Theme: Why do we care for the poor and the broken? Or ... Finding the Flow
The
story from the Book of Acts is often called the conversion of Paul, but
scholars point out it’s not really a conversion because Paul is already
converted and committed to a life of service to God; it’s more a call, or a new
understanding of what being committed to the life of God really means.
Before
we get to that, though, I want to go back to something else we highlighted
earlier in our worship – the number and kind of opportunities we have to reach
out this year in the season of Easter –
·
reaching
out with food to the hungry in our community,
·
reaching
out with care to children living in poverty in the city,
·
reaching
out to help a family at risk to escape Syria and come to safety in Canada,
·
reaching
out with support and love for one of our own members who was injured while
volunteering here at the church.
Feeding,
healing, caring for the outcast, supporting those who are broken – it sounds like
what the early church was all about in the whole of the Book of Acts, what the
first followers of Jesus were known for, and why people flocked to them.
They
did it because they knew Jesus, and because they had seen Jesus risen from the
dead.
Why do
we do it?
Why do
we care for the poor, and show love for the outcast and broken and needy?
Is it
because we’re kind and nice?
Is it
because we feel guilty?
Because
we feel we can make a difference for good?
Because
we see other churches doing these kinds of things, and we want to be like other
churches?
I’m
sure all those motivations are in play in different ways and at different
times.
But
underneath it, is there something else as well?
Is there something in us perhaps that simply responds to opportunities
to show love and care for others – especially for the poor and the weak? Is there something inside us as humans – when
we allow ourselves to be really and fully human, that longs for – maybe even
remembers, what it’s like to be part of a community of caring and a stream of
compassion and grace in the world, that knows how nourishing it is to be part
of a flowing of healing love – part of something that is of God in the world –
or even is God?
We
long for meaning and purpose, and there are some forms of giving and of being
with others in this world that meet that need in deep and lasting ways, rather
than leaving us looking for it elsewhere, as so much in our life does.
Three
stories come to mind.
Story one: from my time as campus chaplain and a student named Terry. Terry was an English major in a four-year
honours program in comparative literature.
She was the kind of student professors enjoy – smart, thoughtful, and
conscientious about her work. She was a
straight A, if not a straight A+, student.
Terry’s
father was a medical doctor. I don’t
remember about her mom, but both parents were accomplished professionals and it
seemed sure Terry would be as well in her own field.
When I
met Terry in the final years of her program, she was anxious, though. She had been anxious all her life about
living up to standards. But now she was
feeling something else as well – a deeper questioning and wondering about her
life itself and the way it was unfolding.
She knew if she applied to graduate school she would be accepted and
would do well. But she also knew that more
and more success and achievement on the path she was on would not answer the
deep un-ease she was feeling – in fact, would only further deplete her.
After
she graduated, instead of going on to grad school Terry answered an ad to live
as a part-time assistant to mentally challenged adults in a l’Arche home in
Trois-Rivieres. It was a summer position
that could be extended to a year. She liked
that it was a charitable and compassionate thing to do, and that she would be
out of her comfort zone in many ways.
She wanted to grow as a person, and maybe come to know a bit better God’s
good will in her life.
Three
or four years later I received a short Christmas letter from Terry. She was still at the home in Trois-Rivieres –
the senior of three full-time workers who lived there with the residents. Her work each day was to assist two of the
residents with their chores and activities, and to manage the books and other
administrative stuff. And she wrote she
was never more strangely happy, never felt more fulfilled and fed by what she
was doing, never more aware of the gracious presence of God every day.
I’ve
no idea where she is now or what she may be doing, but I’ve no doubt she was changed
for the better – converted to know grace and holiness in all her life by her
openness to the call to that l’Arche home in Trois-Rivieres.
Second
story: Do you remember 9-11, the day
“the world changed” for America? Do you
remember the horror of that day? How the
question we always ask in tragedies was asked: where was God? And do you remember the stories that emerged –
maybe in answer to the question, about ordinary people in Halifax, Gander, St.
