Friday, May 18, 2012

Fruit that will last




Last Sunday a man entered our 8 o’clock service about half-way through and walked without any hesitation right up the center aisle and took a seat in the front pew, right over here.  Needless to say, that’s unusual behavior for a Sunday visitor.  But he seemed comfortable here, coming forward to receive communion as if it were his long-standing habit.  And at the end of the service, when I invited anyone who wished to come forward for a special prayer of blessing, he stood up.  Without looking for further encouragement, or making any preliminaries, he said his name was Richard and he asked us to pray for him.  He said he was out of work and had been for a long time, and had been looking and looking everywhere for a job without success.  He said that he wasn’t going to give up, but that he’d sold everything he had of any value and that it was beginning to look like he and his family were going to have to give up their home and start living in their car.  And he asked if we would please pray for him because he really needed our prayers.

So, of course, we did.  It was the least we could do.  Someone brought him over to the Parish Hall and gave him a cup of good coffee and something to eat.  I could have offered him a little money, but he didn’t ask for that, and in fact he told me in the line at the back after church that he was tired of asking for hand outs.  What he really needs is a job.  He wants to work and support his family and preserve what remains of his dignity.  And he came here, because he wanted us to know that, and to pray for him.  

I’ve been thinking about that as I’ve been praying for Richard and his family this week.  Of course, I’ve been wishing we could have done more for him.  Praying for Richard has made me ask familiar questions of myself.  It’s made me ask what can be done for all the people who need jobs.  What kinds of assumptions lead a society to discard people like Richard without remorse or concern for the consequences?  I’ve been asking whether I’ve done enough to challenge those assumptions, whether I’ve allowed myself to be a little too comfortable, whether I’ve played it a little too safe. 

This week I read an interview with the retired Episcopal Bishop George Packard.  A highly-decorated Vietnam combat veteran, Bishop Packard was arrested along with 15 other members of Veterans for Peace, during an Occupy protest on May 1st in New York City.  The comments he made in the interview spoke to the questions I’ve been asking myself: “The spirit is calling us now into the streets, calling us to reject the old institutional orders. There is no going back. You can’t sit anymore in churches listening to stodgy liturgies. They put you to sleep. Most of these churches are museums with floorshows…Those in the church may be good-hearted and even well-meaning, but they are ignoring the urgent, beckoning call to engage with the world. It is only outside the church that you will find the spirit of God and Christ.”  

There was a time in my life when I would have rejoiced to read these words.  “Yes!” I would have said; “Bishop George Packard tells it like it is!”  I can still hear the truth in what he is saying, and I can’t ignore the example of his courageous actions.  But the example that spoke to me even more powerfully this week was that of Richard.  I think of the courage that he had, to walk in to a strange church, full of people he didn’t know, to walk right up the aisle during the service to take a seat in the front row.  I think of how, when the opportunity arose, he took his stand.  He didn’t condemn us for being too comfortable.  He didn’t try to guilt-trip us into giving him money.  He just told us his story, simply and humbly, without milking it for sentiment, or using it to make some larger point.  He trusted us to give him a hearing, and he asked us for our prayers.
 
In his own way, Richard took a stand.  He took a stand for himself, and for the hard truth of his situation.  He laid down the stigma of failure and desperation, and he rose up in the Spirit of truth, and by his actions he said, “I am worthy of love and concern.  I also belong to God’s family.  Your prayers matter, and they matter to me.”  And that was a gift to us.  It was a testimony to us of the love that Christ has for us, in our failures, in our desperation.  It was a reminder of how Christ came to us as a poor man, asking only that we receive each other as his friends.  We may be too comfortable with that friendship.  We may be afraid to follow him, to go out and do something about the besetting evils of the world.  Maybe we just don’t know where to begin.  But that world seeks us out, like Richard did, to invite us deeper into friendship with Christ.  And it is not a random coincidence, not something to be taken for granted, that Richard felt safe here to take his stand.

We may be comfortable here, but comfort is at the heart of the Gospel.  Jesus knew the risks involved in telling the truth to a world entranced with false hopes and empty values.  On the night before he died for that truth, he spoke words of comfort to his disciples.  He assured them that his love for them would not die with him, because it was God’s love for the world.  He promised them that if they kept faith with him, and loved each other as he had, they would find him in themselves.  And more than that, the world— the same world that threatened to destroy them, the world that filled them with fear and confusion—would reveal itself to them as his dwelling place, the abode of God’s love.  He sent them into that hostile world in the power of his love to bring forth fruit, fruit that will last. 
      
And so while I agree with Bishop Packard that “outside the church you will find the spirit of God and Christ,” I don’t think that is the only place to find it.  It would, indeed, be a cold kind of comfort if we prayed for Richard and took no interest in the conditions that put him in that fix.  But although what Richard really needs is a job, he also needs an open door, where they will listen to his story and give him a place in the communion of prayer.  He knew where to look for that door, and when he came, it was open.  More than ever, the world needs places where people can lay down their daily struggle for survival or success, and appear to each other to ask for the friendship of Christ, to listen to the voice of the spirit, and to abide in the love of God.

The First Letter of John says that “everyone who loves the parent loves the child.”  On this Mother’s Day, the scriptures remind us of the love that God has for every one of her children, and that if we love God our Mother, we need to love each other for her sake.  That love means continual, defiant resistance to the powers that enslave and destroy the children of God.  It also means dwelling together in the peace and joy of her beloved Son, holding open a space in the world where love and truth can abide.  We don’t have to choose between the church and the world—in fact, we don’t get to choose between them.  We were chosen to hold the world responsible for the commandment of our friend Jesus, to love one another as he loves.  And we were chosen together, to make our life together a real and visible sign of that love, an open door through which people come in to find God, through which people go out to find God. 

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About Me

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Petaluma, California, United States
I am a priest in the Episcopal Church, and have been (among other things) an organic farmer and gardener, and a Zen monk. I have a lifelong interest in social and spiritual renewal on the basis of contemplative discipline, creative nonviolence, and ecological practice. In recent years my work has focused intensely on the responsibility of pastoral ministry in the humanistic, evangelical, and catholic branch of Christianity known as Anglicanism. I'm married with a daughter, and have three brothers and two parents.