I wear a robe on Sunday mornings. It’s black. It’s nothing fancy. No frilly designs around the collar, no rope cinching it around my waist, no Friar Tuck hood, not even any softly padded buttons running my 66 inch frame. It has a zipper. I remember the first time I stood before my church wearing it. I don’t know if I looked like a cleric or not. My guess is, I looked like a pre-pubescent boy tripping over his father’s bathrobe on Halloween. In my own mind’s eye that’s pretty much how I first wore my robe too, like one trying not to look too goofy in an XXL. We’re told that Jesus wore a robe. I know, I know. A robe in his day was like a cell phone clip in our day. Everyone wore one. Before there were tee-shirts and jeans, there were robes.
There’s a story about Jesus and his robe. He is walking among a crowd. The storyteller doesn’t describe anyone in the crowd. They don’t point anyone out as if to say, “Four rows back was a girl named Susan.” We’re simply told, the crowd is large and pressing in. Hence why no one is named. In crowds like this one you don’t see people, you just feel them. You feel their overwhelming presence, their body heat. In such a crowd I imagine Jesus found his robe to be an issue. It got stepped on, and he got tripped up and slowed down. But in this crowd was a woman (who of course is unnamed). She is, however, diagnosed (another consequence of large crowds: in being too many to name they become too easy to diagnose). She is bleeding. Profusely. Grossly. She tells herself that if she can just get a hold of Jesus’s robe she’ll be made well. I don’t gather that she thinks this is a magician’s coat. Touch it and poof! I don’t even know that she figured on getting her bleeding to stop. Maybe she just hoped to get a good grip on his robe, and then to hold on long enough so that when Jesus finally got to wherever he was going, she’d be right there with him. He’d turn around to see this bloodied, half-comatose human dust ball lying there and think, “How did you get here?” And because he’s Jesus he’d have to help her. But instead, the crazy does happen. She latches on and poof indeed! For the first time in a long time what flows is healing, not blood. And Jesus turns around not to say, “How did you get here?” but, “Where are you?” He doesn’t see it happen but the storyteller says, he feels it–power leaving him. I wonder what that felt like to Jesus. To me, losing power often means losing control as well, and that means being defenseless, vulnerable, even violated and ripped off. Of course, the opposite can also be true. For the one who receives power there is renewal of purpose and person. “The woman knew that something had happened to her, something that she couldn’t have made happen on her own,” we are told. “Where are you?” Jesus asks around. “Where are you who has claimed my hope, my promise, my life, my power for yourself? Somewhere out there is someone who has been reborn tonight. I want to meet them.”
One day last week I took my robe off to share communion with a woman in my church. That may sound backwards, given that in my church the one behind the communion table is often the one wearing the robe. “We break this bread, Christ’s body given for you. We pour out this cup, Christ’s blood shed for you. In these gifts, in this sharing of pieces we have communion.” Some traditions say that such words, when spoken by a duly robed individual, can stir the heart to believe that we are eating and drinking Jesus himself. For me though, my robe is not a sign of speciality. If I wear it at all it is only so you can find the one person who will make sure there is a scrap of bread and a sip of drink left for you, because it’s only communion–and it’s only Jesus–if there’s enough to go around for everyone. Admittedly, sometimes I wear my robe well and sometimes I don’t.
Anyway, this past week, after the Sunday morning crowd had their fill, I took off my robe, changed into some jeans and a fleece pull-over, and took the leftovers to a woman who couldn’t make it to church that day. This woman would have liked to come but she couldn’t because she was sick. Sick with too many thoughts, too many fears, too many paranoias, too many wounds that never took to healing. You might say this woman was, is, bleeding all over the place. Sitting in her living room I’m surrounded by stacks of books and half-eaten frozen dinner trays. The carpet, which no vacuum could find anyway, looks like a cat’s litter box. The kitchen sink and the garbage disposal have run together. The TV is on. “You’ve got to hear this,” she tells me, turning up the volume from loud to blaring. Some woman is interviewing Jim Wallis. “This guy knows what we need in this country.” I think, these are her crowd. Everyday she drowns her pain in these. I reach into my neatly packed grocery bag and pull out a loaf of bread, a 4 oz. bottle of Welch’s grape juice, and a matching pottery-hewn cup and plate. Seeing me do this she clears off her coffeetable entirely to make room for communion. I think, she’s fighting her way through the crowd. She doesn’t turn off the TV though. Apparently Jim Wallis is going to join us for communion.
I read from Psalm 23 about the Lord who is our shepherd and how we shall not want. It doesn’t say that we shall not want because the shepherd gives us everything we want, or even everything we need. The Lord has a whole world full of sheep to care for. That’s a lot of mouths to feed. God knows there are times when we may need to ration provisions, so to make sure everyone gets at least a bit. Because with Jesus, enough is only enough when everyone has something. And when that happens, enough will be enough.
I lift the bread. “Christ’s body broken for you.” We eat. I pour the cup. “Christ’s blood shed for you.” We drink. She, I, and an elder who has come along to stand in for the entire church community. Afterwards I ask her if she would like to pray for us. She says, yes, please. In the course of her prayer I notice that she quotes, word-for-word, from John chapter 10. Some 21 verses, also about Jesus and his sheep, and she knows them all. “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus promises. “I know my own and my own know me.” “Where did you learn that?” I ask her. This is a woman who can barely keep her mind in one place long enough to scrub a pot. “Where did you learn that?” “I don’t recall,” she tells me. “I’ve just always known it.”
And for a brief shining moment I think I see the crowd disappear, as Jesus turns to see the woman who has been gripping his robe all this time.
PleaseGrace 