The narrative suggests two reasons as to why Joseph’s brothers hate him so much. One is good old-fashioned sibling rivalry: they are jealous of him because they believe that their father, Jacob, loves Joseph more than he loves them. We never got an amazing technicolor dream coat! But the narrative gives a second reason that his brothers can’t stand Joseph: he is a dreamer and they don’t like the dreams he has been having.
Inexplicably, however, the lectionary committee (in their infinite wisdom) cut out the middle part of today’s narrative. So if you come to this text without already knowing the story then you may not recall what it was Joseph had been dreaming. Jacob has settled back into the land of Canaan after two decades away from there. Joseph is now seventeen years old, and no one seems to deny that he is a spoiled brat and a tattle tale. And then in verses 5-11 of the thirty-seventh chapter of Genesis, the verses not included in today’s reading, the narrator says: Once Joseph had a dream which he told to his brothers; and they hated him even more. He said to them, “Hear this dream which I have dreamed: There we were binding sheaves in the field, when suddenly my sheaf stood up and remained upright; then your sheaves gathered around and bowed low to my sheaf.” His brothers answered, “Do you mean to reign over us? Do you mean to rule over us? And they hated him even more for his talk about his dreams. He dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers, saying, “Look, I have had another dream: And this time the sun, the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” And when he told it to his father and brothers, his father berated him. “What,” he said to him, “is this dream you have dreamed? Are we to come, I and your mother and your brothers and bow low to you to the ground?” So his brothers were wrought up at him and his father kept the matter in mind. (Jewish Publication Society translation) Now as we all know, some dreams are best kept to ourselves. Some are just too weird to share with others. But Joseph apparently relishes his dreams and can’t wait to throw it into the faces of his brothers, apparently as evidence of his superiority over them. Let me be clear: I am not saying this is an excuse for attempted murder. Only that Joseph was a bit of a jerk as a seventeen-year old. Now to preach this sermon I am going to have to spoil the ending. I need to tell you (if you don’t already remember it) that the dreams do come to pass. Joseph is taken out of the pit and sold to the Ishmaelites who take him to Egypt. Long story short, it turns out he is not only a dreamer but a pretty good interpreter of dreams and that gift will get him out of jail after he is imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. He is then promoted to a cabinet position in the Pharaoh’s administration—Secretary of Agriculture. After the economy enters into a serious seven-year recession and famine threatens the land, his father and brothers come down from Canaan to Egypt and because of his political position, Joseph is able to save them from starvation. And guess what? They’ll bow down before him! One way to preach this story is as a transition from Genesis to Exodus: literally that is how the Joseph story functions in the Bible. We move away from the patriarchs and the land of Canaan, and the children of Israel end up in Egypt. That is where the story will pick up with the call of Moses and the Exodus event. I’m sure there are countless sermons that could be preached on this transition including sermons about family dynamics and in particular the complexities of large blended-families. But I want to raise a serious theological question with you today. The Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob materials reflect a more primitive social context and worldview. In that world, Abraham seems to hear God’s voice as clear as day: “Go to a land I will show you.” Or, “take your son, your only son whom you love, and go with him to Mt. Moriah.” God speaks, Abraham obeys. That is what makes him the father of faith. But Joseph moves in a more subtle and sophisticated cultural milieu, and I would argue that is a world more like the one we inhabit. By the time we get to Joseph, God’s way of communicating is more hidden and less direct; instead of “go” or “take” we get these dreams. It isn’t even clear initially that God is behind the dreams that Joseph is having, the root cause of which may well have been (for all we know) too much garlic in the hummus. The point is that the meaning of dreams is never literal and rarely obvious and so dreams always need to be interpreted in order to figure out what is of God. So Walter Brueggemann argues that what this text is really attempting to do is to raise a crucial and far-reaching faith question: what does it look like to trust God in a world where it isn’t quite so obvious what God is up to? It’s easier to obey God’s will when God is clear, but what to do when it isn’t so clear what God is asking of us? Think about that for a moment. If, like Abraham, we could really “hear” God and know what God wants of us, then maybe we could muster up the strength and the courage to act. But what if the harder part is figuring out what God is up to and what God wants of us? The fancy theological word for that is “discernment.” But all that word really means is that most of the time we have to try to figure things out when at best we get dreams that need to be interpreted