From Caleb the Camel

Proper 23B

Job 23:1-9, 16-17 Psalm 22:1-15 Hebrews 4:12-16 Mark 10:17-31

Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow us, that we may continually be given to good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

 

        You’re going to have to do some powerful imagining, but I’d like for you to imagine that I am a camel.

Yes, my name is Caleb the Camel, and I belong to David bar Benjamin, the master who decided not to follow Jesus in the story that Deacon Delinda just read. Before I tell my version of the story, I need to set the record straight on one thing. Those preachers who claim that the “Eye of the Needle” is the name of a gate in Jerusalem are just plain wrong. I've been in and out of all those gates, and there is no gate by that name. Therefore, on behalf of camels everywhere, I object to Jesus’ exaggerated remark about shoving us through a tiny needle hole. This ridiculous image is an affront to our dignity. Plus, it sounds very painful.

I am rather flattered that Jesus noticed me, though. I was right there when my master ran up to Jesus, so I saw the whole thing. We had been out inspecting one of my master’s properties earlier that day. My master has lots of properties—5 estates, I think, spread out all over the region. My brothers and I haul piles of sweet dates, and wine, and grain, and olives for him all over the Galilee. But we don’t mind. Master David feeds us well. He’s not like his father Benjamin.

Benjamin was a greedy man. He always had his eye out for getting something for nothing. Whenever a poor farmer couldn’t pay his taxes to King Herod, Benjamin was right there to buy up his land for almost nothing. Whenever there was a drought, or a farmer got sick, Benjamin was right there, too, promising a few sheckles for the poor guy’s home. He never forgave anyone’s debt. That’s how the family got so much property. Then, to top it off, Benjamin would underpay his workers—and underfeed his animals. He wouldn’t even let widows and orphans collect the few stalks of grain that the harvesters had dropped on the edges of his fields. Can you imagine?! Don’t tell anyone, but I used to spit on him whenever his back was turned. When old Benjamin died, we were all relieved.

My master David, he’s different. He was always a good little boy, slipping me a sweet date from his pocket when no one was looking. He was always trying to please his exacting father by doing everything just right: going with him to collect and count the tenants' rent; listening to all his father’s bragging; watching in silence as his father shouted insults to the beggars and foreigners at the gate. David spent hours in the synagogue studying scripture. He thought God was like his father Benjamin, full of rules and punishments. I remember him reciting the commandments and saying long prayers as we rode along from one property to the next. He was determined to earn God’s love, but his prayers never seemed to make him happy.

 I really felt sorry for him when his father matched him up with that grumbler Leah, just because she came with a huge dowry. His wife has been a thorn in David’s side his whole adult life. She’s always spending money, always putting him down for going to the synagogue. She’s never satisfied with what he provides for her. And now he’s got three daughters to provide for, too, and no sons. Still, nobody understands why he looks so sad and stressed out all the time.

“He’s the richest guy in town,” they scoff. “He can have anything he wants. He’s got no worries.” But they don’t know the half of it.

You should have seen the look on David’s face when that leper came running into town, shouting to everyone that the Messiah had come and healed him of his horrible disease. It was the first time in years that I’ve seen David’s eyes light up with hope. He became obsessed with finding this Jesus from Nazareth, and we spent days on the road looking. When we finally found him, David nearly jerked my neck off pulling on the reigns, and he leapt off my back before I could kneel all the way down. I couldn’t see what he was so excited about. There was just a young guy in a dusty robe on the side the road, surrounded by a bunch of bearded men who smelled like fish, and a few women who didn’t look so proper, if you know what I mean. But David, he ran down the road after this guy and kneeled down before him like this teacher was some kind of king. All I could think was that David’s wife was going to yell at him for getting his fancy cloak all dirty.

This Jesus really seemed to understand my master, though. Now, anybody could see that my master was desperate, and that he was rich. But Jesus seemed to see beyond that, right into his soul. Jesus knew that David was there to be healed, that his heart was just as scarred as the skin of that leper was. Jesus was somehow both hard and compassionate at the same time—truthful, you know? He wouldn’t let my master get away with any of that rule-following, goodie-two-shoes nonsense that he had been living by. “No one is good but God alone,” Jesus warned. Jesus even seemed to know about David’s father Benjamin—how he made a fortune off of the backs of the poor and the weak. “You shall not defraud,” Jesus added to his list of ways to live. Even I know that’s not one of the ten commandments! My master’s whole inheritance—his very being--is woven through with old Benjamin’s defrauding, though, that’s for sure. I even heard a scornful chuckle escape from the mouth of one of the tenant farmers standing nearby when Jesus pointed that out.

