PleaseGrace

It’s Christmastide.  I just got word from a friend of mine that he’s splitting ways with his spouse.  “It will be okay,” I told him.  “How do you know?” he asked me.  “You don’t know that.  You can’t say that.  How do you know?”  “Because,” I assured him, “it’s been okay before.”

Difficult as it may be to believe, and as impossible as it may be to do, this is what we all can celebrate today, that it will be okay.  Because it’s been okay before.  There’s been peace in Syria before.  We have put our guns down before and wound up on the right side of justice before.  We have reached across tables and aisles and walked across streets to be good samaritans to perfect strangers before.  We have reached even deeper into our hearts to pray for our enemies before.  The have-nots have been made rich at the hands of the have-it-alls before and the have-it-alls have received as much in return from the have-nots.  We have mustered up within ourselves the power to speak well of those we agree with without also having to speak ill of those we don’t.  We have done this before.

In the Christian tradition Christmas arrives in the mystery of an Almighty God who doesn’t ask us if we have the means to protect and defend him.  This God doesn’t ask if we share his beliefs or even have any beliefs at all. Where we go to church, mosque or temple is secondary to whether we do go and if so, why do you go and how is it making you more gracious?  This God neither asks nor cares about our leanings—right, left, gender, political, theological or otherwise.  Do you think I’m a man or woman?  This God says I was born a baby, so were you, can’t we leave it at that?  This God doesn’t ask if we have enough money with which to buy him some food and clothing.  This God asks only if we’re willing to share what little bit we do have.  This God doesn’t ask if we can first get it together in our marriages and prioritize our commitments accordingly before he’ll come through the door and make a home with us.

At Christmas God puts his own faith in our humanity on the line.  Entering the world like we all do as a baby, God puts the eternal at the mercy of the calendar.  At the end of nine months, give or take a day or two, God will have to come.  To parents who aren’t ready, delivered by a virgin of all things!  And if a virgin birth seems half-baked and laughable; if it defies all logic and reason; if we know it to actually be implausible, I think this is the way God would have it be.  If nothing else a virgin birth is God’s version of storming the castle.  It happens on God’s terms, without warning and with a force that topples the powerful, dumbfounds the scholar, and lifts up the lowly.  And yet, in the virgin birth God chooses to go it our way, leaving himself no exit plan, no way to back out should things not go well.

And we know things won’t go well, for things often don’t.  The fact is, precious little in our world is likely to make it, including our marriages.  But this isn’t the hardest part.  The hardest part perhaps is that that which does make it is going to change almost entirely.  When all is said and done, the things that remain will be nearly unrecognizable to us; ghosts of a past once loved.  We will look at these things through squinted eyes and wonder how and why they betrayed us, and how and why we could still love them.  So it goes with spouses, children, and even newborn babies.

But this is what Christmas means to me: everything will be okay because it’s been okay before.

As I sit here typing, Christmas Day has actually come and gone.  I suppose this means ho-ho is over and ho-hum has returned.  Except my children are lying on the living room floor building the Legos Santa brought them.  Soon they’ll skip out the back door to take a swing ride on this unusually warm December day.  Watching them play I can’t help but think, So this is what becomes of hope.

We dig our gift out from under the tree, unsure at first of what it is and disappointed at what it is not.  Give it time, tinker with it though, and in our disappointment we may also discover a certain wonder and curiosity rising up within us—the hopefulness of what it could yet be.  Of course, in our discovery we may also find that the gift is indeed what it is—a gift, yes, that ought to be handled with gratitude and gentleness, but alas, something that neither can nor ever will be changed.  A gift that despite our best calculations will never save our failed expectations.  We will need to return the gift to the place from which it came, give it away to someone who needs it more, or appreciate it for what it is.

In the case of my friend, I don’t know which it is.  A spouse is hardly something you dig out from under a tree and unwrap (at least not in my part of the world).  So some will say then that he and his wife should have seen it coming.  They should have thought more carefully about their vows, dated longer, had a few more get-to-know you conversations before saying, I do.  And now that they have, it’s too late to back out.  Live with it the way it is.

I don’t know.  Marriage can be a deadly mixture of fits and starts, of speechless joy and groaning anger.  We wake up next to the one person we swore we’d always be honest with only to find that our honesty is going to wreck us.  And while loyalty may have its place and persistence can pay off, while that which doesn’t kill us usually does make us stronger, those who preach loyalty and persistence at all costs are just playing the fools.  What is required is hope.  Hope is what the ancients called the sum total of suffering, perseverance, and character.  In other words, hope does not say, “Forget about what happened yesterday and today.  Tomorrow will be better.”  Hope does not bury its head in the sand or wish upon a star.  Hope does not plow ahead.  Rather, hope demands that we look back over yesterday and today and take stock of our wounds.  Hope considers the wreckage of our lives and asks, how did this happen?  Who’s responsible?    And yet, hope plays neither the victim nor the jury, for hope knows it will do us no good to lick our wounds or place blame.  Like Almighty God, hope is concerned for who we’ve become.

If hope is born of suffering, suffering, we know, changes us both inside and out.  It fundamentally alters our self-confidence as well as our relationship to neighbors, friends, and community.  That suffering results in perseverance may be a grotesque assumption.  Perseverance, however, is not at all what we think or say it is: our ability to take a few licks.  Perseverance is not a measurement of our ability to beat all odds and go it alone.  Above all, perseverance is a matter of our continued trust in others.  Despite the number of times we’ve been kicked, punched, and thrown to the ground, can we continue to trust others?  In short, if suffering does lend itself to perseverance and perseverance to hope, than the continued existence of hope in the world depends upon you and me and our daringness to trust each other as signs of goodness and mercy still.  Give up this trust and we become critics and enemies to one another.  Hold fast to it and suddenly a whole new world order becomes possible.

For the sake of my friend this is where I’d like to add that the same ones who told us that suffering, perseverance, and character add up to equal hope, they have also told us that the end of hope is the total loss of disappointment.  Hope does not disappoint us.  Regret may remain; sadness and scars, too.  In a strange twist of understanding, love itself may force us to go our separate ways.  These are the awful side effects of having hoped at all.  Still, hope does not disappoint us.  So go forth.  Suffer, trust, be trusted, rest up, then move along and do it all over again.  Until you find yourself somewhere down the road where the nights don’t feel so long and dark anymore, where hope becomes you, and where at last you can remember a time when everything was okay, and when everything was yet to be.