or epiphanies that give us glimpses and half-guesses into what might be God’s will for us. Most of us don’t get clarity from God and when we do we are probably wise to be suspicious of our own certitude. Stay with me on this! Bruggemann argues that this Joseph narrative is about “God’s hidden yet decisive power that works in and through, but also against human forms of power.” Got that? God’s work is hidden, yet decisive and also against human forms of power. That’s a big huge theological claim! Joseph’s call is hidden, even from him. To say this in a much simpler way: God is at work in this text, but that doesn’t become clear until the end. God is working in and through (and sometimes against) all of these mixed-up characters to bring about a new reality, but that work is mostly hidden from the sight of the characters in this story and even to some extent from us as readers. And I wonder – isn’t that more like what we go through than Abraham, most days at least. Now the text doesn’t say that God made the brothers do this terrible thing of selling their brother off. The text doesn’t negate free will. But it does seem to be insisting that God can use even our bad choices to bring about good, that God can use our sibling rivalry and petty jealousies and ineffective parenting and all the rest and still bring about good. In other words, this narrative is exploring the nature of God’s providence. That word is one I think we need to rediscover and reclaim in our theological vocabularies. It comes from two Latin words, pro-video, literally “to see before.” God sees. Not passively but actively; not sitting way up in heaven distant from our daily lives but right here, in the midst of it all. That doesn’t mean God is some kind of puppet-master who is pulling all the strings and making us do what we do. But through it all, God sees and God acts. God’s hidden yet decisive power keeps working in families—not just when we get it all right (which we rarely do) but even through the messes we make. I think most of us probably believe that at least to some extent, or at least we want to believe it, at least when it comes to personal lives. God has a plan for us. It may be harder for us to make the claim that this narrative makes that God’s activity isn’t confined to individuals and families, however, but global events as well. This is headed toward a story of God’s liberating activity of bringing a band of slaves out of an oppressive political situation and into freedom. It’s harder when you read the newspapers or watch the news to believe that God is involved in global events, working in and through (and sometimes against) human forms of power in order to bring about peace on earth and good will to all. But maybe the great challenge of faith in our time is to trust that God is seeing to things we can’t yet see. As in this story, when it is only at the end of this narrative that the characters in this drama get how it all fits together as part of God’s plan. So it often is for us as well. So Brueggemann makes the claim that a narrative such as this one creates a listening community that is invited “to live between the hint of the dream and the doxology of the disclosure.” I love that! We see the “hint of the dream” in today’s reading—Genesis 37. (Well, actually the lectionary committee didn’t even give us that much but it is in the text!) Next weekend we’ll read from the 45th chapter, what Brueggemann calls the “doxology of disclosure” part of the story. Unlike today, when we don’t hear mention of God, next week it will all be about God: God did this, God was at work in these events, praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise God who has provided for us and who saves us from our foolishness and so on and so forth. But we live most of our lives between the hints and the doxology, don’t we? We work on letting go and letting God, some days with little more than a hunch or a dream or a prayer to go on. We live our lives as followers of Jesus Christ asking for discerning hearts so that God can work more in and through (rather than against) us to bring healing to our lives, our community, and our world. Faith is hard when like Joseph we find ourselves in a pit, abandoned by those we thought were supposed to love us. Faith is hard when the doctor says cancer or our spouse says “I don’t love you anymore” or our kid is in real trouble or the world seems bent on destruction. But God sees further down the road than we can see and that is good news for us. We don’t have to worry about making it all fit together—as long as we are moving toward doxology we can let God worry about the disclosure part. Our work is to move from the hint of the dream to praise. To proclaim the mystery of faith: that Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. Which is simply another way of saying what Julian of Norwich said in the midst of the bubonic plague: all shall be well. Or as Francis of Assisi prayed in a time of war and a church in profound need of healing: Lord, make me a channel of your peace. Faith in God’s providence doesn’t make us passive: rather, the hints of God’s kingdom that we do get sustain us for the work God gives us to do, as we live toward the doxology of disclosure, toward the plan God has for our lives and for this world.
This saying, about whether we find something or not, surfaced in my mind as I have been thinking, this week, about the set of small parables we’ve head in our gospel this morning.