It was hard for me to watch the hope in my master’s eyes die out as Jesus spoke. How could he sell everything and give the money to the poor and then head off down the road with these fishermen? What about his obligations, his lands, his inheritance, his wife, his daughters who needed him? Who would take care of me and all the other animals? It would be like my master had died—died to his family, died to his dreams, traded in his whole life for a new one. Didn’t Jesus understand that? And then that unpleasant remark about it being easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter God’s Kingdom. Ouch. Even the beggars standing around were shocked to hear that. If the well-dressed, educated classes weren’t accepted …. then who was?

It hurt to see my master turn away in despair, without even the strength to climb up on my back. He just plodded down the road toward home. From far off, I heard Jesus still talking, calling out, “For human beings, it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible. … Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” These words have been haunting me, especially at night, when the stars seem to hang so close, like jewels up there in the heavens.

They remind me of a story I heard as a young camel. Let me see if I can remember it:

 Once upon a time, there was a she-camel whose fur was woven in with silver stars from head to tail.[1] Those hundreds of shiny stars gleamed and glistened and jingled when she walked, and when the sun shone down upon her, she blinded you with her beauty. The trouble was, she was lonely. None of the other plain brown camels wanted anything to do with her. When they saw her, all they could think of was that she shone with the light of all the stars, while they were covered in dust. Life was a competition, one that they had lost, one that she had won merely by being born. One day, when she was crying all by herself at the oasis, a wise old palm tree bent down to her and gave her some difficult advice.

“Cut off your stars and give one to all of the other camels,” the old tree suggested, “and find your true inheritance. You can all be beautiful together.  You can’t be happy when all of the others are sad. You are a herd, and you all belong together. What affects one of you ultimately affects all of you.”[2]

So the young camel cut off all of her stars but one, and she shared them with the other camels. It was very painful. She bled, and she was left with hundreds of tiny scars. She wasn’t the same. But she found happiness in the joy that she brought to her herd. She found her true inheritance. Now, they all glistened together, and when they ran, it was like the sun danced with joy across the desert.

Oh, wait! Maybe that’s it! Maybe when those camels stood around in a circle, sharing their lives with one another, the light bouncing back and forth from gift to gift, they looked from heaven like the round eye of a silver needle. And when that she-camel walked through the middle of them, with their light shining on her scars, and their heads nodding in loving recognition, it was as if she walked right through the eye of that needle...

See ‘ya later. I’ve got to go and share that story with my master! I hear that Jesus is still out there somewhere healing folks. There’s still time for my master to change his mind. 

[At the announcements, I'm going to ask the children to put star stickers on the adults at the door, and to have them walk under the "eye of the needle," London-bridge style between two teens. They will say to them, "With God, all things are possible."--adapted from Carolyn Brown, found at http://worshipingwithchildren.blogspot.com/2015/09/year-b-proper-23-28th-sunday-in.html.]

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[1] Thank you to Marcus Pfister, The Rainbow Fish, North-South Books, 1999.          

[2] Thank you to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, quoted at http://www.jackyyenga.com/the-spirit-of-ubuntu/.

Be Opened!

Proper 18, Year B
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Psalm 125
James 2:1-10, [11-13], 14-17
Mark 7:24-37

I don't usually have the children come forward for the sermon, but today, I need their help. [To gathered children:] I need you to act out something for the grown-ups today. Show us with your bodies what it looks like to be closed up. When you're closed up, you could be like a roly-poly bug, all rolled up on itself. You could be like a turtle, all withdrawn into its shell. Or a person, hunched over her cell phone, ears blocked by headphones, in a room full of friends. When you're completely closed up, you can't see, or hear, or speak clearly to other people. When you're closed up, you're like a locked door, or a box that no one can open. It's a dark, lonely thing to be closed-up, but it also feels safe, doesn't it? The soft, fragile, treasured parts are hidden away, and all that people can see is the hard, silent outside.

