Based on the last few Sundays, today's text included, you would think Jesus talked a great deal about taking care of the poor. Ginger quoted George Buttrick ("Fundamental neighborliness is a barometer of the soul.") and then asked these questions: What issues do we dodge? How do we gate ourselves off from the world? Whom do see as too disgusting to invite? Whom do we not think about?
How we hear a story depends on our perspective and where we find ourselves within the scene; so when we try to hear Jesus’ directive, our point of view can color what it means.
the sharp dressed man, a Scrooge before his time, ignored the poor, sick man outside his gate; then rich guy died, and wealth turned into whine, for Hell was not a temporary state.
Any way we slice it, we’re like the rich guy in this tale, though it’s hard to see ourselves in such a role; the poverty unanswered in our world’s our epic fail, ‘cause we're the ones with capital and control.
One question stands quite worthy of a mention: what does it take to get our full attention?
The town was Nairobi, Kenya and they were Up With People. Members of the American community provided host homes for the group and so a couple of them stayed at our house, and in the homes of my friends from Nairobi International School. It was the fall of 1969; most of us were ninth graders, had guitars, and were completely consumed with playing music together. We were completely taken with this traveling band trying so hard to tell the world we were all connected:
if more people were for people like people everywhere there’d be a lot less people to worry about and a lot more people who care
I still remember the songs. One of them came back this week as we celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the first moon landing. (Of course, in a wonderful bit of technological irony, I couldn’t get web access in my hotel room last night to write.) Up With People had a song called “John Jacob Sebastian Smith” that was about a little baby born the day Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon.
John Jacob Sebastian Smith took his first breath today in a little river town in the middle of I-o-way the day the train came down the track the corn stood shoulder high and it was just as the whistle blew that papa first heard him cry . . .
The story line was the dad telling his new son he would see a world his father had hardly dreamed of, as he sang in the chorus:
John David it’s all yours it’s a new world you’ve found you can make it what you will nothing can hold you down
The astronauts appear in the last verse, both as a way of dreaming of the stars and coming to terms with our humanity at the same time:
John David as you took your first breath today others took the breath of life to a planet far away someday maybe you’ll do even more remember son it’s all about people people like the folks next door
Nothing happens in a vacuum, even in space. While Armstrong was planting a flag that couldn’t fly on the moon, the big blue ball below him was in turmoil: the Vietnam war waged on; Woodstock was not so far away; LBJ’s Great Society had given way to Nixon, and the Civil Rights movement continued in the aftermath of the deaths of both King and Malcolm X, among others. Even the dream of reaching the moon was fueled by the competition of the Cold War: we wanted to beat the Russians to show them who was Number One. I read in the Birmingham News yesterday that the amount NASA spent getting to the moon was equivalent to more money than we spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan last year. Long before Christopher Cross sang about it, we were caught between the moon and New York City.
I know it’s crazy, but it’s true.
Another teenager a little older than I who stared into the sky an ocean away from Nairobi, was Mark Heard. A little over twenty years after the moon landing and, unfortunately, in the same summer that he died, Mark released a song, “Satellite Sky,” that still speaks to both the possibility and ambiguity of what it means to be alive in these days.
why do I lie awake at night and think back just as far as I can to the sound of my father's laugh outdoors to the thought of Sputnik in free flight
before I could fashion my poverty before I distrusted the night I must've known something I must've known something those were the times I live for tonight
why, why, why, I say why, mama, why? why can't I sleep in peace tonight underneath the satellite sky
it can't be easy for my children I'm hollow before my time it looks like a desert here to me where is the promise of youth for my child
where are the faraway kingdoms of dreams we've been to the moon and there's trouble at home they vanished in the mist with Saint Nicholas they lie scattered to the ghettos and the war zones
why, why, why, I say why, mama, why? why can't I sleep in peace tonight underneath the satellite sky
I want to stand out in the middle of the street and listen to the stars I want to hear their sweet voices I want to feel a big bang rattle my bones I want to laugh for my children I want the spark to ignite before they find out what it means to be born into these times
why, why, why, I say why, mama, why? why can't I sleep in peace tonight underneath the satellite sky
In these days when we can “Google” our way to most anywhere in the world (except, of course, in my hotel room last night) and see YouTube videos from all across the planet, we are also the ones who see fewer stars from our porches and windows than any generation to have inhabited the planet. Since Armstrong’s steps, we have run rovers across Mars and we have yet to provide clean drinking water for over a quarter of the people on our planet. I’m not making an either/or case here by any means. My question is the same as those who have come before me: how do we look up at the stars and look out for one another at the same time?