I’d like to give you two things.  The first is a word, just a single word.  It’s not a typical word for you.  It’s not hope, faith, or love. Those are good words; heartwarming words.  But I don’t think they’re enough for you today.  I want to give you a word with a little more backbone.  The word is: plucky.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines it as having or showing a lot of courage or determination:  plucky.  Notice, you don’t have to have a lot of courage or determination.  It says you can be plucky by just looking the part.  I don’t know if Mr. Merriam and Mr. Webster were psychologists or sociologists, but they knew enough to know that the line between who we are and who we want to be, between having courage and not having courage, is very fine, a matter of mere appearances at times.

These days I’m watching my four year old learn to ride his bike without training wheels.  For sure, he’s had his fair share of falls and skinned knees.  But the other day he seemed to get it and I yelled out, “You’re so brave!”  To which he responded, “I’m so scared!”  But there he went, down the road without his training wheels.  Was he being brave or scared?

I’ve heard this line before, mostly in movies, when some old guy says to some young kid, “You got real pluck.”  Like, you’re a class act, the real deal, and I’d think, I want to have pluck.  Because people with pluck are people who, seeing what they want or seeing what needs to be done, rush in and get the job done.  The firefighter plucks a child from the fire.  The child plucks a feather from a bird.  Of course, if we want to say that the firefighter and the child have pluck, we must also admit that the bird has pluck.  This is what I really want you to know: a person with pluck is someone who has endured a great loss.  To have lost an essential part of yourself—a feather, a loved one—to have been ripped apart, and to come out clean on the other side, is nothing short of courageous.

Granted, this is more easily said than done, for being plucked requires being scarred, and scars are eternal memories.  Sit with them, walk towards them, run from them, do none of this or all of it at once, “the weak,” said Gandhi, “can only remember.  Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”  Indeed, remembering can be hard.  It takes work and honesty.  Sometimes our memory plays tricks on us.  We think back on our loved ones and sometimes we see them as having been better or worse than they really were, and this causes us to see ourselves as having been better or worse than we really were, and are.  I’m not saying this is a good thing or bad thing.  It just is what it is.  To have lost an essential part of ourselves makes some of us feel…lost, while others of us finally feel free.  Treat that part honestly, though, and you treat it honorably, mercifully, and you come out clean on the other side of remembering.

One of the oldest stories in all of literature is that of Noah and his ark.  In a world is so full of grief, disruption, and a hopelessness that not even God can bear anymore, God decides one day to wipe it all out and start all over.  (Sometimes that is necessary, I guess.)  But at the last second God has a twitch in the heart and God thinks it over again.  “No, no, there must be something worth keeping here.  Nothing is a total loss.”  So God finds an old man, a relic named Noah, and God tells Noah the plan.

“Build yourself a big boat, Noah, and collect 7 pairs of every animal and creature there is and get them on board.  It’s going to rain.”

Dear Ms. Davis,

I hear you’ve been released from jail.  I’m glad to hear it.  When I first heard that you, an official clerk, had been put in jail for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses in Kentucky, I thought, that’s a shame, because I thought you could have done more, and by “more” I really mean, better.  This being the case, I want you to know, I didn’t judge you then and I don’t judge you now for holding up your religious freedom flag.  Really.  I don’t.  I do back the judge who locked you up for breaking the law.  Not that you care about what I think, but the judge got it right when he put you behind bars.  I’ve actually stayed up at night wondering what the judge might have thought about it all.  For all I know you and the judge were both born and raised in the same town.  You had access to the same local news stations and were exposed to the same preachers and teachers.  And we all know, no one can deny it, that you, the judge, and I, we all read the same Bible.  So maybe the judge agreed with you.  It’s not improbable.  Maybe, had he had to issue the marriage license instead of you…  Well, I guess we’ll never know.  He had a job to do and like it or not, he did it.

I know, how well one does their job can be a matter of opinion.  How well did the judge judge?  How well have you done your job?  How well am I doing mine?  All opinions being equal, when the judge ordered you to jail, did you feel like the law had failed you?  Should the law be given the power to force us to do something that puts us against our religion and faith, something that splits our heart down the middle?  I mean, forgive me my questions, I know nothing essential about you, and if for no other reason than this, I shouldn’t assume to understand your reasons for doing what you have done.  But if you and your history are anything like me and mine, than you love your Bible.  It’s God’s very word to you.  The first and last authority on everything that matters.  Your grandmother gave it to you perhaps, inscribed with Acts 16:31 on the inside cover: “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”  Like I said, I know diddly-squat about you.  Like, when, where, why do you believe?  Is it ever hard for you to believe in Jesus?  Nothing says that your family has to believe like you do, or even at all, to be saved; it’s just you that has to believe.  Is that how it’s gone for you and your loved ones?

Sorry.  Here I go again wanting details when details may seem unnecessary to you.  There was a time not too long ago when they did to me.  It’s not that I was ignorant of the details, like I didn’t know what might be in them—the possibilities, the alternatives, the joyful surprises.  I knew not to ignore the meaning between the lines, and I’ve always maintained a teachable spirit.  But still, had I held your position, I too would have said no to same-sex marriage for the Bible tells me so, and crowds of people with their paper crosses would have cheered my name, while Eye of the Tiger played on a loop.

Then one random day, I was taken down Apostle Paul style.  Dropped to the ground and blinded by the light of Jesus, I met someone who could put a cup of cold water in the hands of a thirsty person with the best of them.  And isn’t this what the Bible according to Jesus comes down to?  “Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”  They believed, they acted kindly, they testified to a holy calling, they told me they got it all from reading the Bible, and they were gay.

So here’s what I’ve come to decide: should I ever feel I am being forced by the law to do something that cuts me to the heart, it’s not an attack on my religious freedom (for examples of attacks on religious freedom see black churches burning; see Jews being carted off by the thousands, also to burn; see ISIS; think of being told that your job is to issue same-sex marriage licenses and if you don’t like it, tough luck, under penalty of death you can’t quit your job; think genocide, extermination, whole-scale degradation.)  Rather, what you felt an attack on would, I think, be more appropriately called, your religion, for which there is no protection under the law.

