The Tricky Part

The truth comes in many forms to each of us.  It's hard to find the truth through life sometimes because of the power of the market and of popular culture to configure our desires and self-understandings.  But every now and then, something breaks through, so powerfully crashing into our lives that we have to stop and recognize in it the essence of human experience, in isolation, in relationships, in pain, in longing, in redemption. 

I picked a random book off the display shelf at the public library a few weeks ago.  It's called The Tricky Part: One Boy's Fall from Trespass Into Grace by a middle aged writer and actor named Martin Moran.  It is a true story of his life, more honest than any memoir or spiritual autobiography I've read, including Anne Lamott and Kathleen Norris.  Marty cuts into his experience with the deftness of one who has been through hours of therapy and years of private self-reflection, the kind so private that one only shares it with oneself. 

He tells his story, beginning at age 12, when he first developed a relationship with a camp counselor twenty years his senior.  Their relationship quickly becomes sexual in nature and Marty is trapped in a cycle of depression, guilt, and euphoric intimacy.  He writes, "My bones are infused with a push that tells me I must fashion a dazzling public self.  Be the best and busiest eighth grader ever.  The push has always been there but now it's a kind of panic, an incessant living prayer: God, do not let shame fall upon my head.  For if it were to come, if the truth of things surfaced, I would die of it.  And I had no doubt that shame could kill a body." 


The book has a gravitational pull that draws the reader into the deepest secrets possible, through the ending of the relationship when Marty was 15, through the suicide attempts and the compulsive sexual behavior, through the small cracks of release that came decades later.  It's hard to believe something could be so vividly imprinted in anyone's mind, hard to understand having such vivid and sensual memories. 

You should read this book because it's human.  You should read it because you probably don't read books like this very often.  You should read it and look to see if any of Marty's truths echo some of your own, and if they do, you'll have a companion on the journey... even if there's part of you that never thought you wanted one. 

The Scandal of Enough

The text is Matthew 14.13-21.  This sermon was preached at Richmond Beach Congregational, United Church of Christ on October 4, 2009, World Communion Sunday.  Warning to some Mennonites and other closed-table folks: you will see a bit of the radical table theology that I've picked up from the Disciples and the UCC.  It's God's table, after all. 

  

The Scandal of Enough

There’s a feeding story that dates back about two thousand years to the first century.  A man named Jesus from the Galilean town of Nazareth was in front of a crowd of people. Some accounts say it was four thousand; some say five thousand.  This man Jesus was treating the gathered crowd with compassion and kindness, healing the sick, and loving the needy.  But then came time for supper.  Now Jesus was on the eclectic side – a little bit eccentric, a little bit homespun, and not one for logic as most people saw it.  And so when his disciples rounded up five loaves of bread and two fish, he said, okay let’s feed the people.  The disciples were astonished.  Is he crazy?  Is he stupid?  Five loaves plus two fish is only seven, and we have five thousand people to feed.  “We have almost nothing here,” they said.  There is not enough. 

This phrase, this sentiment is familiar to most of us.  Globally we humans are consuming our planet’s natural resources at a rate that makes us wonder when everything will just run out.  Nationally we in this country are in the midst of a healthcare debate where one of the big worries is whether there will be enough money to pay for it all.  Some of us are unemployed and it seems like jobs are nowhere to be found.  Just Friday, the Seattle Times greeted us with the headline, “It’s the end of the line for jobless benefits.”  Statewide up to 19,000 people by December will have run out of government-funded unemployment.  Locally we have schools that cannot afford to hire enough teachers to keep class sizes down and provide all students with the attention they might need. 

And once we notice these global and national and local scarcities, it’s not hard to notice the places where we are lacking on a personal level. We look on t.v. and the internet and in magazines and we see images of skinny or athletic bodies wearing designer clothes and eating gourmet foods and driving luxury cars and the message we receive is that we are not enough.  We should be skinnier and prettier.  We should be funnier or happier.  We should be wealthier, smarter, stronger, faster, and this product and that show and this kind of house can get you there.  But that pain and those questions and the deepest longings of your soul – there’s not time for those between work, band practice, two kids, college coming up…  You, by yourself – little bit eccentric, a little bit homespun, a little bit tired from all this running around?  You are not enough. 

These messages surround us, closing off our connections to ourselves and each other.  Indeed, it’s as if five plus two is only seven and we have five thousand people to feed.  In culture logic, five loaves and two fish equals scarcity.  We have almost nothing here.  There is not enough. 

But in kingdom logic, things aren’t always what they seem.

One writer tells a personal story of her experience working at a busy restaurant in New York City.  “It was a gritty… afternoon in August, the day after our restaurant won a rave review in the Times for ‘the best burgers in town.’  Exhausted waiters were trying to appease the customers who’d been waiting forty minutes for a table; the manager was doing double duty busing dishes and handing out menus; the house had run out of hamburger buns, and we’d sent a kid to the corner supermarket twice for emergency supplies.  Inside the kitchen… the screen above the grill caught fire twice from an overload of grease, and the dishwasher was threatening to quit.  I was… grabbing meat off the grill with my hands and whirling around to save the French fries from burning.  [[Hello… hello, hello, said my boss, Robert]] I turned to catch his eye.  He kicked a milk crate over and gestured me to sit down, then eased himself onto another crate, taking a cigar out of his breast pocket.  Robert has lost his mind, I thought, but [I sat down] on the crate anyway…  Gently, Robert took my arm.  ‘Got to slow down to speed up,’ he said.  ‘Remember, doll: Slow down.  When it’s busy, slow down.”  We set our record that afternoon: 210 lunches in a forty-seat restaurant, and every one on time. 