The early astronomers studied the night skies, finding gods and bears and hunters, in order to find their way across lands and seas. The stars told them where they were and where they might be going. The psalmist pulled theological questions from the twinkling darkness:
I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, Moon and stars mounted in their settings. Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, Why do you bother with us? Why take a second look our way? (The Message)
Forty years after Apollo 11, we have pictures of galaxies far, far, away; we know our own smells like raspberries; we have driven on Mars and have plans to go farther; my MacBook is a stronger computer than anything the Apollo astronauts understood; the Red Sox have won the World Series twice; there are twice as many people on the planet today than in the summer of ’69 (and Bryan Adams is still touring); we are in another unexplainable war; we have an African-American president; and our planet is plagued with poverty and need that cripples us all. Chet Raymo wondered on paper years ago how there could be darkness at all when there were so many stars in the sky. He answered his own question by saying it was because not all of the light has gotten here yet. It’s coming. But not yet. The stars give credence to our UCC credo that God has light “that has yet to break forth.” I believe, with all my heart, we can still sleep in peace underneath a satellite sky, not so much because we walked on the moon, but because that’s what the stars say.
I wish I could remember how I first heard of Kiva.org.
It was probably because someone took time to write or send an email telling me about micro loans and what they can do in developing countries. Kiva began because a couple, Jessica and Matt Flannery, listened to the voices that gathered around them. She heard Dr. Muhammad Yunus speak – he was the founder of the Grameen Bank, a pioneer in microfinance, and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. After a visit to Africa, the two began to talk about how they could bring together what they knew about the Internet, what they had seen in Africa, and what they believed could happen to make a difference in the lives of people around the world who live in poverty. You can read their story here. They said they came to three realizations:
We are more connected to the developing world than we realize. Even when he was in San Francisco and she in rural Africa seemingly worlds away, Matt could reach Jessica on her cell phone as though she were one block away. Distance means little in the world of communication today.
The poor are very entrepreneurial. While the profit margins may be very different, the spirit of entrepreneurship is as strong among the poor of the developing world as it is in Silicon Valley.
Stories connect people in a powerful way. As they listened to story after story of a fishmonger who needed enough money to buy directly from the fishermen at the lake, or a farmer who needed to buy a better breed of cow to produce more milk, Matt and Jessica knew that any of their friends back home would want to support these business ventures if they also heard their stories. With each story came a human connection as similarities were identified, making an African entrepreneur someone easier to relate to despite differences in language, culture or levels of wealth.
In March of 2005, they made their first seven loans, for a total of $3500, in Uganda. By September, those loans were repaid. Word began to get out and the organization began to grow exponentially. In March of this year – only three years later – Kiva loaned its 25 millionth dollar. Most of those loans are made $25 at a time.
Ginger and I made our first loan in March of 2007. I wish I could remember how we learned about it. We, along with several others, loaned our twenty-five bucks to Maria Guadalupe MartÃnez Magdaleno in Mexico to help her buy a cart so she could take the hamburgers and tacos she made at home to the nearby factories and thereby grow her business. She paid us back by September. We took the money and loaned it to Angela Kamenge in Tanzania to expand her poultry business. I’ve also taken some of the money from the sales of A Faraway Christmas to help Sok Nea open a grocery store in Cambodia and the Mastula Kagere Group who sell mattresses in Uganda.
My point is this: you can help. You can become a lender and help people all around the world. Pick the place, pick the kind of business that interests you, but please go pick one or twenty-seven of them and become a banker to the world. You can also give the gift of lending to someone else. Last December Kiva raised over two million dollars in gift certificates.
Change somebody’s world for twenty-five bucks. Where else are you going to get a deal like that?
Sometimes, figuring out what to write is like a treasure hunt: I have to go out and see what I can find. Other times, like the last few days, I’m less of a hunter and more of a collector, picking up the things that fall around me and then working to see what they might become. This particular collection began Friday afternoon when Ginger and I went to see The Dark Knight. Though there is much to unpack about the film, the overarching thought I carried away was we choose how to respond to difficulty and tragedy that comes our way and whether we seek redemption or revenge. Part of the magic of a movie is the invitation to engage in the willing suspension of disbelief and let myself enter a different world for a couple of hours.
