Month: September 2023

This is a story about a parking lot.

In the first church I worked there was a woman named Maggie.  Her actual name was Magnes, which is why, according to her, she asked everyone to call her Maggie.  Every Sunday Maggie would come to church and sit, along with 3 or 4 other women, in the back pew, as close to the exit as anyone could get.  There was something about all these women that was remarkably similar.  They all had wrinkles on their hands and forehead, they all wore fancy hats, and they all walked a bit hunched over with a swagger that came from being 80-years old.  Like Maggie, they also all came alone, most of them driving either a tiny Ford Escort, all that their fixed income could afford, or a Cadillac the size of a Carnival cruise ship.  They drove those cars always thinking about what it used to be like to sit in the passenger seat, back when their husbands were alive and did all the driving. 

For Maggie, however, there was now Gary.  At the time I met Maggie, she and Gary had been married just a few years.  I remember Maggie telling me plainly, “Gary was convenient.”  Gary, a widow himself, could never survive the future without someone to cook and clean for him, and Maggie couldn’t survive the future without someone to pay for the food.  So they got hitched.  Gary’s grown daughter Suzy wasn’t crazy about the arrangement.  It mostly had to do with Maggie, whom Suzy felt was only looking for an inheritance from Gary.  Mind you, Suzy wasn’t mean, not at all.  She cared about Maggie and about seeing Maggie cared for, and she didn’t mind her father helping Maggie out.  She was also grateful for Maggie and the around-the-clock care she gave to her father, who sadly, just after getting married to Maggie, was diagnosed with cancer.  What Suzy did mind was seeing her father be generous to someone who hadn’t done for him nearly as much as she—the twinkle in her daddy’s eye for 64 years—had done.  Call it the plight of the Prodigal’s older sister, call it the luck of the worker who shows up at closing time and gets paid the same as the worker who put in an 8-hour day, sometimes there is nothing harder for us to take than grace when it is given to somebody else.

To make matters even harder, Maggie’s only son, Roy, whom Maggie would say, “never really had a father,” showed up at the door one day looking for a place to live, and Gary rolled out the welcome wagon for him, giving Roy, of all things, Suzy’s old bedroom to sleep in.  Roy needed this grace because, well, along with Gary, he too was dying from cancer.  For Roy, it wasn’t the first time.  When he was just three, he was diagnosed with cancer.  He fought and beat it then.  But it cost him a kidney, and for the next 47 years Maggie kept telling her son, “You’re special,” and Roy believed her.  I’m sure it’s what brought him to show up on Gary’s front step, and what brought Maggie, on the day Roy died, to ask me if the church would allow her son a funeral service. 

He’s not a member, you know, she told me.  And he never even comes to church.

I don’t think God cares about any of that, I told her. 

Well, no, I suppose not, but maybe the church does?

No, we don’t care about any of that either, I assured her, half assuring myself as well.

What about his past though? Maggie added.  I mean, Ray had a past.

Don’t we all, I thought.  Tell me about it, tell me about Roy’s past.

Well, when he was 23, he called me up to say, ‘Mom, I’m an alcoholic and a drug user.’ 

I bet that was hard to hear.  What did you tell him?

I told him what I’d always told him.  “You’re special.”  Then, I got him some help, found him an AA group to be a part of.

And did it?  Did it help?

Yes, I think so.  He moved around a lot—Florida to California and back to Florida.  I didn’t always know where he was or how he was doing, but he was special, he was very special.

On the day of Roy’s funeral at the church, the service was at 10 a.m.  At 9:30, the parking lot, which held 300 cars, was jam packed under a haze of cigarette smoke.  Curious—and admittedly, a bit annoyed—I stepped outside to see what all the commotion was about.

Good morning, I said to a man standing near the door. 

Oh, ah, good morning.  I hope you don’t mind, reverend, it calms us down, he said, tucking his cigarette ever so slightly behind his back. 

In my head, I was trying to figure out what was going on.  The way Maggie told it, I figured we were going to be lucky to fill up one pew at the funeral.  Are you, are you all here for Roy? I ask the man still puffing on his cigarette.

Well, we’re not here for you, he said with a cheeky grin. 

If you don’t mind me asking, how do you all know Roy?

And that’s when he told it to me, the Gospel like I’d never heard it before.  We all know him from being in NA and AA together.  He sponsored nearly all of us.  If not for Roy, most of us wouldn’t even know the word recovery.  Because of Roy, we know it’s more than just a word.

At the funeral, I learned that, at one time or another, Roy had sponsored 225 people through NA or AA.  One of them got up to read a story about Jesus and Matthew. What a crazy story this is. 

