[This sermon is written for Derby weekend in Louisville. While the subject matter of the sermon didn't exactly turn out to be "light," I took on a friend's challenge to weave 10 Derby words into my sermon this week, just for fun. So if you read a weird turn of phrase about ponies or bourbon or Kentucky, that is just part of the "preaching the races" today! The ten special words were printed in our church bulletin.]
I saw the documentary film, “Bully,” this week. One of the children portrayed in the film is a young adolescent boy named Alex who is called, “Fish Face,” by his tormentors. Alex, who was born at only 26 weeks gestation, had to fight to survive as a baby and is left with some scars from his ordeal: a slightly flat face and misshapen mouth, and a gangly awkwardness that is accentuated by adolescence. He is also blessed with a sweet and loving nature. The film shows extended footage of Alex riding the school bus, the place of most of his torment. As he sits on the bus, smiling bravely or trying to interact with his seatmates, he is periodically hit, shoved, pushed, insulted, rejected, and even strangled by most of the children around him. Day after day. For no other reason but for being different. Alex seems to have accepted that he can’t win; he never fights back and never responds to the bullies. Alex merely endures, with a longing on his face and a palpable wish to shrink away and vanish before the hatred that surrounds him.
I saw the documentary film, “Bully,” this week. One of the children portrayed in the film is a young adolescent boy named Alex who is called, “Fish Face,” by his tormentors. Alex, who was born at only 26 weeks gestation, had to fight to survive as a baby and is left with some scars from his ordeal: a slightly flat face and misshapen mouth, and a gangly awkwardness that is accentuated by adolescence. He is also blessed with a sweet and loving nature. The film shows extended footage of Alex riding the school bus, the place of most of his torment. As he sits on the bus, smiling bravely or trying to interact with his seatmates, he is periodically hit, shoved, pushed, insulted, rejected, and even strangled by most of the children around him. Day after day. For no other reason but for being different. Alex seems to have accepted that he can’t win; he never fights back and never responds to the bullies. Alex merely endures, with a longing on his face and a palpable wish to shrink away and vanish before the hatred that surrounds him.
His mother fusses at him one day for
putting up with the torment, pointing out that the children who treat him in
that way are not his friends. “If they aren’t my friends,” responds Alex with a
trembling, aching voice, “then who are
my friends? I don’t have any other friends.” And his mother doesn’t know what
to say. Do we? The documentary is a painful testimony to the human longing for
love, for abiding love, for love that does not perish—and to the lack of that
love in our world, even in our Christian communities, even in places like this
small-town Iowa community, where most of those bullying children must have
attended Sunday School and where most have their parents must have heard
today’s readings. Even if we have never been bullied, I believe that we can all
identify with Alex’s pain—with the pain of unmet longing for love and for
acceptance of who we are.
I couldn’t help but think of Alex in
his seat on the bus as I imagined the Ethiopian Eunuch sitting in his chariot,
reading about the Suffering Servant in the Book of Isaiah. Alex and the Eunuch
must have been saddled with similar longings as they traveled about. They both
would have identified with that sheep being led to the slaughter, humiliated,
treated unjustly, robbed of joy and life. The Eunuch has a powerful, important
job, and Alex has a loving family to go home to, yet they are both wounded in
their bodies and in their souls, too. They both sit alone, excluded from normal
relationships with their peers, pondering their sort and seeking solace as they
travel on their way. Yet, while boys and girls on the bus race to their seats, ignoring
or slugging Alex as they pass by, Philip, led by the Holy Spirit, knows how to
respond to the Eunuch. Philip goes out of his way to join the Eunuch’s chariot,
running beside it as it lumbers on its way. But once he is in the chariot,
Philip doesn’t give the Eunuch a hug and invite him to Coffee Hour or for a
glass of bourbon at the pub. Philip sits beside the strange man, guiding him as
they read Holy Scripture together. Philip makes sure that the Eunuch
understands what he is reading. He makes sure that the mysterious words of the
Hebrew prophet take on new life and speak the Good News of God’s Love in Jesus
Christ to the Eunuch’s longing and despair. It is the love pouring off of the
pages of Scripture as Philip interprets it that leads the Eunuch to ask for
baptism and to be born anew into the Body of Christ, no longer alone, but
healed and made whole. Luke makes clear that it is the love pouring off of the
pages of Scripture as Philip interprets it that lead to joy and transformation.