Sunday, Ginger preached a kick-ass sermon on the loaves and the fishes. Her lead in was to quote Robert Farrar Capon about Jesus’ parables:
Openness, therefore, is a required attitude when approaching the scriptures. And nowhere in the Bible is an un-made-up mind more called for than when reading the parables of Jesus.
The same is true of the miracle stories, she said, as she invited us to listen to Matthew’s account of how the thousands were fed with a sack lunch: “So with willing suspension of disbelief, we enter the story of enough.” she said. Truly the disciples had to let go of their made-up minds when Jesus told them how to feed everyone. I spent a good bit of time last night trying to find the words to say one of the reasons the miracles are important, even for someone like me who struggles with how some of them could have actually happened, is they show what God can do with committed and trusting hearts and un-made-up minds. And they also call us to live as if God can really change our world. Status quo is not a theological concept.
(After about an hour of writing, Microsoft Word crashed and I lost what I had written. It was late enough that I went to bed instead of trying to recreate the post.)
Today, as I was blog surfing, these quotes fell into my lap. First, from Journeys with Jesus:
One must urge (to his own soul first) a firm rebutting midrash; bring Christ to bear. Read the gospel closely, obediently. Welcome no enticements, no other claim on conscience. Mourn the preachers and priests whose silence and collusion signal plain revolt against the gospel. Enter the maelstrom, the wilderness; flee the claim that would possess your soul. Earn the blessing; pay up. Blessed — and lonely and powerless and intent on the Master — and, if must be, despised, scorned, locked up — blessed are the makers of peace. Daniel Berrigan, The Kings and Their Gods: The Pathology of Power
We took time in our service on Sunday to pray specifically for the UU Congregation in Knoxville that fell victim to the shootings a week ago. The guy dumped over seventy rounds of ammunition into the congregation because of their liberal agenda and their welcoming of gays and lesbians. Carla, our associate pastor, was in Knoxville last Sunday for a UCC National Youth Gathering. She talked about being in a wonderful praise service while, unknown to the gathering, the church was being attacked. And then I sang David Wilcox’s wonderful song, “Show the Way” (one of my favorites). The second verse and chorus say
Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify What's stronger than hate, would they not arrange the stage To look as if the hero came too late, he's almost in defeat It's looking like the Evil side will win, so on the Edge of every seat, From the moment that the whole thing begins
It is Love that mixed the mortar And it's Love who stacked these stones And it's Love who made the stage here Although it looks like we're alone In this scene set in shadows like the night is here to stay There is evil cast around us but it's Love that wrote this play... For in this darkness love can show the way
The citizens of Gotham had pretty much made up their minds that life was going to be a living lasagna filled with layers of pain and more pain. Some were willing to shine the Batlight into the moonless sky, but no one was looking for miracles.
Berrigan and Padilla have not only suspended but have hung the belief that the darkness gets the last word and pretty much expect miracles, if by miracles we mean
God's Spirit is on me; he's chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, to announce, "This is God's year to act!" (Luke 4:18-19, The Message)
The last quote that fell my way today fell like a stone – that someone threw at me. A Different Street quotes former US Senator Rick Santorum’s ad hominem argument against Obama, saying Barack’s faith is “phony.” (Obama is a member of the UCC, by the way.) When the interviewer presses and asks if one can be a liberal and Christian, Santorum answers:
You're a liberal something, but you’re not a Christian. When you take a salvation story and turn it into a liberation story you've abandoned Christendom and I don't think you have a right to claim it.
A made up mind is like a made up bed: no one is getting in.
"Free your mind and the rest will follow," En Vogue used to sing. We would do well to sing along. The love of Christ does liberate us from our cynicism, our hopelessness, our self-absorption, our bitterness, our prejudice, our blindness, our pride in order that we might be liberators and builders of the Community of God in our world. The thousands got fed because the disciples un-made-up their minds and moved beyond the logic that said there was not enough and fed everyone.
We live in a world full of poor and imprisoned folks waiting for those who believe in miracles to start cutting locks and serving dinner. May we un-make-up our minds and open our hearts that we might be liberated, even as we are called to liberate.
