Jesus and the kingdom of God in Central Park (Sun, June 25, 2023)

Reading:  Matthew 10:24-39

The resurrection and ascension of Jesus changes everything for the disciples.  In communion with the risen Jesus, and empowered by the same Spirit of God that was alive in him, they now are the body of Christ – the incarnation of God’s Word of love for the world. 

The world is not changed.  It can be still as blind and resistant to the good news of the kingdom of God on Earth, and of God’s love for all as it was when the world put Jesus to death.  So, the followers of Jesus at times face just as hard a journey, as Jesus did.  But they also are as empowered by God as Jesus was, for their living of the good news of God’s kingdom on Earth, and God’s love for all.

We read the encouragement Jesus has for his followers, in these verses from Matthew 10:24-39:

No pupil is greater than their teacher; no servant is greater than their master. So, a pupil should be satisfied to become like their teacher, and a servant like their master. And if the head of the family is called Beelzebul, the members of the family will be called even worse names!

But do not be afraid of people… What I am telling you in the dark, speak in broad daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the rooftops.  Do not be afraid of those who don’t get it.  Rather, be faithful to God who watches over you, as God watches over even the smallest sparrow, and in whose love even all the hairs of your head are numbered.

Yes, you will be at odds with the world – at times, even with those closest to you.  But those who try to save their own life will lose it; and those who lose their life for my sake will gain it.

Reflection

Listening to the reading, what I want to say – what it seems to be saying, is that a life of following Jesus, of being a member of his body – of his community, in the world, can be one of the free-est, most interesting, most liberating, funnest ways of being.  Because if it’s really Jesus – the Jesus of the Gospels that we are following, we are set free, given permission, and actually encouraged to live out the best, the most compassionate, and the most generous impulses of being human.

It isn’t always easy.  Because not everyone around us is ready for it.  Not everyone likes it.  We too are afraid of it sometimes.

Sometimes people are afraid of the kind of generous love and inclusive compassion that Jesus lives out and that he inspires us to live out, because it challenges and upsets the way the world is divided up and put in order in ways that benefit them.  And that they really don’t want to let go of, or change.

Sometimes people are afraid because what they see in Jesus' way speaks to something inside them – stirs up a kind of compassion and generosity that they know deep down is part of them, but they are determined to deny or repress, because it scares them.  They don’t know where it will lead them.  What it might demand of them.  Where it will leave them -- or what it will leave of them, in the end.

That’s what I want to say.

For now, what I’m going to do is narrate for you a two-minute scene from the movie, “French Exit.”  The movie stars Michelle Pfeiffer as Frances, a socialite widow with a college-age son named Malcolm, and whose life in New York is about to end because she is reaching the end of her assets. 

It’s the night before she and Malcolm will leave town unannounced to live in a borrowed apartment in Paris until the end comes for her.  They are at a high-class soiree, and she makes up an excuse for her and Malcolm to leave. 

Well-dressed and well put-together, Frances and her son, Malcolm, leave the just-off-Central-Park apartment where the party is.  The driver of a waiting limo – one of a line of them waiting at the curb, opens the passenger door for them to get in, to be whisked safely home.  They ignore the limo and the driver, and the two of them quietly and contentedly walk off arm-in-arm into the night in Central Park.

Once in the park, off to one side in the shadow there is a voice.  A man says, “Got something to spare tonight, folks?”

The camera turns towards a man with long hair and beard, dirty clothes, standing off to one side of the path, quietly holding one hand in another in front of him.  Frances stops, lifts her cigarette, looks calmly directly at the man. 

"Possibly we do,” she says.  Takes a long drag on her cigarette, and says, “But, may we ask what you need the money for?”

 

The camera goes back to the man again.  “I guess I’d like a little wine … if you want to know,” bowing his head a bit as he says it.

Camera back to Frances, Malcolm still standing quietly behind her.  She smiles.  “What’s your name?”

“Dan.”

“Daniel.” she says.  “Well, what would you do if we gave you $20.”

The man whistles loudly, then begins to imagine what he would do.  “I could get a gallon of Three Roses.”  He rubs his hand a bit, and a bit of a quiet smile creeps into his face.  “A pack of cigarettes.  And (he looks around a bit nervously)… a weenie!”

“And where would you take it?  All back to your room?”

“I’d take it to the park.”  Daniel lowers his head a bit again as he says it.  “That’s where I sleep most nights.  In the park.”

A pause.  Frances says, “Hmm.  So … you’d … lie under a bush … and smoke your cigarettes … and drink your wine … and look up at the stars …”  She sounds wistful, not judgmental, as she says all this.

“Why not?” he says, smiling shyly.

Smiling herself, Frances reaches into her purse, pulls out a bill.  Reaches it out to Daniel, taking a step towards him in the process.  He steps forward and takes it.  Looks back at her as puts the bill in his pocket.  Walks away hurriedly, a little nervously.  Looks back again quickly.  Walks away.