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

Matthew, chapter 9, verse 9

Jesus calls Matthew to follow him, and Matthew does.  There are no negotiations, no promises made.  Jesus doesn’t say, Follow me, Matthew, and I’ll throw in an all-expense paid trip to Bermuda.  Matthew doesn’t say, I’ll follow you, Jesus, so long as you agree to pay me more than what I’m making now as a tax collector.  With other disciples, Jesus at least promised that the work they’d get to do with Jesus would be both personally and professionally more fulfilling.  Follow me, Jesus said to Peter and Andrew—two fishermen who weren’t very good at fishing—follow me and I’ll make you fish for people.   

But with Matthew it’s a simple directive.  Follow me.  And Matthew does.    

I don’t know what makes Matthew do it.  Maybe he was tired of running the rat race, fed up with being a hatchet man.  Everyday his job was to not care about whether you could afford to buy groceries or to keep a roof over your head, so long as you paid your taxes, so long as Rome got richer.  It was degrading work, degrading to Matthew’s soul.  But it was a runaway train and Matthew didn’t know how to get off.  Then, one day, Jesus comes along and throws him a lifeline.  “Follow me.”  And Matthew does.

Next thing we know Matthew is throwing a dinner party. 

And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

verses 10 – 13

Jesus is there and all of Matthew’s former co-workers are there as well.  Tax-collecting low-lifes.  What can you say?  If there’s nothing harder to take than grace when it is given to someone else, there is nothing greater than taking the grace you’ve been given and sharing it with others. 

Of course, and this is what gives grace its name, as far as we can tell, Matthew wasn’t asking for it.  He wasn’t even looking for it.  Not until Jesus comes along to tell him there can be something more does Matthew even realize more exists.  But once he has it, there’s no keeping it to himself. 

You understand, this is not a story about a parking lot.  It is about what can happen when we give each other full and equal access to holy places.  And we need holy places in our world today.  We need them in Morocco and in Ukraine.  We need them in Washington, and anywhere else we’d like to call home.  Places where hope meets us at the door and call us by our one true name.  Where recovery is not just a word, but a thing we work for together.  Where grace surprises us at every turn. 

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear… For it is the nations of the world that seek all these things, and your Father knows that you need them… Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.  Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out…” (Luke 12).

I read an article recently about how little things are dying just as big things are getting bigger.  I suppose the article could have been talking about any number of realities, but it wasn’t.  It was talking about the church in North America.[1]  Frankly, I find the article to be a dime-a-dozen.  Regarding the North American part of this reality, one might argue that getting bigger has been the recipe from the beginning.  We’ve always been getting bigger, or at least wanting to be.  One of the first topics we cover in school as children, next to basic math and learning to write our name, is the explorers.  Essentially, what we are after is the answer to such questions as, how did we get here?  Who got here first?  And where did they come from?  As a fourth grader growing up in New England, my answers amounted to nothing more than a list of names and places.  To Coronado we owed the southwest, including the discovery of the Grand Canyon; to de Soto we owed Texas; to Ponce de Leon we owed Florida and that elusive fountain of youth; to Christopher Columbus we owed the Bahamas; and to that hearty band of pilgrims who left England in 1620 for fairer shores, we owed everything.  Am I right about this?  Maybe it was just my generation, or my family and church who said that while Columbus discovered America, it was the Pilgrims, landing on Plymouth Rock in 1620, who gave us America.  Fleeing the persecutions and idolatries of the Church of England, they risked life and limb to set sail for a land where they could live and worship freely, the way they wanted to.  For right or wrong, this was the story of America I was told, and this is the story I bought into.  As such, this was a story about an America where not just ideals and dreams are supposed to be bigger, but where God is supposed to be bigger, and where God is behind the getting bigger.     

And so, it was not hard for America’s first pilgrims to regard this land as their manifest destiny, God’s divine gift to them, meant for them to have, that in having it they might also enlarge it.  For a gift left untouched and unused is but a destiny left unfulfilled. 

History has shown that in the early years of Plymouth Plantation, life was governed somewhat successfully by a series of treaties and compromises made between the Pilgrims and the natives, whose homeland the Pilgrims were living on.  This would not change the fact, however, that, to the Pilgrims, the natives were considered savages, likened to the Canaanites they had read about in their Bibles, the ones about whom the Israelites once said, “They are giants, and we’ll never take them,” but about whom their leader Moses said, “If the Lord is pleased with us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us.”[2]  We can take them, it is our manifest destiny.  And take them they did.  In the first 225 years of the founding of the United States, upwards of 100 million Native Americans were forcibly removed from their homes, ultimately to die from the spread of unwarranted and unmitigated disease, warfare, and genocide at the hands of those whom today most of us call our American ancestors, who believed it was their destiny to get bigger.

I don’t share this bit of history in order to make social or political hay, or to spark confrontation with anyone whose version of the story may be different.    Plus, surely someone will say, you can’t have it both ways, you can’t say the church isn’t called to have a national identity and then use the pulpit to talk about America.  Fair enough.  I admit, figuring out how to speak of God and America in the same sentence is as complicated and complex as trying to figure out how to tie your shoes.  There’s more than one way to do it, and some people just choose to wear slip-ons.    

