kid raincoat—the slick yellow rubbery kind. 

One year I put my foot down.  I was going to have a yellow raincoat like everyone else or die.  My mother finally relented. 

I wore it to school with great pride the first day it threatened to rain.  It was like I had had a nerd inoculation over the summer.  I arrived at school and hung it up with great relief that I no longer stood out.  I was sure my social problems were over!

At some point during the day it started to rain; not just light rain, a deluge.  It was a Noah-like flood.  Now I was not worried about the rain.  My mother never failed to pick me up when it rained.  I knew she would come get me. 

The final bell rang.  I put on my yellow raincoat, and I went out to the car pool lane.  My mom, however, was not there.  I was surprised, but I started to walk home.  New raincoat or not, I was getting soaked.

I hadn’t gone far when, sure enough, my mom drove by.  She was going very slowly and peering out the window.  I waved.  She did not stop.  She headed on toward school.  I kept heading home, now mildly annoyed.

I looked back over my shoulder.  She was making another pass, driving slowly, clearly looking for me.  I waved my arms in the air like someone lost at sea trying to catch the rescue plane’s attention.  Once again, she did not stop.  She just drove on by.  I was way beyond annoyed at that point, and when I finally walked in the door, soaking wet, I let her know about it.

“I came looking for you,” she explained. 

“I know.  I waved and waved and you didn’t stop.”

“I looked and looked,” she responded.  “But I couldn’t tell which one you were.  Everyone looked alike in their yellow raincoats.”

Now, to this day I’m not absolutely sure whether or not she couldn’t tell which one I was and didn’t stop or she did see me waving and decided to teach me a lesson.  Same difference, I suppose. 

In the waters of Baptism, Jesus is proclaimed to be who he is, which is hardly being like everyone else.  A voice from heaven announced, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mk. 1:11).  Baptism is about becoming who we are, who we really are, who we uniquely are. 

That’s why Baptism involves water, I think.  It’s so we can decide whether we’re going to put on a yellow raincoat like everyone else or face the consequences of being the individual we were made to be.  If we choose the latter, one of the things we’re going to have to face is standing out in a crowd, as immaturely uncomfortable as that might be.

Peace,

Happy Valentine’s Day

I may have grown up as a Methodist, but it was only many years later as an adult that I became acquainted with Wesleyans.  Not Methodists, Wesleyans.  One of Ginger’s grandmothers and some of her relatives were Wesleyans.  There was a strong little Wesleyan church in Whitmire, the little town in South Carolina where Ginger grew up.  Wesleyans are a small denomination, but you can find Wesleyans around in other places.  Upstate New York is a stronghold for them. 

As one of those “sophisticated” and somewhat self-impressed Episcopalians, the Wesleyans always seemed to me, shall we say, quaint.  They are a rather conservative group.  They tend toward the modest and simple.  They are a bit conflicted about instrumental music in church.   They dress plainly.  Women do not wear makeup and generally opt for long skirts or dresses, certainly covering the knee, even when that isn’t the fashion trend.  Wesleyans do not paint a picture of worldly attractiveness.  There isn’t very much romantic about being a Wesleyan. 

My perception of Wesleyans, and of romance, changed when I got to know Jimmy King, a leader of the Whitmire Wesleyan church and a distant relative of Ginger’s.  I got to know Jimmy many years ago when Ginger and I were visiting her grandmother in the nursing home.  I noticed that Jimmy was there every single time we were ever there.  I later learned, not from Jimmy of course, that Jimmy was at the nursing home every day.  He came to visit his wife, Eula Mae. 

Eula Mae had Alzheimer’s.  She had long since ceased to know who Jimmy was.  Still, Jimmy went to feed Eula Mae her lunch every day.  Every single day.  It did not matter that Eula Mae did not know who Jimmy was anymore.  It is just that that is what love means.   

Now, the nursing home is not what we typically think of as a romantic place.  Lunch at the nursing home, after all, is not breakfast at Tiffany’s.  The former, though, is an icon of what love is about, love in the sense Jesus meant it, agape.  Romance comes and romance goes.  Love does not.  In biblical language, it abides.  Love is what is left when romance is something that can no longer be remembered.

This is not much how the world understands love these days.  We associate it more with beauty than constancy, more with glamour than faithfulness, more with pleasure than service, more with self-gratification than with devotion to other, more with passion in the hormonal sense than passion in the Christ-like sense.  I associate it with Jimmy and Eula Mae King. 

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Peace,

Waiting and Confidence

One of the things that amazes me about New Yorkers is how good they are at waiting.  They wait at the bus stop and subway platform.  They wait for hours on the Thanksgiving Day Parade to come (I’ve done that one).  They wait in a sea of people to see the decorated department store windows at Christmas (I’ve done that one, too).  They wait for the dropping of the New Year’s Ball (not that one).  They wait in line (I cannot bring myself to say, as they do, “on line”) to buy theatre tickets.  They wait in line for special exhibits at the museum.  They wait in line to get coffee and a bagel.  They wait in line to go ice skating (although there is a way out of this particular line with cash).  They wait in line to wait in line.  They never seem to get flustered.

Isaiah tells us that “those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength” (40:31).  I must admit it doesn’t sound right to me.  I’m not good at waiting.  At all.  I had occasion last week to be waiting with Ginger to see a doctor.  I waited and I waited and I waited.  Hours.  And then I lost my cool.  I finally put my foot down and insisted (maybe demanded) on somebody paying attention.  And they did. 

Waiting seems to work for New Yorkers.  For me, not so much.  So what’s the difference? 

I take it as a spiritual failing of mine to think it’s up to me to make things happen.  When I wait, I wait with no expectation that the waiting will ever come to an end unless I do something about it.  New Yorkers wait with more confidence.  Confidence that the waiting will yield the desired outcome results in patience I suppose.  Maybe what my waiting lacks is confidence.  Perhaps my patience would be enhanced by cultivating confidence in others.

On the other hand, come to think of it, my waiting on the doctor last week resulted in a certain strength of its own, maybe precisely because of a lack of confidence.  Sometimes, after all, a lack of confidence is entirely justified.  It’s just that New York would cease to function if New Yorkers didn’t generally have it. 

I suppose Isaiah is right.  Those who wait renew their strength.  My strength, at least, seems to get a boost from a lack of patience.  Maybe one day I’ll mature to having more confidence instead.

Peace,