Verse 19 of today’s scripture story says this: “Then Jesus ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass.”  Picture these five thousand people milling around, hungry and uncertain for they have no supper.  The anxiety surely was mounting, the pressure building. – we could hear it in the disciples voices when they said, “But, but Jesus, we have almost nothing here.”  And here he is, this eccentric, homespun leader telling everyone to just sit down on the grass.  It’s scandalous, isn’t it? 

This little detail is easy to miss if you just hear it once.  It stretches our imaginations and expands our possibilities for action.  We are so limited by the culture logic that says when you are busy move faster, when there’s pressure, speed up, when you don’t feel good enough, buy more.  But this stretching of the imagination and expanding of our horizons, that’s how it is with kingdom logic.  Kingdom logic says when you are busy, slow down and when there’s pressure, stop.  Rest.  Return to yourself.  Sit down on the grass.  There is enough. 

Let me tell you one way this is already happening.  There is one way we are already stepping into the kingdom logic of Jesus of Nazareth, that eccentic, homespun fellow. 

Today, October 4, is World Communion Sunday.  Congregations and faith communities all around the globe are celebrating the sacrament of communion together and praying for one another.  When culture logic separates us into nations and states, kingdom logic binds us together across time and space at a common table. 

Today in our midst, we act without outside limits and pressures to hurry up and be busy and conform.  We enter God’s kingdom and God’s sacred time.  Pressures of the week aside, we, right now, are sitting down together in God’s sanctuary.   And today at the table of God, we embody the kingdom logic of enough.  There is enough bread and enough juice for us all, and there is also enough in France and China and South Africa and Russia and Afghanistan, even in Samoa and Indonesia in the midst of tragedy and grief, at God’s table there is enough bread for all. 

When we come to God’s table, we unite in solidarity with other citizens of the kingdom.  We set aside the culture logic of scarcity and separation and we lay aside those voices that say we are not enough.  Regardless of race, nation, ability, background, orientation, faith, or lack of faith, we are welcome at the table to eat the bread of life. 

This scandalous kingdom logic doesn’t change the pressure we feel.  This doesn’t stop the grief or lessen the external stress.  What it does is stretch our imaginations… shake us out of everyday routine and open our eyes to new possibilities already in our midst.  So pay attention.  As you walk by someone begging for change on the street, pause to say hello and acknowledge his or her human dignity and place in this world.  As you rush to your thirteenth obligation of the day, stop and sit for a moment.  It’s okay to slow down.  When you see someone you know, take time to ask how they are… and really listen to their response.  How can we stop always striving for more and instead deepen our compassion?  Where can we stop taking and needing and start giving what we have?  There’s already enough, after all. 

There’s a feeding story that dates back about two thousand years to the first century.  Five thousand people are hungry, and five loaves and two fishes are all they have to eat.  It’s scandalous to even imagine that that would be enough, but the scriptures are calling to us, speaking to us through ages.  They say, pay attention.  Look around you.  Look within you.  Sit down on the grass.  You have enough.  You are enough.  Matthew 14:20 says, “And all ate and were filled.”  This is good news, my friends.

In our struggles, in the midst of the culture logic that says need more, get more, be more, there is a different truth, a scandalous kingdom logic.  After all, five loaves and two fishes equals enough.  Come to God’s table.  Here, you are enough.  Thanks be to God. 

The Evergreen State

I did a little internet research tonight to look into the nickname of the state in which I currently reside, Washington, also known as "The Evergreen State."  The nickname was given by a pioneer, realtor, and historian, C.T. Conover of Seattle because of the many, many evergreen forests in the region.  If it were light, out my window I could see evergreen trees in every direction, a cacophony of conifers, if you will.  They are everywhere.  But the nickname takes on another meaning for me this fine October day.  Not only are many trees ever green, the grass is green, the bushes are green, the plants are green, and flowers are blooming.  This is much more green than the occasional evergreen magnolia tree sprinkled throughout the South.  This is more green than you can imagine.  In fact, Seattle is called the "Emerald City," not with reference to the brilliant green jewel but because of the brilliant green period.  Oh my. 

It's October.  Is anyone else sensing something wrong with this picture? 

Last weekend I drove out of my way to a street that I knew was lined with deciduous trees, which were turning yellow and blowing across the road and crunching underfoot.  It was beautiful and were I to look up, I could have transported myself to the Ozarks or the Tennessee hills (which not incidentally, I sometimes often want to do).  It's a beautiful fall week, but I find myself stepping outside and asking, "Where are the dying things?!"  Apparently I'm not the only transplant to ask that question.  One of Jamie's parishioners told her about a flower blooming the February she first moved here.  She was angry and the poor, innocent little flower as if to say, it's not your time to thrive yet.

I defy you green things.  It's not your time.  You need to go ahead and die.  If you don't die, when will you be resurrected?  If you don't die, how can I hope for new life in these feelings of loneliness and isolation?  I will say fall is beautiful, but I of Kansas, Tennessee, Missouri, four seasons, dry winters, brown leaves, and dead grass am having an absurdly difficult time appreciating it at all.