Just the same, we must reckon with the fact that, to whatever degree history gets told by the victors, in America, it was the church-goers—and by “church-goers” we mean those who once-upon-a-time dared to invoke the name of God in declaring independence for themselves—We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—it was the church-goers who also stipulated that enslaved persons, black persons, counted as only three-fifths of a person.  It was the “church-goers,” the so-called Christian missionaries, who, in the spirit of manifest destiny, landed upon the shores and moved across the frontiers, but who left in their wake trails of tears upon which Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and so many others were forced to march from their homes to go live on reservations, reservations whose dignity to this day is threatened by poor access to healthcare, education, and corporations who would steal their land for profit.  And it was the “church-goers” down south, and up north, whose houses of worship and personal fortunes were made bigger and bigger by the hands of people they would never actually allow into their churches.  

Many years ago, I visited the Wren Building on the campus of The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, the second oldest academic institution in the country.  The Wren Building, constructed in 1700, is the oldest academic building still in use today.  Within the building are several classrooms, offices, and a chapel.  As part of the chapel there is a small balcony. I remember learning that, back in colonial days, the balcony is where enslaved persons sat, while their white masters sat down below.  One might think slaves wouldn’t even have been allowed in church back then.  However, their masters wanted them there, to hear the sermon.  A typical sermon being one that served to remind enslaved persons that their station in life was by God’s design. 

I am glad to say that if you go to the campus today, there is a memorial bearing the names of people who were enslaved by the college over a period of 172 years, some of whom, undoubtedly, built the chapel.       

When we consider how getting bigger has been the way of it for America since her beginning, and how the church, for better or worse, has helped her in her quest, it should not surprise us if we, as a church, should feel a certain desire to always be getting bigger as well.  I know I feel this way sometimes.  As embarrassed as I may be to admit it, on both a personal and professional level, I want bigger crowds, a bigger budget, a bigger safety net.  I feel better when people are asking, what can I do?  Rather than, do I have to do that again?  When my brain is feeling inspired, not empty.  When I am not thinking about how to keep something going, because I am too busy trying to keep up.  When we, with our ten thousand other things to do, couldn’t be happier to put it all down and show up to church for another Sunday.  Yes, I too would like to be bigger.    

But who am I kidding?  If the article I read recently is any indication, only those churches that are already big are getting bigger, while the little ones are dying.  Of course, the article didn’t say what constitutes “big” or “little,” leaving open the possibility, I guess, that 2 people could be considered big, and 2,000 people could be considered small. 

What I find interesting is what Jesus says: Do not be afraid, little flock.  At the time he said it, Luke records there were thousands in the crowd, so many people that they began trampling on one another.[3]  Some were sick, so sick they were dying, and they just wanted to get close enough to have Jesus touch them.  Others were lonely and wanted to get close enough to have Jesus hug them.  And others just wanted to get close enough just to hear what wisdom or hope he might have to offer.  There were thousands of them, and Jesus called them a “little flock.”  It’s almost as if Jesus knows, no matter how big we get, we’re still just a little flock. 

The truth is, we can super-size our order at the drive-thru all day long and build houses as big as old Solomon had in all his glory, but we’re still going to be found wanting.  We can live to see the greatest medical achievements of all time, but there will always be something that can kill us.  We can work our fingers to the bone putting food on our table, and even on our neighbor’s table, but the poor we will have with us always.  We can be as big as an empire, protected and preserved on all sides, but still, we’ll be a little flock, wishing we could be bigger.  So, take heed: do not be afraid, little flock.  Do not be afraid for your life, what you will wear, what you will eat.  For it is the nations who worry about all these things, and you are not a nation.  

If we take Jesus at his word here, it would be easy to take him as reckless.  Do not worry about what you will wear or what you will eat.  “Man, are you crazy!  Everyone needs to eat, and some already haven’t had a bite in days!”  But it would be a mistake to take Jesus as saying that in this world possessions do not matter.  For what Jesus says is, it is God’s good pleasure to give you a kingdom, and in this kingdom, possessions matter greatly, because in this kingdom people will sell their possessions to provide for the poor. Because in this kingdom, sharing, generosity, and human equality rule.  In this kingdom, purses will be stuffed with a kind of riches that will never run out, the riches of brotherhood and sisterhood.  In this kingdom, a piece of bread broken and offered in grace will be worth a feast.  So, take heed little flock, and do not be afraid, there is a kingdom, God’s own, and it belongs to you. 

---

[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/07/14/1187460517/megachurches-growing-liquid-church

[2] Numbers 13:32; 14:8.

[3] Luke 12:1