          Whole groups of people, too, can be closed up. They can be turned inward, with their backs to the rest of the world. Children, show us now a closed-up group. Groups can close themselves in with thick walls and tall fences with locked gates. They can put up barbed wire to keep others out, or shoot at them with weapons. Or they can simply make up a special language that you have to know to get in, or special rules that you have to follow to be part of the group. They can divide people up into categories--rich and poor, educated and uneducated, black and white, foreigner and native, male and female, Christian and non-Christian, Democrat and Republican, baby-boomer and millennial--and they can only let people like themselves into their huddle. Closed-up groups can feel safe, too, can't they? They feel comfortable, and easy. Differences can be hard to deal with. Helping people to get along takes work.

          What God wants for us, though, is not to live closed-up lives. God wants us to be open: open to the richness in diversity, open to God's love, open to mercy and forgiveness, open to new life, open to learning new things, open to healing, open to taking risks, open to growth, open to grace.  In today's Gospel, Jesus goes up to the man whose ears and mouth are closed. He takes hold of the man and he cries, "Ephphatha," or "Be opened!" And immediately, the man's ears are opened to hear, and his mouth is opened to speak with others. So children, when I cry, "Ephphatha," I want you to show us what it looks like to be opened up. Show us what it looks like with your body when you go from tense and closed up to relaxed and open to God and to one another.[Thank children and tell them they can sit back down for now, but that I'll need them again later].

 In today's Gospel, even Jesus experiences what it is like to be opened. When Jesus first travels from Israel into strange Gentile country, he is closed up within the culture into which he has been born in human flesh. For Jesus, Scripture is clear that the Children of Israel are God’s chosen people. Of course, God also cares for the Gentiles: the Greeks, the foreigners, those who don't know the Law. But Jesus has been taught that the Jews must be saved first, and then, through them, the rest of the world will be fed with the bread of life. When the Syrophoenecian woman begs him to heal her daughter, Jesus' response echoes coldly from out of the closed box in which he finds himself: He refuses to help a woman who is "other," who is not one of us, who is outside of the Law, outside of his own limited mission.

This woman, however, surprises him. Instead of slinking away, she rattles his box with a clever retort and the powerful love of a brave "tiger-mom" defending her child. That love breaks down the box around Jesus, and he changes his mind. The divine love and healing power within Jesus throw open his closed-up notions and, joining with the mother's great love for her daughter, bring wholeness and healing to the child. Jesus is then empowered to go forward with a new mission—one that is open to the healing of the whole world. "Be opened," he cries to the suffering Gentile man, closed in a silent, lonely world. "Be opened," he cries out to us today—we who are more lonely and divided than ever before.

Here at St. Andrew's, as we begin the program year today with a new commitment to God and to one another, I wonder if we will let Jesus heal us with a risky new openness? There's a great story about medieval knights who used to hold their sword-hand up out of the baptismal waters so that they could continue to use it to fight and kill. They were willing to open up their lives to Christ, just not the hand that kept them safe and powerful. The truth of that story always makes me smile in self-recognition. We all close up parts of ourselves to keep God from meddling with them. For some of us, it might be our wallet that we lock safely away from God's wild generosity. For some of us, it might be our prized sense of superiority that we close up from God's abundant love for every human being. For some of us, it might be our treasured stability and safety that we bundle away from the risks of an encounter with God's life-changing Spirit. I wonder what would change if we opened up our whole selves to Christ and his all-inclusive mission of love?

Years ago, in a hospital in the deep South, there was an elderly white man who was very ill. He was as ornery as could be, and none of the nurses enjoyed caring for him. One nurse, a black man, was a constant recipient of the old man's meanness and racist remarks. He made the nurse's life a living hell every time this nurse came into his room. Soon, the old man was dying. Strangely, it was the African American nurse who volunteered to perform the increasing care that the sick man needed. Amidst a barrage of insults, he would soothe his patient's pain, again and again. This nurse's courageous and deliberate choice did not escape the notice of one of the doctors in the hospital. The concerned doctor offered the nurse a chance to trade off this difficult patient with another staff member, but he turned down the offer, saying that he wanted to care for the old man. Finally, the old man died of his disease. When the doctor came into the room, he saw the nurse bent lovingly over the old man's body, caressing his pale forehead and shedding real tears of grief and love at the man's death. The doctor, who had always been much too busy to pray and much too worldly-wise to contribute to the life of a church, suddenly saw the transforming power of Jesus ripping open the constructs of hatred and pride right before his eyes. In the nurse's Christ-like action, the doctor saw the astounding grace and love of God out in the open for the first time in his life. The doctor's heart was broken open by what he saw. He couldn't stop thinking about it. Before he knew it, the doctor sought out the rector at the church he had been too busy to attend, and he handed her a considerable check. He told her the story of the loving nurse and the old racist, and he explained that he just had to respond somehow to the miracle of grace that he saw in that room. He had to thank God somehow for a love like that in the world.