Again, in our
Gospel reading, all about abiding love, the bearing of fruit seems to be
connected to God’s Word in Jesus
Christ. “If you abide in me, and my words
abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you,” promises
Jesus. This is a tricky verse. We all learned as children that praying was not
about getting that pony or that new ten-speed bike or having God zap our
enemies. However, if the life-giving, love-proclaiming words that Jesus speaks
and lives in Holy Scripture dwell in us, if they are continually poured into
us, then won’t our desires, our wishes, be re-centered on God? Theologian Wendy
Farley writes that, if we want to change what we do, we must change what we
desire, what we long for.[1]
If we desire safety and security above all else and read Scripture in the light
of the safety and security of rules and right answers, then the fruits that we
produce will be judgment and exclusion, and our schools and churches will be
communities of judgment and exclusion. If we desire deep and abiding love and
read Scripture in the light of Christ’s love, then the fruits that we produce
will be acceptance and communion with the rest of Christ’s beloved Creation. I
can’t help but wonder if the bullying that is so rife in our schools, while
certainly part and parcel of our fallen human behavior, is not also fed in our
Christian communities by both a lack of reading Scripture with one another, on
the one hand, and misguided interpretations of Scripture, on the other hand.
The Good News in Jesus Christ is that the love that we all long for already
dwells in us, yearns for us, pulls us toward right relationship with God and
one another, like a vine is filled with life and pulled toward the sun. It is
our job as Christians to testify to that Good News, to be sure that our
interpretations of scripture rest in that Good News, to take care that that
Good News is what we are teaching and showing to our children, who are part of the
fruit that we bear.
In the row of
townhouses where I live in Kentucky, we each have little brick walls in front
of our homes, and most of them have ivy planted around them. My neighbor--the
same neighbor who doesn’t have any weeds in his little plot of grass—takes care
of the ivy on his wall, too. He keeps it trimmed. His ivy curls gracefully up the
wall, climbing up like delicate roses. When I look in his yard, I can see the
new growth happening, as small, light green shoots peek out from behind the
established leaves and seek the sun on their journey up the wall. We would all
like for our souls, our world, and our ivy to look like his—neat and clean. We
would like the supporting walls of Scripture to show through the growth so that
we can be sure that the plant is growing on the right foundation. But my
neighbor sure spends a lot of time cutting on his ivy—snipping, snipping away
vibrant shoots and throwing them in the garbage, cutting away the ones with
funny mouths and flat faces, pulling out the strands that veer off in a
different direction from the rest, as if love, the vitality of the plant, can
be fixed and kept pinned down and on a certain track.
The ivy on the wall in front of my
townhouse, on the other hand, hadn’t been cut for many years when I moved in.
It had grown thick and unwieldy, completely overloading the brick wall. When I
tried to trim it last spring, cutting away some of the growth, I was just left
with a mass of dead branches heaped one on top of the other, resembling the
thick and ugly brambles that cruelly imprison Sleeping Beauty in her castle.
This year, as a result of the unsuccessful trimming, the new growth slowly
crept up on top of the dead, hard branches, covering them up and once again
burying my wall. New growth and death are all mixed up together now; nothing is
clear; and the wall seems ready to topple at any moment, like Jericho at the
sound of the bugle. If we want to join John’s Jesus in talking about vines and
us and God together, perhaps my version of vines is the right one. God’s
abiding love is about movement and mutual yearning, outpouring and indwelling,
tangled growth and abundant, messy yields that are barely contained by the
words of Scripture, words laden by the history of interpretation, words that
are constantly threatened with being lost, words that need to speak through our
voices and our lives, words that need to dwell in us.
The Alex’s on that bus, and the
Alex’s inside each one of us, are crying out for someone to climb in beside them
and help them find the Love that awaits us in God’s Word, so that our yearning
may bear fruit, rather than pain. The documentary ends with a plea for us to "Stand with the Silent," to remember those who have been bullied to the point of taking their own lives. Jesus asks us to do more: we are to sit with the silent and to give them Jesus' own Words, so that they--and we--need be silent no more.
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