Now I realize this may come as a disappointment to you, that the law which gives a same-sex couple the right to receive a marriage license doesn’t give you any right on the basis of religion to deny them that right.  But at no point in our nation’s history has the law ever protected religion.  If I may be so bold, at no point in our history do we ever want it to.  For as soon as the law takes to respecting religion and faith on individual bases, we have weaponized religion and faith.  Mike Huckabee claims that “we shouldn’t criminalize the Christian faith,” but I think he is missing the greater danger, that the Christian faith can be criminal.  Criminal when its people know how to be right only by making others look wrong.

Ms. Davis, I am not at all disappointed by your loss of religious freedom.  From what I can see, you haven’t actually lost a thing.  What disappoints me is our pitiful take on religious freedom today.  Truly, what does it say about you and the excellence of your religious freedom when the best you can do with it is to keep two people from getting married?  Do you even know the two people?  Beyond the fact that they’re gay and want to get married, do you know anything else about them?  You probably don’t.  But I wonder, if you did, would it change your mind, or at least make you care a bit more about them and their marriage license?  Might I suggest you sit down over a cup of coffee with them?  My guess is, they’ll be glad to buy.  And then, consider more carefully the thousands upon thousands of people who are fleeing their countries today for safer refuge elsewhere and ask yourself if, for the sake of these and all who are like them, you couldn’t find a better use for your religious freedom?  Because your decision not to give marriage licenses to same-sex couples doesn’t make you a champion for the word of God.  All it’s done is to prove that you are not a very good employee for the state of Kentucky.

I am glad to hear you are out of jail.  I really do believe we can do more, and do better, because remember, we read the same Bible, and while I haven’t read anywhere that we get to decide who should and should not get a marriage license, I have read that we ought to seek understanding, practice compassion, bless our enemies, and let God take care of the rest.

Sincerely,

A Household Member

One night a couple months ago my wife and I attended a kindergarten pre-registration session for my daughter, Lillian.  You read that right.  We didn’t actually sign Lillian up for kindergarten.  We just heard about how to sign her up.  It was the sign-ups to the sign-up.  It was like the calm before the storm.  (Why do we even speak of a such a thing—calm before the storm?  Do we really think we can convince ourselves, as we’re running around boarding up windows, pillaging the shelves at the grocery store, that we are calm?  I know we are really pointing to the fact that for at least a few more minutes we can sit on the back deck sipping lemonade, because soon, with hardly a warning bell, the heavens are going to rain down hell on us.  Soak it up then.  Stay calm and sip gently.)

But for those of us who tend to chug our lemonade unnecessarily, there is pre-registration.

Sitting in the auditorium of what will soon be Lillian’s newest adventure, I am giddy.  There’s nothing eye-catching about the surroundings.  The walls are darker than one would expect for a place that teaches children about ultra-violet rays and the colors of the rainbow.  There is a carpet, which is the first sign that the room needs a make-over, or that someone hates the custodian.  There are chairs set up on either side of the room, about 30 rows in all, and in between them a wobbly cart with a projector that is pointing at a dimly lit screen on a dimly lit stage.  It’s all plain and simple.

A woman steps out in front of us and introduces herself as Mrs. So-and-So, the Principal.  You can tell that she can’t wait to tell you whatever it is that she’s about to tell you.  All she tells us about are bus routes, school lunches, and the PTA.  Then she hands off the microphone to the school nurse to say a word about hepatitis shots and the need to pack an extra pair of clothes in your child’s backpack.  (“Just in case,” she reminds us.)  “We love spending the day with your children, getting to see the world with them, to teach them and to learn from them,” says the principal.  I lean over to my wife and announce in a rather self-congratulatory way, as if I discovered her for the good of all humanity, “She’s great.”

After she is done speaking we’re invited to check out one of the four kindergarten classrooms.  Right off I notice there are very few walls in the whole school.  The library opens into the hallway, which twists and turns up a wide ramp to dump you out in the cafeteria, from which you can look out and see down into the gym.  The individual kindergarten rooms are divided from each other only by partitions—corkboard walls on wheels.  The walls of course are covered in ABC’s, lowercase and uppercase.  There is a “weather wheel” that can be turned to indicate sun, clouds, rain, or snow.  There doesn’t seem to be an inch of wall that isn’t covered by student artwork or the latest science experiment results.  The teachers are there to ask questions, which they do in a manner so sure and sweet that if one of them had sat down on the floor right then and there, I probably would have plunked myself right into their lap for story time.

For a moment I close my eyes to see Lillian bopping around the room like it’s her own bedroom, complete with corners for napping, reading, and coloring.  Meanwhile the sound of other children eating lunch and playing kickball wafts over the walls, filling her senses with the anticipation of things to come.  She is free and safe from all alarm.

And yet, and yet, in that same moment one thought enters my mind like an uninvited guest at a party.  Drunk, inappropriate to the occasion, I want them gone, but they are unavoidably passed out in the middle of the action, and no one seems able to move them or to ignore them.  My eyes snap open.  The thought is this: what if the school needs to go into lockdown?  What if a crazy person with a gun finds their way in and all the children need to huddle behind closed doors?  What then?  There’s no doors!  There’s no doors anywhere!

I’m not a pessimist.  I go hard on myself for letting Bad Mind take over.

I realize that for every alternative available to me and my wife—homeschool Lillian, petition the town to send her to a school with doors, pay for private school, lock her away in a tower (I saw Disney’s movie, Tangled.  Rapunzel did pretty well for herself in the end)—we’re not likely to do any of these things.  For one thing, Lillian doesn’t have the hair to be Rapunzel.  For another thing, if we haven’t figured it out by now, try as we may, no one gets total pass protection through life.

As Barbara Brown Taylor once noted in her short essay, Truth to Tell, “Sons and daughters of God are killed in every generation.  They have been killed in holy wars and inquisitions, concentration camps and prison cells.  They have been killed in Cape Town, Memphis, El Salvador, and Alabama.”  We can sadly add to this list now Newtown, Kenya, The West Nickel Mines School, the mountains of Virginia, the streets of Boston, and the church pews of South Carolina.