Frances and Malcolm turn and continue on their way, and hear another voice from the shadows, from another direction.  “That guy wasn’t bothering you two, I hope!”  A uniformed policeman is slowly and self-confidently walking towards them.  “Looked like he was puttin’ the bite on you.”

“Who?  Daniel? ”  Frances asks with some surprise and indignation.  After a pause for effect, “No, not all all.”  She smiles coolly.  “He’s a friend of ours.”

The policeman laughs a nervous little laugh. "I thank God,” Frances goes on, “for the fact of a man like him.  Not that it’s any of your business.”

The policeman is silent.  He backs away uncertainly.  Nods his head briefly.  Turns and walks away.

Frances and Malcolm turn and continue on their way, arm-in-arm, quietly and contentedly into and through the park and the night.

 The movie is called French Exit.  When I googled it, I found a link to “French exit meaning.”

Apparently, a French exit – also known as a French leave, or an Irish goodbye or Irish exit, is “a departure from a location or event without informing others or without seeking approval.”

I wonder if that’s what it’s like to follow Jesus, and to live as part of his body and part of his new-life community in the world.  If it’s a matter of daring to leave behind, and to walk out on the “normal” way of being in the world, in order to live out instead the best and the most generously compassionate impulse of the human heart, without feeling a need to inform others or seek approval.

 I can’t help but think that even if others around us – or the world in general – are not ready for it because they’re afraid of it (as we are sometimes, too), it’s probably one of the free-est, most liberated and liberating, and fun-est ways of living.  Because it’s good.  And it’s of God.

Question for Consideration: 

 The working title for the reflection above was, “’The French Exit’ Jesus-Style: Or, Who Would Have Thought Michelle Pfeiffer Would Ever Play the Role of Christ in Central Park?”

With that in mind, identify 10 things (settings, actions, words) in the narrative of this two-minute scene of her and her son’s walk through Central Park, that you see as being symbolic or reminiscent of the way of Christ in the world. 

 Can you make it 15?

How can we ever criticize God's choices? Remember, God chose us. (to paraphrase some traditional wedding advice often given to the new husband) -- Sunday, June 4, 2023

Focusing

 

June is a month of growth.  We see it in our gardens, in parks, along the roadside.  Growth of all kinds of things.  Things we plant and care for.  Things we enjoy and marvel at.  Things we count on eventually for food and sustenance for ourselves, for animals.  Also things we see as weeds and unwanted species.  Things whose growth we manage.  Things whose growth is beyond our control.

 

How do we see all this growth in relation to God?  How do we see God in all this growth?

 

Reading: Matthew 9:9-13 and 18-26

 

In this reading, the early church remembers how Jesus travelled around Galilee – healing and teaching the people, lifting up and feeding the poor, and calling disciples to follow him in living the way of the kingdom of God on Earth.  Some people received him gladly; others held back; some outright opposed him.  One of the problems some people had with Jesus was the way he reached out so indiscriminately to everyone – even to the worst.  Through it all, Jesus just continued doing what he knew God was leading him to.

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.  

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

... While he was saying this, a synagogue leader came and knelt before him and said, “My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and she will live.” Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples.

Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.”  Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.”  And the woman was healed at that moment.

When Jesus entered the synagogue leader’s house and saw the noisy crowd and people playing pipes [in lament], he said, “Go away. The girl is not dead but asleep.”  But they laughed at him.  After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up.

News of this spread through all that region.

Reflection

 

A few years ago I made a trip back home to Winnipeg – my first time back in 20 years.  On a Sunday, I went to worship at my old childhood church.  I went to worship God, and to reconnect with my childhood.  To feel grounded again in my own story.

 

From the outside, the church looked as I expected, although a bit smaller than I remembered.  Inside, at first glance, not much was changed either.  Refurbished a bit.  Some new technology.  It was still cared for, in up-to-date ways.

 

But I felt uneasy.  Something was not right.  I recognized some of the people there, and they happily remembered me.  But so many of others were new.  And not only new, but different.

 

The church had always been a mixing of German- and English-speaking immigrants from Germanic and Anglo-Saxon Europe.  Now, the pews held a variety of Filipino and South and Central American families.  It was their children I saw running around together in the church they saw as theirs.  It was their faces lifted in praise.  Their voices lifted in prayer.

 

And I wonder why, instead of celebrating the new life of that old church, its obvious connection with the life of the neighbourhood around it as it is now, and the gracious mingling of old and new members – why I felt more sad than glad?  More nostalgic than ready to be part of the new reality?  It was like instead of the past, I’d gone back to the future, and I wasn’t ready for it.

 

 

In reading the text for today, a number of commentators suggest that the real miracle – the “most difficult” miracle among all that Jesus does in this story, is neither the raising of the little girl from her death bed, nor the healing of the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years, but the including of a despised tax collector back into community.  As one commentator says, “Don’t believe it?  Try thinking of a person your community despises, and invite them to church with you?”