The family was made up of a single mother, who is expecting, and her two-year-old daughter, whom Ginger wanted to bring home. Together, they live a life over which they have little control. The woman said the folks at the shelter offered to give her a weekend pass and she answered, “Where would I go?” She has no means of transportation, nowhere to stay, very little money, and a two year old. The life she’s living may offer her a way out of homelessness eventually, but right now it’s a hard and lonely road.
Part of the reason Manny wanted to be traded was he thought he could make more money as a free agent next year rather than letting the Red Sox pick up the option to extend his contract for two more years. For twenty million dollars. A year.
Ginger and I are both unabashed Manny fans. We’re sad to see him go. I love watching him play because he truly loves playing the game. And he plays hard, even including the “Manny being Manny” moments. Who else will ever climb the outfield wall, catch the fly ball, high five the fan on the front row of the bleachers, come down grinning, and throw the runner out at second to make the double play?
When it comes to the money, Ginger says she cuts him some slack because he grew up in poverty in the Dominican Republic and then joined his parents in New York City (still in poverty, I presume) until he was drafted out of high school by the Cleveland Indians. According to the biography on his website, all Manny ever wanted to do was play baseball. His dad used to take his dinner to the ballpark to make sure he ate. His talent and tenacity offered him a way out of poverty. Even though he has made almost $150 million cumulatively in his career, it appears he isn’t sure it’s enough at some level.
I suppose the obvious connection to make is Manny could build a lot of homes for people like the woman in the shelter, but that ought to be a conclusion Manny comes to on his own, not one I offer here. If all I did with my blog was to tell other folks how to live their lives better, I would change the name to something like “Sit Up Straight and Finish Your Spinach,” rather than “Don’t Eat Alone.”
The connection, for me, is about community. For those of us who consider themselves citizens of Red Sox Nation, Manny was one of the ties that bound us. His enthusiasm for the game gave us reason to cheer. The way he dropped his bat and followed the ball when he hit a home run had less to do with being cocky than it did with his love of the game. You could see it in his eyes: a child like sense of wonder. He had fun playing ball and we had fun watching him. The reality of the business side of baseball, which hits home in the terse transition of his departure, makes that sense of togetherness very tenuous.
And togetherness is tenuous, whatever the game.
As many people as it takes to provide the day shelter and the transportation and the meals and the place to sleep, the woman Ginger drove tonight feels alone. When offered the chance to get away for the weekend, she didn’t say, “Great. I can go stay with my friend.” She doesn’t get to feel together; she is only reminded that life is out to get her.
Strange how a couple of spaces can change what the letters can mean.
Manny’s gone because of money. The woman Ginger met is sleeping on a cot in a church parish hall because of money, or lack of it. When Manny’s contract expires, one of the questions that will show up on the sports shows will be, “Is Manny worth $20 million?”
The answer is, “No.” No one is worth twenty million dollars, whatever they do.
The question, slightly altered, that needs to be asked as we gather in our communities of faith, or wherever we meaningfully come together is: what are the people around us worth?
Let me ask it this way: aren’t they worth more than cots and soup kitchen lines and food stamps and humiliating anonymity? Aren’t they worth our figuring out how to pay whatever bills need to be paid to let them be a part of our togetherness?
The questions sound rhetorical until I look at the way our lives get lived out. As I listened to Ginger talk about her conversation with the woman this afternoon, I realized much of what I do, when it comes to reaching out to those folks who are being trampled by life for any number of reasons is because I want to help, but I don’t necessarily do what I do in a way that lets them know I want to include them. When Ginger finished her conversation, the woman said, “I think I would like to come to your church,” and Ginger offered to help her figure out transportation.
Togetherness is not a myth, nor is it a given. In Jesus’ parable of the Great Banquet (one of my personal favorites), the king tells the servants to go out and compel people to come in until the hall was filled. When the disciples questioned if the five loaves and two fishes would be enough to feed everyone, Jesus told them to just start feeding people and trust they would have enough. The way I’ve always imagined the scene is, as the boy’s lunch was passed and the unabashed sharing became obvious, others who had food of their own thought, “Well, I could share my lunch,” and the next thing they knew they had leftovers. When I watch how inclined we are to hang on to what’s ours, I have no doubt that meal was a miracle.
The stories I’ve heard today have reminded me of the value of togetherness.
And the cost, which is whatever we have to share – which is everything.