It would seem there are at least three ways we can respond to this truth.  We can open our eyes without actually seeing what’s before us.  We can pretend none of it is happening at all.  Stick a lollipop in our mouth, skip on down the street, and see only the silver linings on every dark cloud.  Some might call it optimism, others, hope.  Either way we have failed to recognize that hope alone won’t put a cup of water in the hands of a thirsty person.  That neither right thinking nor right belief leads to right actions.

So we might instead admit defeat and just close our eyes in despair of it all, which, like wishfulness, is as equally shortsighted as it is unhelpful.

Thankfully, there is a third option.  I couldn’t come up with it while touring Lillian’s school, but it came to me rather innocently a few days later while sitting in church.  It was Palm Sunday and I was sitting in the pews, which might not sound all that unusual, except for me it was.  For almost a decade now I’ve been used to sitting up front in church.  Actually, not just up front but front and center, and alone.  As the preacher or liturgist or both, I’ve always maintained a well protected perch from atop the pulpit or behind the communion table.   Donning a black clerical robe, the idea was never to stand out as being more important than the masses.  Rather, the purpose of the robe is to ensure that the masses can easily pick out the one person among them who no matter what will sit on the floor with their children or sit with them in the hospital waiting room, the one person who will lead the march to justice and the prayer for mercy.

These days, however, I’m working as a hospice chaplain and sitting in the pews.  It’s not as roomy as sitting on a 36 inch wide, double cushioned chair up front all by myself.  Nor is it as quiet.  But sitting in the pew listening to the story of Palm Sunday, I realize that where we sit and who we sit with has everything to do with how we hear the story, and what we’ll decide to do next once the story is over.

If you’re a child, the story of Palm Sunday is just a parade, and the finest one around.  For one thing, the street vendors don’t charge for their trinkets.  Not only are they handing stuff out for free, but you have to take it, which is a dream come true for every boy and girl whose parents have only ever said no to spending $10 for a bag of cotton candy or a whirly light-up thingy.  This time there is no saying “no.”  Everyone gets a palm tree branch to wave in the air.  Not only this, but the rule of the parade is you have to yell and cheer as loud as you can for those marching in the parade.  No one is allowed to hush another person today.

“Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of The Lord.”  When you see the guy riding on the donkey, scream it at the top of your lungs, the parade-directing-preacher directs us.

This is something only children will understand.  The politician wearing a suit and the veterans decked out in medals and flags are all respectable, but they’ve also become predictable.  That we cheer for them both, sometimes with the same levels of enthusiasm, is a misappropriation of history and of hope, but the guy riding on the donkey, what’s he up to?  He’s clearly not running for office or heading off to fight yet another war.  What’s he done lately to merit applause?

According to sources he’s been accepting a number of invitations to dine at some of the most respectable establishments in town.  Cocktails with elite academics who recently published groundbreaking interpretations on vexing moral questions, now local best-sellers; hors d’oeuvres with party leaders; dessert with religious power-brokers.  Except on every occasion it would seem the dinner gets interrupted by someone who has decided to kick the door in because they’ve had enough of not making the guest list.  It’s usually a woman of the shunned variety.  Divorced, maybe it was her doing, maybe it wasn’t.  Times being what they were, it didn’t matter, no one was likely to ask for her side of the story anyway.  She’s got a letter cut across her chest now and no man is going to give her his love again, let along an arm to escort her into a party.  She’s poor in pocket and in spirit.

Or she was never married.  After years of not being able to make it happen, her father did what he could, though not what he should, and sold her off to another family.  On that day she became a disgrace, doomed to wander forever from door to door in search of herself.  But when she hears there’s a party going on and that Jesus is at it, she figures there must not have been a guest list and that she can just show up for this one.  After all, if a guy who would ride around on a donkey can get in, how can she not?

But sitting down at the table next to Jesus, everyone just stares at her.  To most she is just an object to be examined, labeled, and put in a corner for safe keeping.  It’s not that she’s not safe in this crowd (though she’s not, not at all).  It’s that no one feels safe around her.  She’s a threat to their ideals, a discomfort to their every comfort.  So they stare at her as if to say, “We see you there.  Now don’t you dare try to move.”

To them Jesus has but one simple instruction.  “Look at her.  Soak her up.  Take her in, into your arms.”

For to see someone is to acknowledge their presence, but to look at them is to see with the eyes of the heart…

To see not just what we can handle, but to allow ourselves to be handled, to be gripped, moved, by what we see…

To allow ourselves to be seen in return…

To see not just as we feel, but also as others must feel…

To see feelingly.

Sitting in church I realize this is the third option I’m going to need to get Lillian through kindergarten: GOOD, HARD LOOKING.

As far as the parade goes, it’s over and the man who rode upon the donkey has been taken down by a terrible alliance between heartless religion and feckless government.  The accusations are several, but top of the list is that he cared too much about the woman and everyone who ever has been, and everyone who still might be, robbed by indifference.  The cheering crowds now yell for his scalp.  But listening to the children in the pews, they’re still cheering hallelujah.  In fact, they’ve slipped onto the floor and are rolling around, tickling each other on the back of the neck with their palm branches.

“Shush,” I hear one mother say.  “Don’t you hear what’s happening in the story?  This is a serious moment.  Jesus is about to be killed.  This isn’t a happy moment.”

My own child looks up and passes me an animal cracker.  “Here, want one?”  For a moment I wonder why the children don’t seem to see what I see.  Then I wonder if the truer matter is that I don’t see what they see.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said that,

“One day youngsters will learn words they will not understand.

Children from India will ask:

What is hunger?

Children from Alabama will ask:

What is racial segregation?

Children from Hiroshima will ask:

What is the atomic bomb?

Children at school will ask:

What is war?

You will answer them.

You will tell them:

Those words are not used anymore

like stage coaches, galleys or slavery

Words no longer meaningful.

That is why they have been removed from dictionaries.”

I don’t know what words Lillian will and will not learn in kindergarten.  I don’t know what to do about open schools with no doors or locks—such crosses we bear.  The children of God have been killed in every generation.  I do know that in such places there is no telling who you’re going to end up sitting next to.  They might be friendly.  They might threaten your life, and these are the ones you really want to take a good hard look at, and to try with all your might to love.