John’s and many other places, who as soon as the crisis broke immediately
opened their hearts and homes to travelers suddenly stranded in fear and
anxiety? I wonder if any of the people involved
– both the travelers and the people who took them in, might still see those
days in some odd sense as among the best, the most holy, and the most
meaningful and nourishing days of their lives?
Third
story: One spring about 20 years ago I
was in Winnipeg visiting my sisters. I was
there to relax and reconnect. While I
was there the spring flood also came to Winnipeg, and both the army and an army
of volunteers were sandbagging daily along the river to protect homes and
neighbourhoods from the rising waters. I
saw the news of it on TV one morning, and immediately I knew in my heart I
wanted to go help, and be part of the effort – part of the ad hoc helping and
saving community at that riverside.
I
wonder why that is the only thing I remember about that time in Winnipeg? And I wonder what would have happened – what
might have shifted for me and within me – what might have changed even a little
in me and my life if I had answered that call – if I had embraced that urge and
gone to help with the sandbagging.
I’ll
never know.
Because
it is true, isn’t it, that sometimes we don’t answer the call. We give in to the comfort and ease of where
we are. We come up with reasons –
excuses, not to get involved. We hang on
to old securities and familiar routines.
Like Paul
– at least for a while. We’ve read the
story of how in the end he finally gave in and heeded the call of God to
embrace the way of the followers of Jesus.
But how many times and how thoroughly – even angrily, did he reject it
and manage to put it off before that?
Paul
was deeply schooled in the Hebrew Scriptures and the traditions of Jewish faith
– which means at least in his head he knew all about God’s choice of the poor
and enslaved to be a special people in the world – God’s choice of those who
were nothing in the eyes of the world, to be the bearers of God’s wisdom and
saving power to the powerful – God’s choice of the despised to be the vessels
of God’s glory and grace for all.
So as
he came to know of the activities of Jesus’s disciples and the way these poor,
ordinary, hunted people were reaching out so strongly to heal the sick, to help
the poor, and to gather the outcast into communities of love and new life, how
could he could not feel some twinge of recognition, some stirring in his heart,
at the very least some honest questioning about whether this was or was not of
God?
And
then as he rose in the ranks of the defenders of Temple piety and pharisaic
righteousness, and began to help out with the actual persecution of these troublesome
nobodies, holding the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen to death, and he saw
how these people died with such faith and such holy light in their faces, was
there nothing in him that felt moved, felt touched, felt at least a little
compelled to explore and maybe be part of such an unexpectedly strong movement
of something sacred in his time?
But
Temple piety and pharisaic righteousness were powerful sedatives. For most people these were good enough, and
he was really good at it. He had no
need, really, to move from where he was if all he wanted was approval and a good
reputation and a comfortable life.
But …
finally, that was not enough. On his way
to Damascus he met his Waterloo, and he could no longer shut out the call of
God to become part of what was stirring – what God was stirring in his
time. He heard God identifying with
those that he and his friends were dead set against – with the ones who were
·
feeding
the hungry,
·
caring
for the poor,
·
reaching
out to the outcast,
·
supporting
and showing solidarity with the broken and needy,
·
in
the name of Jesus proclaiming in any way they could – as he had, the year of
the Lord’s favour, the community and communion of all, the healing of all Earth
together.
And
once Paul heard it, he could not un-hear it.
He was knocked off his certitude, and he could never regain the pride of
his piety nor the comfort of his righteousness.
He saw a great light beyond his power to control it, and he knew how
blind he had been to how God really is in the world, and what God really is
doing.
He
humbly submitted to the need to re-learn the meaning of faithfulness. He admitted his blindness, and let God and
the very people he thought were outside the circle of grace lead him into the
fuller flow of God’s love and grace in his time.
And so
it is – or at least can be, for us as well.
There is something in us all that yearns to be smack dab in the middle
of the flow of God in our time – and find our own place in the river of God’s
grace and love that flows through the world all the time.
And like
Paul, like Terry as a University student, like the people of Halifax and Gander
and St Johns on 9-11, like me watching the news about the flood in Winnipeg, don’t
we all have our moments
·
when
the river of God flows by us
·
and
asks us whether and how and when we will enter into it, and let it carry us
happily along?
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