At different times, we might be the old man, the nurse, or the doctor in this story. Whoever we are, though, we are redeemed by God's self-giving love. When we ask you to give to St. Andrew's, either of your skills, or your money, or your presence with us, we are not asking for you to give it only so that we can balance our budget, or so that we can make a comfortable, closed-in clubhouse for our parish family. That would be to shut ourselves, and God's Church, in a box that is much too small. Instead, we are asking you to give out of thanksgiving—out of amazement—over the divine healing, freeing power that transforms our lives every day. God's love is incredible, when our eyes are open to see it. God's grace is earth-shattering, when our hearts are open to feel it.

That's why we need the children to come forward again and help us. [Wait for them to come up.] Children, I want you to go quickly up and down and around the aisles, and to cry out, "Be Opened!" to everyone in the pews. Wave your arms, make noise, be like Jesus, full of God's power and determination. And the rest of us, as the children bless us with Jesus' transforming words, let's feel those heavy walls come down from inside us and from around us. Let's feel our hearts float free. Let's be opened to God's powerful, life-changing love as it flows in and out of our whole selves, from me to you, and from you to me, from us to others and from others to us. I think we will be surprised at the miracles we see.

What Bread Do You Desire?

"The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven." We are given this mysterious bread every week at the Eucharist. And we're going to hear about this bread for at least the next month in our lectionary, as the Gospel lesson for each week of August delves more and more deeply into John 6. So it's probably a good time to ask exactly what kind of bread Jesus is.[1] Is he the little round communion wafers that children often confuse with cardboard? Is he crispy flatbread or supple pita? Or could he be a delicious French baguette or even a flaky, buttery croissant? How about cornbread made in an iron skillet, with those delightfully crispy buttermilk edges? Could he even be rich pumpkin bread, with cranberries and walnuts? Or a fresh Challah loaf, slathered with sweet honey?

Mmmmm, I'm getting hungry! Well, not hungry really, since I ate a nice breakfast this morning. But my mouth sure is watering. I'm afraid that my mouth waters more readily for fresh-baked bread than it does for God. What would it be like, I wonder, to tremble for God's sweetness? To drool over the bread that gives life to the world? Jewish Midrash tells us that the manna God gave to the Israelites in the desert could have tasted like whatever each person wanted it to taste like. Remember, in the Exodus story, the Israelites were lost and fearful out in the desert. They were hungry and wishing that they'd never left home. They bickered and whined. So God graciously rained down flakes of manna for them, just enough for each day, and it sustained them. According to the later rabbis, then, if someone had a hankering for Joella's hot chicken, that's what they tasted in God's gift. If someone else preferred a salad, then the manna flakes tasted to them like the freshest greens. For the rabbis, God didn't just nourish the unhappy travelers—God delighted them with God's deep and abundant goodness. In our Gospel, Jesus compares himself to this manna—the bread from heaven, the generous gift of God. Jesus compares himself to food that not only nourishes but delights. Food that satisfies our deepest, truest desires.

The difference, of course, between a croissant au chocolat and the bread of life, is that Jesus' bread doesn't go stale. Manna only lasted for the day, and if you tried to hoard it, then it would turn bad and sprout worms. Croissants get dry, cake gets stale, and real baguettes get so hard after a half-day on the counter that you can use them for baseball bats. The same thing goes for the other worldly delights with which we try to nourish ourselves in God's stead. Many years ago, at a difficult time in my life, I had a recurring dream. I was in a dark, empty room filled only with a mini-fridge right in the center. It was the kind of small fridge that you put in a college dorm room. I was hungry in my dream—really hungry--and there was no food in the house at all. Hoping to find something to eat, I knelt down in front of the little fridge. As I opened the door, bright light from inside the fridge poured out into the darkness of the room. And yet, inside, the shelves were empty, except for a couple of unappetizing containers of moldy leftovers. It was at that point—hungry and dejected, but unwilling to close the refrigerator door—that I would wake up.

