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.
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