But let me start with a story I enjoy every time I think about it. I’m going to read you a piece about it that appeared in the Washington Post, some years after the event it describes: In Washington DC, at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, a man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, approximately 2000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After about four minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule. About four minutes later, the violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk. At six minutes, a young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again. At ten minutes, a three-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time. This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent - without exception - forced their children to move on quickly. At forty-five minutes: The musician played continuously. Only six people stopped and listened for a short while. About twenty gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32. After one hour: He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed and no one applauded. There was no recognition at all. No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold-out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100 each to sit and listen to him play the same music. This is a true story. Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the D.C. Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities. You may well have heard this story before. We could even call it a parable, in that it meets several of the characteristics that fit the parables that Jesus taught:
This story came to my mind, like the aphorism about expecting the unexpected, as they’re both about what we see, what we notice, and particularly, about noticing something unexpected that may be hidden. The parables in this morning’s gospel are part of the large body of parables that Matthew reports Jesus as having taught. Many of them including this mornings’ parables are about what is translated in today’s version as “the Kingdom of Heaven”. You’ve heard me say this before, but I prefer other terms to “kingdom of heaven”, in part because “kingdom” by definition suggests a patriarchal social order, and in part because Christian tradition has come to associate “heaven” with a realm outside of the world we live in, that we might access after we’ve died. I feel quite confident that an otherworldly heaven is not what Jesus was concerned about. I prefer the language “the realm of God”, a way of living and being in a community of respect, compassion and justice that reflects the Love that is God‘s self. Our presiding bishop often uses the phrase “God’s dream”, which is helpful, too, and comes from Verna Dozier’s 2007 book, The Dream of God. So in his series of parables Jesus is suggesting to his hearers what God’s realm or God’s dream looks like and he compares it to five examples:
There are a couple of common threads in these brief parables. The first two parables are about something small and seemingly insignificant that proceeds to grow in size and ultimately take over. I find it interesting that mustard seed and yeast would not have had positive associations for Jesus’ community. Mustard was considered a weed, an invasive plant that, once it took hold, would self-propagate and potentially choke out the other crops. Yeast, likewise, looks quite undistinguished to begin with but then bubbles up and completely changes the nature of a batch of flour, and apparently, is not used by nomadic people because it makes dough hard to manage. Having come home from Maine, ten days ago, to a crop of weeds the likes of which I have NEVER seen before, I can understand how first century listeners may have been startled to hear God’s realm likened to mustard seed. The treasure hidden in a field and the pearl of great value are both unexpected finds. Like the mustard seed and yeast, both are small, and both were hidden from view. Both inspire the ones who discover them, however, to basically abandon all their other priorities to commit to the treasure and the pearl: both sell “all that they have” in order to possess the one desirable thing they have found. The net thrown into the sea draws in fish of every kind – both those that are desirable to eat AND those that, when hauled up on shore, are just going to be tossed into a basket and disposed of. This parable seems to be directly connected to the parable we heard last week: like the weeds that have grown up among the wheat plants, that need to be gathered and destroyed, there are “bad” fish pulled in with the good ones. This week Julie Carew shared with the vestry an approach to Bible study that invites us to look at Jesus’ teachings through the lens of “Beloved Community”, that is, recognizing that Jesus was teaching with love to an oppressed people, and not from the perspective of power and privilege, and I’ve thought about how it might shape our understanding of today’s parables. Adopting this approach, it’s easy to understand how this set of parables about God’s realm would have great appeal to the disenfranchised – both the disenfranchised Jesus’ world, and of our own:
For those of us living more comfortable lives, these parables may be scarier to embrace.
But the piece of the parable that’s been most thought-provoking to me this week is the suggestion of how subtle and hidden the bubbling up of God’s realm may be. I think we could suggest that God’s realm is like Josh Bell playing the violin in the subway station. Because we are so much dominated by the schedules and lists and agendas and priorities playing in our heads, what Bach, what Stradivarius are we not noticing? What opportunities to join in the work of God’s realm are we missing? Where is the work of God’s love taking root and growing, hidden away like a treasure, a pearl of unusual value, or a master musician, playing incognito? As we contemplate the opportunities and the risks of God’s realm, may we continue to keep our eyes and our hearts open
And it is a particular joy to witness new generations of families with long term ties to this congregation – it gives us a sense of continuity and of hope, reminding us of God’s ongoing presence and love, supporting this family and this parish family through times of change and challenge.