It doesn’t take an expert to explain that dream: In the busy distress of my daily life, I was spiritually starving. Whatever stores of joy and meaning that I had previously packed into Tupperware containers and saved in my spiritual refrigerator, they had sat for too long uneaten and untended. I had gathered up only the food that perishes: possessions, acclaim, Facebook friends, dreams of perfection. What I hungered for was the bread that endures—the bread of life that Jesus offers us: the food of love, forgiveness, and grace.

The Good News is that this bread of life isn't hard to find, once our mouths are watering and our eyes are open. Not only do we receive it in our hands every Sunday at the altar, we find it hidden in the most ordinary places. The kind of bread that Jesus knew—the kind of bread that Jesus used to feed the multitude in last week's Gospel—is plain peasant food; rough, commonplace barley bread. I had some once in Europe, the kind of bread that shepherds stick in their pockets to take up into the mountains for weeks while they pasture the cows. A small chunk of this bread is heavy enough to use as a paperweight. It scratches your throat going down, and when you cut it, you have to saw it like a piece of wood. It's a gray-brown color, the color of earth, the color of humble things, the color of the wooden cross. This bread might not always delight, but it can be counted on to withstand any hardship. It is, as Lauren Winner says, "bread that sustains oppressed people on their journey through dangerous terrain."[2]

We need this kind of Jesus bread, too. By God’s Grace, God has planted reliable nourishment for our souls deep within simple, common things—deep within our own imperfections, too. As we look around the world, hungry and restless, can we spot the strange God hidden in the ordinary? Hidden in the people and places that we so easily overlook? Hidden outside the safety of our walls? Hidden beyond the boundaries of propriety? Part and parcel of our own most hated flaws? Within the heavy silences of what seems like unanswered prayer?

Yes, Jesus is both daily sustenance and extraordinary delight. But I'd like to close with just one more bread image. Last year, I gathered two preschoolers and a first-grader on a Saturday morning at church to prepare them for their first Eucharist. As part of the lesson, I decided that we would make bread together to use on Sunday. I looked up a recipe and gathered the ingredients, and we got to work. The children took their task seriously. They scooped and measured flour; they tirelessly stirred and poked, shaped, and patted. And patted. And patted. The dough got dry, so I added some water. It was sticky, so I added some oil. Then it was still sticky, so I added more flour. When we finished, we had flour and doughy fingerprints everywhere. But we also had six small flat loaves of communion bread, each carefully marked with a cross right at the center. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The bakers among us can probably guess what happened during the Eucharist the next day. That bread was as hard and dry as a hockey puck. Parishioners chewed valiantly on Jesus. Even worse, when we broke it and gave it out, that bread crumbled everywhere. It went in the chalice, on the fair linen, on the kneelers, on the floor, even down the front of people's shirts and in children's hair. Everywhere! Little crumbs of eternal life, Christ's body broken to bits, scattered in messy abundance all over the sanctuary. Luckily, I didn't get fired and probably won't try that recipe again. But it did look like we'd had a party up at the Altar rail that Sunday, a party in which love was thrown around joyfully like confetti, falling from the plump hands of children into our mouths, down our shirts, and out into the world.

I invite you now to close your eyes for a moment and imagine what kind of bread you most desire Jesus to be…… What would delight your heart and enliven your mind? What would sustain you in the wilderness? What would call you to yourself and set you forth on a wild search for God? What crumbs would you scatter in your wake? For what kind of bread would you exclaim, like the disciples, "Sir, give us this bread always"? When you come forward to the altar at the Eucharist, hold out your hands for this bread that you desire from God. Taste and see, trust and delight, in the goodness of the Lord.

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[1] The following riff, and much of the sermon, is inspired by Lauren Winner's work in Wearing God and the class that I took with her this summer at the School of Theology, The University of the South. See Lauren Winner, Wearing God (New York: HarperOne, 2015), 94f.

[2] Ibid.,113.

Photo credit to Robin Garr!