“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” 

So said the Apostle Paul a long, long time ago to a small band of Christians in Rome.  Granted, Paul didn’t think of himself as speaking to Christians any more than did those to whom Paul was speaking think of themselves as being Christians.  Paul and his audience were both Jewish.  (Paul called them “saints, God’s beloved”.)  They thought like Jews, they practiced their religion like Jews, they ate like Jews.  Like their ancestors of old who looked for the Almighty and found the Almighty in some of the most eye-splitting places, they were Jews through and through.  That this last quality of being Jewish would cause some many centuries later to call them not Jews, but Christians, would perhaps have sparked within them as much surprise as distress.  But so it went that this small band of Jews in Rome who had heard of God once appearing to their great-great uncle Moses in a burning bush and to their long-lost cousin Elijah in a whisper of silence, one day saw something else they’d never truly seen before: a man.

What made this man so different was not his miracles–feeding 4,000 people on a couple fish and a few loaves of bread; calming stormy seas; or his views on power–that money can be corrupting and poverty crippling beyond self-repair.  Moses had split the Nile River and Amos ranted against social injustice.  Rather, what made this man so different was his mercy…

He forgave women that others would have stoned.

He leveled evil by inviting its perpetrators to see both the consequence of their ways AND the possibility for change, in him!

He prayed first, which is to say, he insisted on letting others talk first.  He listened to understand, and then he spoke, and this was his compassion.

Yes, on occasion he was known to flip tables mercilessly, but he did it only to those who should have known better than to sit down and lick their plate in the presence of a starved beggar.

And what the small band of Jews saw in this man was something of God, the divine spark igniting a bush again.

True, it would not have been unusual to hear a Jew say that God had met them in a way never seen before.  To say that God Almighty had descended to earth in flesh and bone even was not entirely new.  The Greeks and Romans had been setting their caesars up in palaces, trotting them around in chariots, giving them dominion over the sky and sea, and calling them God for years.  What made the elevation of the mercy-man Jesus to divine status so different, however, was that it depended entirely upon the testimony of rather shaky witnesses to say over and over again, it’s true, we believe this about him.

Where the Greeks and Romans upheld their gods and caesars with proclamations and doctrines, giving them the necessary and unchanging justification to do most anything and to never be questioned (at least not to their face) about it—so if Poseidon chose to churn up the seas and cause a massive typhoon to wipe out an entire village, as terrible as this may be, Poseidon must have his reasons for doing so and those reasons must be good—Jesus never laid claim to being anything close to a god, or even to good.  As far as we know he didn’t write anything down that couldn’t be erased and the few proclamations he did make tended to make those who once called him God to rethink their position.

Consider the rich man who once called Jesus, Good Teacher, and asked him what he must do to inherit eternal life.  Jesus threw off the title, saying, “God alone is good,” and as for eternal life, start with the commandments: Don’t murder, don’t steal, honor your mother and father.  At the heart of Judaism is a concern for law, for a system that works to nurture justice and to protect the innocent.  That the rich man responds to Jesus by telling him, “I’ve done all of that,” makes clear that he is well on his way to eternal life.  But then this: “You lack one thing: go, sell whatever you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.  Then come follow me.”  It’s our reminder from Jesus that social responsibility without compassion will get us no where except further away from eternal life.  We can live our lives following all the rules.  We can never join a march, never disrupt the public square, never steal from our neighbor or even want what they have.  We can sit in a pew every week, drop some money in the poor box, keep to ourselves and never pass a judgment.  We can do all of this and still be miles away from the goodness of God, because while all things do work together for good for those who love God, the operative word is not “good.”  It’s “love,” which is nothing short of a revolution.

It seems to me that we who call ourselves Christians have come to hear these words differently today.  We hear that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose, and we forget that if we are to love God, we must first work together.  That the purpose of God is to love and to work together.  But instead we stake our claim on working only with those who share our purpose, who love like we do, and most notably, who love us like we want them to.  So “liberals” tell “conservatives” who in turn tell gays and lesbians who in turn tell gun owners who in turn tell pacifists that all things will not work together for good for you because you are not living according to the purpose of God.  We hone in only on the parts that make us feel good about being us, forgetting that there is no goodness, or even any hope of goodness for us, if we don’t give up some of our goodness to love.  Perhaps we need reminding that these words—“all things work together for good”—these words were not spoken so much to Christians, or for the sake of Christians, as to those who, on account of their generous orthodoxy and unassuming ways, would come to be called Christians.   

Not too long ago I was sharing with a group of children the story of how Jesus once fed those 4,000 people with just a couple fish and a few loaves of bread and how after everyone was done eating there were 12 baskets of leftovers.  One little girl asked if the story was really true.  (I thought this was a very brave thing for her to do.)

     Another child, equally brave, said, “I don’t think so.”

     I asked them then, “Do you not think Jesus could feed that many people?”

     “Yes, I think he can,” the two said together.

     “But I don’t think he did it on his own.”

     Overcome with curiosity, I had to know.  “How do you think he did it then?”

     “I think the people just kept passing the food around, taking really small bites to make sure everyone got something.”

     “In the story, though, it says that everyone was filled and that there were leftovers.  How could everyone be stuffed if they only had a little bit?”

     “I don’t know how the leftovers got there,” said yet another child, “but I think everyone was filled because it feels really good to share.”

If Paul had been asking a question when he said, “all things work together for good for those who love God?” the answer must have been “yes.”  In fact we know it was, and is.  That somehow, in a world like ours, someone had the guts to say, “all things work together for good, now go out and make it so,” is indeed a call to love and revolution.

But would our vision fit the call.  In the wake of this past week’s shootings at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston I have heard a lot of questions.

Is this a time for politics or healing?

Is this the appropriate time and occasion to raise the platform again to talk about gun control?

Was this a hate crime or a crime against Christians (I understand the difference, but seriously, wouldn’t we do better just to tell ourselves that all crime is hatred?)

None of this surprises me.  We’ve heard these same haunting questions before.  The same people ranting so singularly about their position.  For my part, I just don’t think they are the right questions for today.  Maybe we can ask them tomorrow, but as long as we insist upon asking them today, we wait for the next gun to go off.  These questions will not lead us to the more urgent answers—the right answers—we need today.  Some ask, is this a time for poltiics or healing?  But what about,  can our politics be a force for healing?  And what about our religions and our families?  Can they be of that same force?  Can we start a revolution with just a few loaves of bread and a couple fish?   We already know the answer: all things work together for good for those who love God.  Are we humble enough and gutsy enough to prove it?