In the liturgy, we speak of baptism as a covenant. Covenants involve agreement and mutuality - and baptism involves both receiving and committing. When I meet with parents bringing child for baptism, I ask why baptism is important to them. Always some version of same answer – We want the child to be in relationship with God – to have God as a fundamental part of their life. Parents also often talk about their desire that the child is connected to something larger, something life-giving: they recognize what an important part of life community is. In baptism and in the early years of his life, Noah will experience the receiving side of the baptismal covenant – He will be receiving God’s grace and blessing as he is named as a child of God – not because of anything he has accomplished or earned, but because it is God’s nature to love and to bless God’s children.As he grows, he will be nurtured in God’s love – through the family, caregivers, teachers, community who support and shape him. Over time, Noah will grow into the responsibility/commitment side of baptismal covenant – that of being not only a child of God, but a disciple of Jesus. He will grow into his adult capabilities, into the capacity to make impact on the world around him. As do all of us, Noah will have the opportunity to make God’s love known in the world, to have God’s love make a difference in the world, through him. In our liturgy this morning, therefore, we celebrate hope and faith, and we meet God in this morning’s sacraments with gratitude. And we have heard some particularly wonderful readings this morning that fit perfectly with the themes of hope and faith and promise. Today’s story from the Hebrew Scriptures is one of my favorites. It is a great story on its own, but it also has special associations for me. As you probably know, I spend thirty two years on the faculties of independent boarding schools. At the beginning of each year, new students always arrive a day before returning students and are given a brief orientation and the opportunity to feel at home before the “old kids” get there to claim their turf. At my last school, we always had a brief chapel service on new students’ first evening, and my colleague in the chaplaincy, Ned Sherrill, would always read and talk about the story of Jacob at Bethel. He would talk about how terrifying it must have been for Jacob to have left his home and be heading into the unknown: you’ll recall that Jacob was actually on the run from his brother’s anger, after Jacob had pulled a pretty nasty trick swindling Esau out of his birthright. Ned would draw attention to poor Jacob having only a stone for a pillow. I pretty sure Ned didn’t explicitly draw the connections for the new students that Jacob’s situation had a lot of similarities to their own on that first scary evening in a completely new environment, but I can’t imagine that many of them missed the parallel. And Jacob, in his dream state, was shown that the place where he was lying, with a stone under his head, was directly connected to the place where God dwells among all of the heavenly beings. And God spoke to Jacob, this kid who was on the run after behaving very badly, and promised that “I am with you and will keep you wherever you go”, and that “all of the families of the earth shall be blessed in you.” So when Jacob woke, he did so declaring “Surely God is in this place – and I did not know it!” I recall appreciating, every year that Ned offered that lesson in that moment, how much it must have offered reassurance to those other scared kids among whom I sat in the school chapel. And Jacob’s story is a lesson for all of us, of course. Whenever we find ourselves scared and alone, with nothing but a metaphorical stone to lay our heads on, especially when facing a new and unknown environment, we can remember that “God is in this place.” When we’re fleeing something for which we feel ashamed and guilty, we can know that just as God promised Jacob, God blesses us and will bless others through us. We are not alone and there is ALWAYS hope. And this morning’s psalm celebrates the very same promise of God’s faithfulness in knowing and caring for us: Lord, you have searched me out and known me; * you know my sitting down and my rising up; If I take the wings of the morning * and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there your hand will lead me * and your right hand hold me fast. Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; * darkness and light to you are both alike. Search me out, O God, and know my heart; * and lead me in the way that is everlasting. This assurance is what we hope Noah will come to know and find comfort in, and in welcoming him today, we pledge to help him learn the faith. And this morning’s gospel, as well, offers hope and assurance, albeit in a somewhat strange way. We’re in Matthew, the gospel of parables, and we are continuing in this same part of Jesus’ teaching ministry we heard last Sunday, in which he is immersing his listeners in agricultural metaphor – planting and growing and harvesting, along with the many things that can make the agrarian life complicated. This week’s farmer is a responsible farmer and sows good seed, hoping and planning, no doubt, for a good harvest that will not only feed the family but also benefit the community. But there is an enemy in the neighborhood, and that person chooses to undermine the work of the responsible farmer, sneaking in while the household is asleep, and throwing the seeds for weeds among the farmer’s good seed. As the plants begin to grow, the other farmworkers are horrified at this bad luck and initially question the farmer’s skills. When assured that the weeds are the work of the enemy, however, they are ready to help out by pulling the weeds before they grow. The farmer declines their offer, however, pointing out that any attempt to uproot the weeds will result in damage to the wheat as well. “Wait until harvest time”, he tells them. When all of the plants are mature, the weeds can be plucked up and destroyed leaving the good wheat to be gathered into the barn. Jesus’ explanation of the parable to the disciples centers on the differentiation of the righteous from the evildoers at the end of the age. The beauty of the parables, however, is that we never need to be satisfied by one explanation; parables work on many, many levels, and the more we dig into them, the more we see. I actually don’t think that any of our lives are entirely wheat or completely weed. We’re all pretty much of a mix, aren’t we? Sometimes we can act as our best selves and do things we are proud of, and sometimes we just blow it, giving in to impulse or acting out of fear, saying or doing things we regret, which can then hang around our necks like the veritable albatross. I think the parable of the wheat and the weeds invites us not to dwell on what is already done, but rather, to move forward, and to trust God that God will do the sorting when the time is right. Just as Jacob arrived in Bethel with a violation of his brother’s trust on his conscience, and was nevertheless shown God’s presence and offered blessing, so it is with our lives. God’s dream for us, God’s beloved children, is lives of a full harvest of joy. We can’t help but sow some weeds along the way. And despite our best hopes for him, Noah will find his times to include both the wheat and the weeds. But the weeds are not the final word, with. God who is Love itself. But the One to whom “darkness and light are both alike” is there beside us and in us – knowing us, accepting us, inviting and challenging us. Let us always be listening for her voice.
