August 16, 2009
Jonah 3: 5-4:4
Mark 9: 2-8
Matthew 26: 36-46
“My Confession - Our Confession"
“The final control and measure and irritant in Christian speech remain the cross: the execution of Jesus of Nazareth. Christianity is born out of struggle because it is born from men and women faced with the paradox of God’s purpose made flesh in a dead and condemned man. … If the new age had dawned, it was with the slaughter of the Anointed (One)… ”
The Wound of Knowledge by: Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
Three days ago I may have met the slaughtered Anointed One right here in our church of all places. I admit I did not recognize him at all. Because of years of training and enculturation I did not recognize him at all.
He limped badly, his cloths did not match except for the dirt that covered every square inch and his ragged gym shoes where untied, missing laces all together. I knew why he was in church, why he had sought us out on such a sweltering afternoon. He had come to beg, to plead, and perhaps to con me into helping him.
Even though the names and places of his misfortune would be distinctly his, I knew his story before he opened his mouth. So, I was inclined even before we sat down at the "Welcoming Table" not to listen to him. I was inclined to put on my very nice Pastor face and look right through him as he spoke while I figured out a way to turn him away.
He sat and I, the gracious host, sat across from him. The smell he gave off was sour and old. The dirt and stains on his clothes were worse up close than from a distance. His teeth were bad. His breath was awful. His speech was garbled and disjointed. I had met him before, but of course I could not remember his name or his exact story or whether I had offered to help him. He remembered all the details including some promise he said I made to help him if he returned.
He told me he was 55. He told me he fought in two wars for this country. And then, because he knew I did not believe him (probably nobody like me believed him) he stood up, pulled his shirt up and showed me his twisted and scarred belly.
Then before I could react, he pulled his trousers down and there, just above and below his filthy boxers, were more scars, more holes, dents and jagged creases in his dark skin. While he stood there with his pants down making me look at his wounds, he told me he was proud and that he did not like to beg but right now he needed help. Right now, in fact, he needed my help.
I finally restored some sense of dignity, some sense of propriety and made him pull his pants up and his shirt down and sit down. Then he began his story. Forced out by Katrina and then forced out by Gustav. He was hardly able to work because of his injuries and the constant pain they caused.
He had an apartment with just enough room for his wife and children. The only reason he had a place to live was the landlord was good to him even though he was a white man. He couldn't enroll his youngest child in school because he could not afford $15.00 to get a certified birth certificate nor the carfare to get to the Bureau of Vital Statistics on Causeway in Metairie.
All through his story he kept calling me “Father”. I thought of telling him I was not a priest but decided it was not worth the effort. Let him call me “Father”: it didn't bother me. Then he asked for help with rent. He asked for "only $15.00" to get the certified birth certificate. He asked if we had any food and cold water in the church he could have. He asked for a little money for canned milk.
At some point sitting there barely listening and hardly seeing what was in front of me, the terrible words I read at the beginning of this my confession came to me: “God’s purpose is made flesh in a dead and condemned man. … If the new age had dawned, it was with the slaughter of the Anointed One… “
The man in front of me was as good as dead. Certainly he was condemned by our society to a place almost below the ground itself. He was wounded and broken. No matter how he got those scars or why his appearance was so disturbing or why he seemed so shameless in his willingness to beg and plead, all of these were real and sitting right in front of me.
Could it be that God’s purpose was being made flesh in this dead and condemned man who sat before me? Could that be? Was God making Himself visible in the terrible details of this broken man? Was this complicated and muddled bundle of experience" sitting across from me "a theater for God’s creative work? (The Wound of Knowledge)
There is really little more for me to say. The man limped out of our church, his life no better and hopefully no worse than when he limped in. He did not keep an appointment we made for the next day. He did not give me a chance to do the wonderful things I thought of during the night. Of course, we all know his kind cannot be counted on to keep appointments. All they ever do is show up at the worst times in the worst ways.
But he did do this: He continued my education, my awareness, and hopefully - I pray to God- my growth as a follower of God's Anointed One. He made me face one more time the excruciating possibility that God's incarnation in the human Jesus is not limited to just that one beaten, humiliated, and condemned Jew executed in Jerusalem 2000 years ago.
He made me again ask the questions that each one of us must ask in every moment of our lives if we are to grow in this Christian life:
-Where was the hand of God in that particular experience?
-Where was I when God was in front of me?
-Where was I when the Anointed One - the least of these - came looking for me?
-And where was His church? Where was His church?
Like Jonah we do not like it when God seems to care greatly for those we despise, for those who are unworthy of care.
Like Peter, James, and John, we prefer to stay on the mountaintop with Jesus in the pure, pristine, and rarified atmosphere of goodness and security we just know we deserve.
Like Peter, and the Sons of Zebedee, we do not want to believe we might stumble over our Savior afraid and sweating blood in a garden, or dying on a cross, or offering the blood and bread of everyday life, or limping up the church steps to beg and foul the air we breath with his brokenness. It is easier to sleep than believe such things of our Savior, and so we sleep.
Like so many, we are perfectly happy to look past the details of crucifixion to the glory of the gilded cross, to look through and around the pain of the suffering ones to the happiness of those who prosper. That is fine. The only risk really is that we might miss God altogether.
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