I don’t think it is inappropriate, given the nature both of this crowd and of the one who has gathered us all here, namely Margery, to tell a story about…sheep.  This seems to be the theme we are running with this evening anyway.

“The Lord is my Shepherd,” we have just heard played and sung.  And in a moment,

“My Shepherd will supply my need, 

Jehovah is his name.  

In pastures fresh, he makes me feed, 

beside the living streams.”

We’re talking of course about sheep, about us, about the places we wander to—sometimes knowingly, sometimes against our wills—and about the things that happen to us in those places where we feel lost and yet free.  And most especially we are talking about the people, the shepherds, who lovingly track us down in those places and gently nudge us onward.

This all part of the story I want to share with you, and I promise I’ll get on with it in just a moment, but first, an observation about sheep that may be helpful to the story.  (Keep in mind, this observation is coming from a guy who’s never really observed a sheep.  Even at the petting zoo, I don’t pet the sheep.)

From what I can tell, when looking at a flock of sheep, their ability to travel together and stick together does not depend upon the individual sheep.  In other words, in order for there to be unity, oneness, among the sheep, they don’t have to know each other.  It is, however, necessary that they at least recognize each other as sheep.  Stick a moose or a pig in the flock and the sheep will baa in unified protest or just shudder in fear of the one who is different.  But their togetherness, their togetherness rests solely upon the shepherd, and not upon the loyalty of the sheep towards the shepherd, but upon the loyalty of the shepherd towards the sheep.

Now I can’t speak for you, but this comes as good news to me, because as I look around, I see only one or two people that I know and who know me.  Not many of us have been introduced.  But here we are.  Thanks to the generous, spirited welcome of those who call this hallowed sanctuary home, and of Margery, here we are.  And I submit to you that in this time and place it is not necessary to our unity that we know each other.  For us to share grief and hope, as we are here to do, it is only necessary that we recognize each other as human beings.  Or, if you will, as sheep.  Which brings me, finally, to my story.  It comes from scripture, from the gospel of Luke.

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus.  And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  So Jesus told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?  When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.  And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’  Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

I picked this story to share mainly because it’s one that Margery and I read together a short while ago on the day we first met.  Margery had just received the news that what had been ailing her for months was cancer.  Life as she knew it had changed and before long it was about to change again.  “I’m not afraid to die,” she told me.  “It’s not the moving on that bothers me.  It’s the leaving behind.”

Leaning back in my chair, I pulled a page out of my Counseling 101 textbook, drummed my fingers and said, “Yes, tell me more about…leaving behind.”  And that’s when she started in about the 100 sheep and the 1 who got away.  “I worry about people who aren’t saved,” she confessed.

Now it was clear from listening to her tell it that Margery did not think of herself, nor was she likely to ever think of herself, as the sheep who got away and needed saving.  At best she was the shepherd who went off in search of the lost.  At worst she was a member of the herd of 99 who followed the rules and kept to the straight and narrow.

What we ought to remember, though, is that right or wrong, all judgments aside for a moment, we’re never told how or why the 1 sheep got away.  I mean, what kind of shepherd are we dealing with here who loses track of sheep and then abandons 99 to the wiles of the wilderness to go off in search of just 1?  Why are we so quick to wag a finger at the sheep?  Perhaps we ought to indict the shepherd for negligence?

Moreover, how do we know the 1 sheep didn’t want to get lost?  Maybe they’d had enough of living under the watchful, arrogant eye of the flock.  Time to find greener pastures.  How does the saying go?  “Not all who wander are aimless.”  Amen to that.  Sheep are not as dumb as they look.  If anything they are stubborn, persistent, far more certain of themselves than we give them credit for.

Truly, to know Margery was to know that she was the 1 sheep.

At a young age, following the separation of her parents, she and her sister had to live many years in an orphanage.  When her parents did patch things back up years later, it was Margery who kept the family afloat, who bounced from job to job, working her way up whatever ladders she could to provide for the family.

It strikes me that in recalling Margery, her youngest nieces and nephews remember her as their source for comic books and bedtime stories.  “The bedtime stories were clearly made up on the spot.  Every night she would invariably paint herself into a corner and not be able to get out of it.  That’s when she would declare, time to go to bed!  But the next night the story would pick back up and go on.”

As an adult she loved to read fantasy books about dragons and vampires, so long as the vampires were good, and she took on the Harry Potter series with all the enthusiasm of a 13 year old.

And though she was banned from the kitchen on account of being an absolutely terrible cook, she had an uncanny ability to keep cats and dogs alive forever just by giving them a lap to lie on.

I don’t know but that you don’t get through life and also help others get through their life by being just another one of the sheep in the fold.  I’m sure Margery loved dragons because they are fierce fighters, and cats because they are winsome and gritty.  She took to bedtime stories and fantasies as a way of creating more beautiful, holier worlds for us to live in, even if just for a moment.  Yes, she was in her own right more the shepherd who rescued us than she was anything else, and we owe her our gratitude for that.

But she was also the 1 sheep who wandered off.  She was the stand-out in need of saving.  And while she may not have liked to think of herself as such, I will tell you how the rest of my visit went with her that first day we met.

After reading up on the 99 sheep and the 1 who got away, and her telling me that she didn’t much care for my particular take on the story, but she did like me, she agreed that it wouldn’t be so terrible to discover after all that we may not have gotten it all right.  That while we have surely gotten some things right, we may still have a thing or two left to discover about God, ourselves, and who, or what, saves us.  Because it wasn’t the sheep who stayed put that got saved by Love.  It was the sheep who got away.

 I don’t know what you believe about who, if anyone, meets us when we are put out to pasture.  I know that Margery believed that in death God would meet her in the love of Jesus, the shepherd who traveled far and wide to seek and save the lost.  And if only for the sake of Margery, I do believe that’s just what Jesus did. 

But still, I don’t know what you believe about who, if anyone, meets us when we are put out to pasture.  Rumi once quipped that “Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.  When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make sense any more.”