I hope to take less than 45 minutes but buckle your seat belt.
Let’s begin by reflecting back on a couple of phrases from the Bidding Prayer Kathryn read to us in the beginning of the service. “We gather as the body of the faithful to remember that God is the Peace which surpasses all understanding. . . “We long for peace, within ourselves, within our communities, within creation. . . . “Make us quick to welcome ventures in cooperation among the peoples of the world … “In the time of opportunity, make us diligent; and in the time of peril, let not our courage fail; . . . ” The fact that all of these are action statements with regard to peace cannot be over stated. I am one of those people who hears peace and I relax and want to sit back and enjoy the quiet and restfulness that I often associate with peace. But peace is not necessarily peaceful. Kathryn read in the Collect just before I started, “Keep us from being content with things as they are, that from this central peace there may come a creative compassion, a thirst for justice, and a willingness to give of ourselves in the spirit of Christ.” No sitting back and resting in peacefulness in that sentence. My second response to getting this assignment was to go to the Oxford Dictionary for a place to start. There were 10 definitions for “peace’ in the electronic version of the Oxford Dictionary that I accessed with numerous sub-definitions among them. Five dealt with political or civil tranquility as among nations or within society; four of them dealt with the quiet restfulness that I mentioned enters my mind on first reflection and one explained the sign of peace we offer during religious services. I am going to guess that the Peace that surpasses all understanding is not defined in those definitions. Jesus would have used the Jewish word for peace in his teachings to his followers. Shalom, does not simply mean Peace. According to Doug Hershey in his article entitled The True Meaning of Shalom on firmisreal.org, “The root word of Shalom is ‘shalam’.” He goes on to say “The ancient Hebrew meaning of shalam was “to make something whole”. Not just regarding practical restoration of things that were lost or stolen. But with an overall sense of fulness and completeness in mind, body and estate.” To make something whole with an overall sense of fulness and completeness in mind, body, and estate. Now to me that sounds a lot more like something Jesus might say. Perhaps a little further investigation of how a Jewish rabbi might view the meaning of peace would be helpful. Dr. Aviezer Ravitzky has done an exploration of shalom in Hebrew scripture in an article entitled Shalom: Peace in Hebrew, on the online site myJewishlearning.com. He writes; ““Great is peace, for of all the commandments it is written: ‘if [emphases added] thou see,’ ‘if thou meet’ (Exodus 23:4, 5), ‘if [there] chance {to be} (Deuteronomy 22:6); that is, if the occasion for this commandment should arise, you must do it, and if not, you need not do it. In relation to peace, however, [it is written]: ‘seek peace, and pursue it’ — seek it in your own place, and pursue it even to another place as well.” (Leviticus Rabah 9:9)” Ravitzky is saying that most of the rules and commandments of the Mosaic and Jewish Law are responsive or reactive to an action taken by a person of the Jewish faith. But peace, peace is affirmative. You don’t wait on peace, you make peace. Dr. Ravitzky goes on to say; “Peace was the ultimate purpose of the whole Torah : “All that is written in the Torah was written for the sake of peace” (Tanhuma Shofetim 18). It is the essence of the prophetic tiding — “The prophets have planted in the mouth of all people naught so much as peace” (Bamidbar Rabah Naso 11:7) — and of redemption, “God announceth to Jerusalem that they [Israel] will be redeemed only through peace” (Deuteronomy Rabah 5:15).” So I reach the conclusion that the pursuit of making something whole with an overall sense of fulness and completeness in mind, body, and estate is what Jesus is saying to us when he says “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27) Wow! Talk about a mission statement. And yet what was it that Kathryn just prayed in Collect? “Keep us from being content with things as they are, that from this central peace there may come a creative compassion, a thirst for justice, and a willingness to give of ourselves in the spirit of Christ.” So how do we do that? I think it sounds more difficult than it really is. Take a trip with me. Close your eyes if you’re comfortable and imagine a place where it is peaceful and you like to go to gather yourself. A park, a beach, a place in the woods. Imagine settling down on a bench or a rock or a log or something to rest from the travel to get here and take in the surroundings. All of a sudden a slightly disheveled person muttering to themselves saunters up and sits down next to you. Of course you’re startled but you can’t find the words