 

Just think of what we know about the social and religious attitudes of people in the time of Jesus – all the strict boundaries of religious and moral identity, and the lines people drew between who they could and wanted to associate with, and who not.  Just think of the incredible cast of characters that Jesus draws together in this amazing one-day, real-time story: a few people who are already followers, a lone tax collector at his tax booth, a few of his friends and some other outcasts, some critical Pharisees, a desperate synagogue leader, a woman along the way to a healing who’s living a cursed life herself, and at end a disbelieving crowd that just needs to be sent out of the room. 

 

If it were written as a children’s book, it might be titled Jesus And The Wonderful, Awesome, All Good, Most Bestest Day Ever Of All.  Or maybe, Just Another Day in the Life of God’s Messiah – with each of us invited to identify which of the many roles is the one we play.

 

 

Sometimes that kind of growth into more opened and inclusive community happens over time – whether we like it or not.  Sometimes it’s the fruit of a more intentional bold step that a community of faith decides to take. 

 

Trinity United in Beamsville has been in the news recently.  For some time they were engaged in study and discernment around the question of becoming an Affirming Community – whether to be intentionally affirming of all sexual and gender identities and orientations.  At the end of the process, they identified themselves that way – to live and be known as an Affirming Congregation.  To make this known and to celebrate it, they raised a Pride flag outside their church to fly through June, Pride Month.  Within days the flag was vandalized – taken down and shredded.  The police are investigating the act as a potential hate crime.  The church will be raising a new Pride flag in its place, to fly all year.

 

We have a sign board outside our church.  At the moment, it reads “You Are Welcome Here – Sundays at 10:30 AM.”

 

 

I wonder, who do we want to get that message?  It’s a serious question.  In our church, in our life and our circle of friendship and activity, who do we want to get the message of welcome?

 

How do we get it to them?  Are there any struggles, any barriers to overcome -- on our part, or on theirs?  

 

And … what if the welcome were to be offered not just Sundays at 10:30 am, but 24/7?  Or some manageable variation of that? 

 

And not just for worship, but for … whatever???  Whatever they need?

 

 

The question leads me back to my return a few years ago to my childhood church, that I talked about at the beginning.  It troubles me that I felt sad rather than glad about the new life of that old church, and that I felt a jealous nostalgia for the way I had known it, rather than gratitude for its connection with the life of the neighbourhood around it now.

 

Two things come to mind as maybe a way beyond that kind of jealous possessiveness.  At least for me.

 

One is a little story about Pachomius, a fourth-century desert father, that was part of my morning prayer this week.  Pachomius was revered as a very special saint, known for deep spirituality and openness to God, and for visions he sometimes was given.  He shied away, though, when a brother asked him, ‘Tell us about the vision you had.”

 

‘As far as visions are concerned,’ he replied, ‘I, a sinner, don’t ask God for any …. [When they come, they are pure gift and nothing of my asking, or choosing, or earning.]  However, when you consider what constitutes a great vision: … what is greater than to see the invisible God in a visible other human being, who is His temple…[or in a visible coming-together of people, even more God’s temple?]  This is the visionary faculty which the saints have at all times of seeing the Lord.’”

 

The second thing is something that happened Friday when, on my way to the church, I stopped to work for a bit at Williams Coffee Pub in the Brant Street power plaza.  It’s one of my favoured working spaces.  The staff have come to know me and treat me as a regular.  Fran, the manager, takes time to stop and chat, to get to know me, welcome me for who I am, and share some of herself with me as well – her values, family story, successes and struggles.  It feels like we are not just manager and customer, but also friends. 

 

The place satisfies more than just physical thirst and hunger.  It’s a generously hospitable space – a place of open and intentionally welcoming spirit.

 

This past Friday, I didn’t get to talk to Fran.  For much of the time she was behind the counter and on the phone sorting out problems with some new piece of equipment and its supplier.  And when I was leaving, she was sitting at one of the patio tables just outside the door, chatting warmly with a couple having their coffee.  Chatting with them the same way and in the same spirit as she has with me.

 

She didn’t see me; her back was half-turned to me and she was focused on what she and the couple were talking about.  I was tempted to stop by the table, interrupt them for a moment, maybe touch Fran on the arm, and say hi.  To claim my place.  To get my hello.  To affirm – maybe even flaunt, my standing with Fran as a friend, and with Williams as my place.

 

I didn’t though.  I just walked to the car, feeling gratitude for the gift of being welcomed as I have been into a place like this, where people of all kinds are embraced in a circle of intentional caring and friendship.  Through no special earning or deserving on my part, I have been included in the hospitality of the place, and made a member of it.  And isn’t that enough?  How could I begrudge or intentionally interrupt anyone else receiving the same kind of attention, the same kind of focused care, the same kind of importance given to me? 

 

So I happily walked to my car.  I was on my way to the church.  And it seemed I had just come to know something about church in that place – as a place where Jesus gathers into healing community all those who know they are hungry and thirsty, and are grateful to be included in the company of other and different hungry and thirsty people – all of us loved, welcomed in, and embraced by God.