Let’s try to imagine:
You’re out at St. Ambrose trimming some vines and pulling some weeds. You’re just minding your own business, doing your part to keep the parish grounds looking decent, focused on the task at hand. As you clip, your mind drifts to this week’s Gospel: “I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you … the harvest is sure to be abundant.”[1]
Before you know it, you’re no longer safely ensconced in the flower bed. Instead, you’re standing by the picnic table, facing a complete stranger! This person, wearing a diamond-studded nose-ring, is huge, dark-skinned, and scowling. He has arm-muscles the size of your thigh, and his bare skin is covered with a web of strange tattoos.[2] The front seat of his bright yellow Lamborghini convertible is pushed way back to accommodate his long legs. He seems to be reading something on the fanciest iPad you’ve ever seen. It looks like it’s in a gold case.
“What am I doing here?” you wonder. You never lurk around strangers at the picnic table. You would never approach a stranger unbidden, especially a strong, angry-looking one. You like to mind your own business. Yet, your lips move on their own. “What are you reading?” you blurt out.
The stranger looks up without surprise and responds, “Oh, I’m reading some poetry or something from a holy man named Isaiah. I downloaded this Bible last night in my hotel room for kicks and just can’t seem to put it down. It’s really bugging me, though. I don’t get it.” He frowns more deeply and slowly shakes his head back and forth.
"Hey, I need to head to the airport,” the stranger blurts, looking at you. “You go to this church, right?” he asks, nodding at St. Ambrose. “Why don’t you jump in and teach me something?” He pats the leather front seat.
You stare, trying to think of a good excuse stay out of that car. You’re wearing shorts. Your shoes are muddy. It’s foolish to climb in a car with a stranger. Who knows where you might end up? Besides, you don’t know much about the book of Isaiah, anyway. You don’t have the answers for lots of things about your faith. How could you guide someone else? You might say the wrong thing and get him angry … and then what would happen? But you find yourself right beside him in the front seat, anyway. Much too close for comfort.
“Read verses 32 and 33” commands the serious stranger, handing you the golden iPad. You obediently begin: “As a sheep led to slaughter, and quiet as a lamb being sheared, he was silent, saying nothing. He was mocked and put down, never got a fair trial. But who now can count his kin since he’s been taken from the earth?”[3]
“What does it mean?” the stranger asks. “Is Isaiah talking about himself? Hmmm. ‘Led to the slaughter. Mocked, no fair trial’ … It sounds like what happens to black bodies like mine. It sounds like God should intervene.” He’s agitated now.
Before you can say anything, the stranger keeps going: “Man, I sure have felt like a lamb being sheared, silent, afraid to speak. I know about being mocked and put down. I sure would like for my suffering to mean something. Could the scriptures be talking about me ….” Then he grows silent and pensive.
You don’t know what to say. Do the scriptures really have anything to do with our lives? Especially the Old Testament …. All that fighting and angry-God stuff … Was Isaiah even a real guy? But you don’t say any of that. Instead, these are the words that come out of your mouth: “'God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him … There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment… We love because he first loved us.' Jesus said, 'Remain in this love. Remain in me as I remain in you.’”
About this time, you are headed down McCaslin and the stranger spies Harper Lake. His face is now glowing. He shouts, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
You start to sweat. “What is to prevent you??? Lots of things,” you think glumly. First, there’s the fact that you don’t know if this man has already been baptized. We can’t just go baptizing people over and over in the Episcopal Church. We have strict rules about this kind of thing. Second, there’s the little problem that lay people aren’t allowed to do baptisms—at least not unless someone is dying. Third, there’s the issue that this guy hasn’t been properly prepared with classes. You can’t just jump into a lake and start baptizing people like some free-floating evangelist. What if someone sees you? What if you end up in a viral video, looking like a fool?
Yet, amazingly, as you are still listing all the stumbling blocks, there you are knee deep with a tattooed giant in the chilly water of Harper Lake, naming the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, while incredulous joggers roll their eyes.
Until, of course, you wake up from your dream. Yes, you must have fallen asleep in the shade while you were taking a rest from trimming vines in the sun. “What a crazy dream,” you muse, rubbing your eyes with profound relief.
It had to be a dream, right? We would never get ourselves in a situation like that one in real life. Lose control over a situation like that? No way! Trust a scary stranger, lay all of our judgments totally aside? No, that wouldn’t happen. Evangelize like some TV preacher instead of following the proper Episcopal way of doing things? No way, we think with a shudder.
I wonder, though. Why must it be a dream? Perhaps what should have made me and others pause this week in Bible Study wasn’t the Holy Spirit’s power to move Phillip around physically, but the Holy Spirit’s power to move us around spiritually. “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” the eunuch challenges Phillip. What, indeed? What’s to prevent the flourishing of God’s dream of love and justice for all to become reality? What’s to prevent abundant growth from happening right here in our lives at St. Ambrose? What, indeed? No matter what judgment, fear, custom, and despair we put in its path, God’s miraculous love will find a way around them. “Faith will [somehow] find the water,” writes Willie James Jennings.[4] Loving my neighbor in the way that God loves us involves more than acts of will on our part—more than deliberate, thoughtful plans. It involves living our lives connected to the source of the love, in Jesus. And it involves giving that love the freedom to bless those whom we encounter on the road.
[1]Eugene Petersen, The Message, John 15:5.
[2]Example given by Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands. (Las Vegas: Central Recovery Press, 2017), 94.
[3] Eugene Petersen, The Message, Isaiah 8: 32-33.
[4] As quoted in Debie Thomas, “When all are welcome.” April 25, 2021. Found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=2995
No comments:
Post a Comment