Jesus, Rumi, a great big field, a heavenly gate, I don’t know what you believe about who or what meets us when we are put out to pasture.  Perhaps we can all agree though that if we want to be found we must first step away from the flock, jump the fence, and get ourselves lost?

If only that we might also rejoice over each other when we are found again.

Writing about tonight, the gospel writer John says that when they were gathered together for supper, Jesus took off his outer robe, put on a towel and began to wash the disciples feet.

John doesn’t say that Jesus asked anyone if they wanted their feet washed.  Jesus doesn’t say, “Andrew, I’d be glad to wash your feet for you if you’ll just kick off your Nikes.”

Jesus doesn’t ask them if they want their feet washed.  He just knows that their feet need to be washed.  He knows this because for one thing, he can see that their feet are dirty.  There were no closed-toe boots or sneakers or Uggs back in those days.  At best you had a pair of sandals and the dirt on your feet told the story of where you’d been that day.

There’s an ancient saying that goes, “If you want to know where you are, look at your feet.”  So we can imagine what Jesus saw, and what he could have said, in washing the disciples feet tonight.

“Wow, Peter.  I can see that you’ve got a lot of dirt here from your bedroom floor.  You’ve been in your bedroom a lot today, have you?  Behind closed doors, doing some praying, some thinking, trying to figure out your next move.  Peter, let me wash those feet of yours.”

Then there’s James and John.  The dirt on their feet is the same.  Two brothers, they’ve been out on the soccer field all day kicking the ball at each other’s head, trying to prove who can kick the ball harder.  In a few minutes an argument is going to break out around the table about who is the greatest disciple.  Make no mistake about it, James’ and John’s voices will be the loudest.  “Here guys,” says Jesus, “let me wash your feet for you.”

There’s also John the Beloved Disciple.  He’s at the table, too.  He’s caked with dirt from his feet all the way up his shins.  It’s the dirt from the field at the edge of town, the one covered with flowers.  John’s been out there all day shuffling back and forth.  We’ve heard that John is the disciple who just needs some extra reassuring.  He needs to be told that he’s loved the most.  So he’s been out in the field all day pulling the petals from the dandelions.  He loves me, he loves me not.  He loves me, he loves me not.  “John,” says Jesus, “give me your feet.”

And of course there’s Judas.  His feet are covered with the dirt of the temple and the dirt from the local sheriff’s office.  He’s been hanging out there a lot lately, scheming and plotting with the authorities on how best to capture Jesus.

They’re all at the table with Jesus tonight, but soon none of them will be at the table with Jesus. They’re all going to run, to say they never knew him.  And they know this about themselves, and Jesus knows this about them.  That it’s not just their feet that are dirty.  It’s their hearts and souls as well.  So Peter says, “Lord, wash not just my feet, but my hands, my head, and every inch of me.”  And Jesus does, because to Jesus those gathered around the table are his friends.  That’s what he calls those who are so dirty, so insecure.  He calls them friends, and he reaches out to touch the dirtiest parts of them.

I don’t know where you’ve been lately.  If we looked at our feet, what would they tell us about who we’ve stood beside, and who we’ve walked away from, what good we’ve said and what good we’ve not said?  I don’t know but Jesus invites us still to come to his table with our dirty, messy lives, to eat bread—his presence with us, his body broken for us; to drink a cup—his blood poured out for us, his life given to us.  For in these gifts and in this moment Jesus himself draws near enough to touch us, to wash and heal us, for us to hear him call us friend, that we might call each other the same.

One of the most audacious declarations in scripture, that perhaps sums up all of scripture, is from none other than the 23rd Psalm.  “My cup runneth over.”

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

If the language sounds a bit out-dated it’s only because we’ve been hearing this for as long as there’s been air to breathe.  

 “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.”  This is, I believe, the love of God, though it makes me want to scream out, “What the hell?”  What kind of shepherd goes to the trouble of laying out cloth napkins and lighting candles so I can sit down with people who make my blood boil?  I much prefer the shepherd who doesn’t hold my own stupidness and stubbornness against me, who leaves a herd of 99 faithful sheep behind to set out in search of me.  Then, finding me, throws me on his, or her—I’m going to say her.  In this case you got to figure on the shepherd being a kind grandmotherly type—she throws me on her shoulders and skips me home.  But lay me out in green pastures, lead me alongside quiet waters, restore me right down to my soul, only to sit me down with my enemies?  Take me back to Death Valley please!

Of course, there is no place that begs us to be friendly more than a table.  Is this the love of God?  To provide a six-course meal and enough beer and wine to keep us at the table until all the enemies have drunk themselves into friendship?  Given that we know drunkenness wears off, this would be a strange way to show love and make friends.  For we would wake up the next morning only to see a less-dazzling version of ourselves in the mirror.  We’d remember what we did or did not do the day or night before and we’d loathe, resent, and hate ourselves.  What is more, our enemies would not be our friends.  They’d still be our enemies.  No, this is not the love of God.

Indeed, in coming to any table we might play the enemy as much as the friend, or at least the stranger, which is too often taken to be the enemy.  We have nothing in our hands, no gift to offer by which we might even win a friend.  We’ve just stepped out of death’s shadow.  We’re barely breathing.  Before us, a table; we sit down, and if we see only our enemies sitting across from us, who’s to say that they don’t see it the same way?  But our cup runneth over!  Someone has decided to treat us like we are a friend, to show us not just a little bit of generosity, but more generosity than we can contain.  God makes us her friend and gives us a spillover of kindness in hopes that we’ll use it to make more friends.  

This is the love of God.

A three year old—specifically, mine—is standing in the hallway trying to put his shoes on.  His older sister is going outside to play with the neighbors and he wants to go too, if only he could get his shoes on.  He is leaning against the stairwell bannister.  He can hear the doors to the shed opening and the squeals of children proclaiming liberty as they climb aboard their bicycles.  He can see that someone who doesn’t even know how to ride a bike is using his Spiderman Big Wheel!  Anxious and terrified, he begins to pound his left heel into his right shoe.  His right heel is simply pounding directly against the hardwood.  His shoes are velcro.  He won’t need to tie them, but the harder he pounds the more the back of his left shoe is getting folded, smushed underfoot.

“Can I help you,” I ask him.

“No, I can do it,” he reverberates.  

