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May 11 , 2008
Pentecost
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Acts 2:2-11; I Corinthians 12:3-13; John 20:19-23
Just before the Easter Season began, on Holy Thursday, I preached about an encounter I had with a homeless man in downtown Minneapolis. I had been shopping for Easter chocolates and was wondering around the IDS tower lobby when I recognized this fellow from service trips I had taken to the homeless shelter. To make a long story short, we talked for a while, I asked him what kind of egg he wanted, he chose caramel, and we parted.
Well, after Easter I got around to eating my own caramel egg. It was big, about the size of my fist. I had expected it to be caramel flavored chocolate of some kind, but it was in fact a big glob of caramel coated with a layer of chocolate–tasty but harder to eat than a caramel apple. “Uh oh,” I thought, because the man I had given the caramel egg to had only one tooth.
So two weeks ago I’m back at the homeless shelter in Minneapolis with some Stout students and the man is there again. After serving the food, I sought him out and chatted, finally asking him if he remembered meeting me in the IDS Tower just before Easter. “Oh, are you the guy who gave me the egg?” “Yep,” I said. “Boy that thing was hard to eat. I just have the one tooth, you know. But I got a firm plastic knife from one of those take out places and I cut it up. It tasted good.” Mission accomplished.
I wonder if that’s a bit like the gifts of the Spirit. We believe at Confirmation we are given the gift of courage, but do we use it? Do we take a chance to help someone out? We are given the gifts of knowledge, wisdom, understanding, and counsel, but do we listen closely to others or to the news of the world and pray about what we hear or read? We are given the gifts of piety and fear of the Lord–inside of us there is a very vital part just begging to know God and worship God through prayer and action. We have the caramel egg, but with our weakness (with one tooth) it’s hard to eat, and so we have to work a bit by getting a knife to cut it. We don’t eat by automatic osmosis, and we don’t enjoy the gifts of the spirit that way either.
After I met with this man, who was white, at the shelter, I looked around for someone else to talk to. Most of the men there were not white. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I need an extra urge from the Spirit to start conversations with people who might not speak my language or who might thing I’m a “do gooder whitey” (which I am). But I just walk around until I catch someone’s eye and they look like they want to talk. An African American man named William was listening to music and smiled when I walked by so we stopped and chatted about the food, the weather, and his frustration with women. He was lying on his foam mat. Then the person next to him came and laid down on his mat. The three of us went on with our banter for a few minutes until the other man looked at me intently and asked “Are you a Christian?” I said I was. “Do you pray for people?” I said I did, every day. “How do you pray for people?” I told him I think of people I know real well, others who have asked for prayers, and others far away who I know are suffering. I try to feel a bit of the anguish out there and ask God to help them. I told him my mom thinks of people who need help and asks God to give them a big spiritual hug. He liked that. Then he asked if I would pray for him. I said yes, thinking he meant that I would pray for him when I was alone later that night.
But then I saw him with his head bowed and his hand out to me. I knelt next to him, took his hand and asked if there was anything he especially needed help with. He said his marriage. And so I prayed, and when I was done I asked him if he would pray for me. He began right away. He prayed for a couple minutes. He thanked God for sending me to the shelter that night and said that he knew God had a special plan for me, that he had chosen me to work for his glory and he asked God to give me the courage that I would need to live that out.
It was a powerful prayer. If my prayer rated a 6, his was a 10. But ratings aren’t important, but only the experience of two people, very different people, uniting in prayer. And both with the sure knowledge that we needed God and God would come to us. We need the beautiful moments of prayer, but here I am two weeks later not a lot different than I was before we met. And again I see the distinction between the gifts we receive and the gifts we use. It was not enough to get the egg without getting the knife to eat it. It was not enough for the Apostles to receive the Holy Spirit without going out to preach it. May we be touched by our prayer at this Eucharist, experience the unity it seeks to create among us, and go forth to use this blessing for the good of all.
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May 4, 2008
Feast of the Ascension of the Lord
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Ephesians 1:17-23; Matthew 28:16-20
I have a friend, Mark, whose daughter Katie was seven when she got her goldfish. Not naturally a super responsible person, Katie surprised her parents by how well she cared for this fish. She never missed a feeding and cleaned the tank even more often than it needed it. She called the fish Babu. One morning she came into her parents bedroom screaming “Babu jumped out of the tank and he’s dead!” Mark jumped up and found the fish lying on the floor, scooped some water from the tank with a bowl and then put the fish in the bowl. For fifteen minutes he pulled the fish gently back and forth by the tail in that bowl of water with Katie wide-eyed the whole time. And the fish came back to life. I called him about an hour after that happened and I don’t think I’d ever heard him happier. When we spoke a few days later, though, he gave me the bad news that Babu had died in the tank about six hours after the resuscitation and their was real grief in the house.
Some of the mystics (notably St. Bonaventure) have described our life as a “journey into God.” I think Mark learned two things about journeying into God that day, and I learned them through him. 1. Giving life is the greatest joy, and 2. None of us is the Lord of Life. Mark could help Babu live but only for a while.
On this Feast of the Ascension we celebrate that Jesus is the Lord of Life. He has ascended to his throne, and our life goal similarly is to be swept up into heaven. And we do not have to imagine any wild supernatural event of being swept away, for we can be raised into the life of God in our everyday lives. St. Augustine said that hearts lifted to God in the Eucharist signify our own Ascension. We are as surely drawn into God whenever we love well, be it through some extraordinary effort or a simple act of kindness toward a child.
There’s a beautiful line in today’s second reading: “May the eyes of your heart be enlightened that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call.” The hope that belongs to his call. That says a lot. To me, it feels like the author is trying to elevate our lives. It’s not just us in the world. We hear a call from above, in our consciences and in our hearts. "Do this; don’t do that. Feel my blessing and love in your life." Hearing this call and identifying it as Christ’s brings hope and elevates our lives. It makes us part of something more. It allows us to participate in God's very life.
Jesus has said his last direct in-the-flesh good-bye to earth, and the hands he has to work with are now not his but ours. And so it is for us to receive life from above and give life here below, knowing that nothing is in our control but we can help it along with our love and care and our actions for peace and reconciliation. It could lead us to resuscitate a gold fish, and beyond, as we all journey into God. On this Feast let us elevate our lives.
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If you'd like to offer feedback, feel free to email me: Tom4664@aol.com
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