to say anything right away. They just continue to talk; not necessarily to you but sort of in your direction. You can’t figure out what the heck you should do or say and your focus on that keeps you from really hearing what the person is saying. You catch a word or two, enough to understand that the person is in distress. Suddenly the person jumps up and turns toward you and says, “Thank you. Thank you so much. You have made my day. No one would listen to me but now you have allowed me to get myself straight. Thank you so very much!” and they walk away as quickly as they came. So what do you feel? I know some of us are still too startled to feel anything but startled. I think maybe some of us are analyzing the encounter and realizing that we accidentally gave someone shalom. We went into our favorite place in search of shalom, thought we lost it, gave it to a stranger, and got it back from the stranger. God’s shalom is like that. Sometimes all we have to do is be present and the Spirit takes it from there. As Charlie said in her sermon three weeks ago, one of our friends, Fr. Warren Hicks, gave us a mantra to guide our work with folks who are not doing as well as might be. He said show up, be present, tell the truth and let go of the outcome. Showing up is just being where we think we are called and sometimes just being open no matter where we are. Being present just means not preoccupied by the noise around us and in our heads. Listen, actively. Telling the truth is not license to judge or condemn but is about responding from your heart to the person in front of you. Letting go of the outcome is understanding that we don’t have all the answers and that sometimes things won’t meet our expectations and that’s alright because we can leave it to the Spirit to finish the work. A short time ago, on a Wednesday night, Charlie and I were watching PBS. We started watching a documentary about a black gay man who did a tour of the South in search of places where gay and trans people can live authentically. It was interesting how much love he found touring a part of our country not know for openness to the other. It was followed by a documentary about Mama Bears, moms of gay and trans children. Let me explain that while I do my best to accept trans people, I have had a hard time understanding their world. Watching how a young trans woman expressed who she was and how it came from inside of her helped me a step further along the way. I highly recommend the show should you get a chance to see it. The reason I tell you this is to show that the Spirit has a way of getting you prepared to do God’s work. The next day, Thursday, was my day for going walking with Dennis O’Rourke to visit with the folks on the streets as we do as members of Emmaus Companions. About mid-way along the walk we entered the Energy Park and Dennis set about teaching a new card game to a group of folk sitting at one of the tables. As he was settling in I noticed one of our peeps sitting off by herself on a rock in the park. I have known and talked with K (not her real initial) since a few months before the pandemic. When I first met her she was homeless. I had not seen her for a couple years so I asked how she was and if she was living inside now. We chatted for a while and I learned she was in a pretty good place with housing and people she liked. She started sharing how hard it was to continue her transition. I thought about how changing your physical self to make it consistent with your psychological self had to be really hard and scary. While I thought that was what she was talking about, the real issue was with her mom. Her mom’s rejection of the transition makes it hard to impossible for K to commit to the rest of her transition even though trying to live as her birth gender has driven her close to suicide more than once. Mom was unable to accept where K was and where she was going. K loves her mom and it hurts really badly that mom doesn’t return the love. Tears ran down K’s face a couple times as she told me her story. To be truthful I didn’t know what to say so I decided to let God tell me what to say and when. God wasn’t talking at the moment. I sat with K for about an hour. Before we parted I reminded her that she admired how her mom was really helpful and caring with people. I told K that K’s care and concern for those around her was evidence that a part of her mom was alive and well within her. I told K that she has a lot to give to the world and we can’t afford to lose her. K thanked me for listening and said people often find it hard to listen. I don’t know how much my listening helped but that is the letting go of the outcome part. I felt peace as she went her way and I went mine. As Joan read from Rumi “Be a precious donor of peace and hope. Give love to all you meet.” We don’t have to be great ministers to offer Shalom to the world. Sometimes we don’t have to do anything but sit and see who sits down with us. Amen |