He is quite clearly growing not only into his shoes but also into his heart that wants what it wants.  I leave him there to work things out.  A few minutes later I come back to check on him.  He’s still wrestling.

“Buddy, let me help you.

“No.”  He yells at me this time and throws a punch; it’s harmless, a swat at the breeze, except he knows that I know: he wasn’t really swatting at the breeze.  

“Time out,” I tell him.  And up to his room he goes.

I listen to him sob for a bit before pushing the door open.  He’s sitting on the floor inside his closet trying to get a different pair of shoes on now.

“Daddy, can you help me?”

This is, I believe, the love of God.  Having been turned away more times than not, God asks us if we can help.

Then, with her own divine hand she bends down to show us how it’s done.  She tucks her thumb into the back of our shoe, just enough so our heel can slide into place and we can stand up to run outside and play.

 

 

 

This morning my 3 year old son, Rowan, came into my bedroom to ask the same question he has asked everyday for the past two months: “What’s today?”

Now most people would know this is an impossible question to answer.  You can’t put the cart before the horse and expect to get anywhere.  How can I say what today is before today has really begun?  I’m still in bed, not sure if I’m still dreaming.  The alarm clock ticks 5:45.  I’m actually in a nightmare.  What’s he doing up already, asking, “What’s today?”

In our house this question can be answered in one of three ways.  “It’s a school day.”  “It’s a Grampy day.”  “It’s a stay-home day.”  The first of these usually evokes a level of whining that can be tampered only with candy bars.  News that it’s a school day means there’s no way in hell this day has any chance of being treated fairly or judged rightly.  There may be a fridge full of Mickey Mouse yogurt cups downstairs, but today, Mickey might as well be the Devil.  As for my own cup of coffee that thanks to Keurig can change flavors daily and brew instantly, today all coffee tastes bitter.  And school—that glorious place of pre-K-ness where recess actually counts as a class and picking your favorite color of crayon is the measure of smarts—it’s just a cover for minimum security prison.  “What’s today?”  Of all the hopeful, cheery ways to answer this question, “It’s a school day,” is just a mistaken way of saying, “Today we are condemned.”  How unfortunate.

On the other hand, news that it’s a stay-home day can raise us to levels of ecstasy reminiscent of soldiers who have just been told they don’t have to go to battle today after all, the other side has declared a cease fire.  You can leave your bunker, go into the backyard and play ball.  You can even cross enemy lines—go to the school yard and take a ride on the swings.  Today the promise is that no one will fire upon you by ringing a bell to summon you back inside.  It’s not a school day.  It’s a stay-home day.

In between these is a world of compromise, or what we call, a Grampy day.  To understand how this day works, let me back up to what happened four months ago.  Four months ago I announced to my church that I was leaving.  Leaving, as you may well know, is hard, painful, divisive work.  We try harder than hard to make it easier by saying things like, “You’re moving on to bigger and better things.”  And the person who is leaving says back, “And bigger and better things will come along for you as well.”  We tell each other that it’s not what we’d like; it’s not according to our timetable, but nothing ever is.  We appeal to reasonable irrational—“It makes no sense but somehow it must.”  In the church we give up to faith and to the plan of God, which we trust isn’t just out there somewhere waiting to be discovered but is (if you dare to believe it), waiting to discover us.  We need only to come out of the bunker, let the sun fall upon our faces and see that it’s falling on everyone everywhere.

Scripture tells a story about an Ethiopian eunuch who is pulled over on a desert road just outside of Gaza.  As in that part of the world today, so in that part of the world then, Gaza was contested territory.  Many claimed Gaza, but few belonged there.  It should not surprise us then that a eunuch—traveling in the service of a foreign dignitary, robust, having the appearance of one who should not be messed with, yet underneath all of this, castrated—is pulled over just outside Gaza’s coveted borders, for a eunuch knew what it was to be claimed and yet not to belong.  To be told, like it or not, your whole future now belongs to me.  You’ll go and not go where I say.  Did the eunuch want it this way?  Did he say, not my will but yours be done.  (That would be noble, I suppose.)  Or was it the price of being who he was, an Ethiopian?  Either way, this Ethiopian eunuch has just come from worshiping in Jerusalem.

Now I don’t know how you, my reader, worships.  Lying on your back in a bed of leaves, staring up at the stars?  Sitting perched on a porch with a cup of coffee, quietly observing the world going by?  Keeping weekly ritual in a pew or on your knees, surrounded by 10 or 10,000?  To me worship is the recognition that like it or not, we are not alone.  God is everywhere, and this means Grace and Mercy and Kindness are everywhere, too.  Because God is Love we are not only claimed, but we also belong.  We are claimed to belong.

So the story goes that this no-man is sitting in no-man’s land reading about this Extravagant God and wondering, is it for me, even for me?  Of course, the only answer he can come up with is the only answer he’s ever known.  Except along comes a fellow-worshiper who climbs up into his chariot with him.

“Do you know what you’re reading?  Do you know who the writer is talking about?” they ask. “No,” says the Ethiopian.  “How can I without someone to make it plain?”

Saint Paul once confessed that the basic reality of God is plain enough to see.  Run your fingers along a tree trunk, climb a hill and feel the sun warming up as you go, from the ocean depths to the tiny star speck, it all sings God’s praise and glory.  True enough: these are good enough for the glory of God, but only flesh and blood can confirm the love of God.

“Is it for me, even for me?  How can I know?”

I don’t know if this was the exact question that called me and my family to move four months ago, but such is the question whose answer I find myself coming up with every Grampy day when I drop Rowan and his 4 year old sister, Lillian, off with Bernard who has no arms, and who must wonder, “Is it for me, even for me?  How can I carry them?”  And it is the answer that comes to me when my 82 year old Nana who is no bigger than 5 feet offers to spring Rowan from preschool early and take him to the duck pond.  It is the answer the Ethiopian eunuch comes up with from the seat of his chariot, the answer I heard coming from the backseat of my Subaru this morning when, knowing it was a school day and there was no way to avoid it, Lillian suggested we sing on the way there.  “It will make things easier for you, buddy,” she said to her little brother.

“It is for me, even for me?  How can I know?”

The God whose mercy and kindness is everywhere says yes it is, but only flesh and blood—mine and yours together—can make it known.