The Present

When you head off to seminary, you are never quite certain what you will encounter. Even with the steady rhythm  of semesters drumming by, things do manage to change.

I am deep into my third of four years. When we started, there was a good deal of excitement about how we were the largest cohort (class) of seminarians at UDTS, at least among those on the distance paradigm, with 23 members strong. I sat in my Homiletics class last week and listened to a sermon from each of the remaining seminarians in my cohort, and there were only 12.

Nearly half of us are gone.

It is true that many have moved on in a good way. Some had begun with a few credits under their belt, and will be graduating early, like my friend and theologian Katy Steinberg, who has started a new worshiping community, The Missing Peace, on Ormond Beach, Florida. Others jumped off paradigm and will graduate early, like Derek Martin, who will follow his dream to become a Navy Chaplain. I am happy for them and I look forward to hearing about the great and wonderful things God is doing in their lives.

Others have transferred to other schools where they continue their work. Still others have dropped out, taking a break to deal with the mess that life can throw at us, or leaving the ministry entirely.

I do miss them so.

With only half of us left, our cohort is small but strong. We have settled into our spiritual identities and we have learned to cope with the balance of life - work and family - as well as our online classes. We frequently chat through social networks and on our smartphones, keeping tabs on one another and encouraging each other not to let up when the going gets tough.

Over the years we have become family, fiercely devoted to one another and our well being. We recognize that we possess different gifts for ministry, and we try and lift each other up in that ability.

The light at the end of the proverbial tunnel can be seen easily enough now. I don't need to squint to see a faint dot in the distance, but rather, I squint because the light is bright.

With that light comes choices that I will need to make. This is a career choice, after all, and I can't be expected to stay right where I am in my current ministry position. In the Presbyterian Church, we refer to this career destination as a "call to ministry", quite literally calling us to move to do God's work in one place or another. I love my church family in the place where I have been a member for over 20 years and where I currently am the Director of Youth and Family Ministries. There are few things that would make me happier. I will also add that the Presbyterian Church has certain rules in place that don't make that prospect an easy one.

And so, the future is uncertain. But then, it is uncertain with all of us, and we have only the present. To quote a great man:

"Do not worry about tomorrow - tomorrow will take care of itself. Today has enough trouble of it's own." - Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 6:34)

Peace and grace to all of you. Enjoy the journey.

-Beau

"I Do Want To"

This sermon was one of several I preached in my Homiletics class at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary in January of 2016. 

The story is real, though the names of both the individual and the camp in which he resides have been changed as I have no way to ask permission that they be used. The story is many years old now, and things have changed significantly in the camp since I experienced this.I have been back 5 times since, and I never saw the van of "believers" again.

A note about speaking in tongues: I do realize that "tongues" is a gift of the spirit, and I affirm that gift. However, I also believe, like the occurrence in the book of Acts, that when an individual speaks in tongues part of the miracle is that those in attendance are able to understand that person. That is NOT what I experienced this day, and as such I left my comment in the sermon. If you get hung up on my clear attitude against the way these ladies "speak in tongues", then you are missing the point of the sermon.

If you would like to use this sermon, I invite you to do so, but please link back to this blog if you share it on the web and use my name if you preach it, or a part of it in church. My sermons are for the Glory of God and not my own, but because this is my work, it can get sticky if someone posts or preaches it as their own and then my is read afterward, making it look like I plagiarized. 

One of the resident children at the camp enjoys strumming my ukulele as I create chords with my left hand.
Music is a powerful healer of the soul.

"I Do Want To"

I sat under the shade of the mango tree and ate my lunch. After a morning of mixing concrete by hand in the 100 degree heat, I could eat just about anything. Why I had thought a mission trip to the Bahamas at the end of July was a good idea was something I’ll never understand, but we went, and there I was.

The smell of rotten food and other refuse occasionally drifted over from the dumpster in the center of the camp, and there was the undeniable smell of human waste that would waft up from a nearby trench that ran behind the shacks that the residents of Benedict's Camp called home. The heat only served to exacerbate the problem. I don’t care what anyone says – you don’t get used to it. Not THAT smell. At least I didn’t have to live here.

A large, burgundy van pulled up the one lane road into the camp, up over the hill and through the massive, but now inoperable gates that sat next to the road.

The van was big. When the van reached the top of the hill it came to a stop and the side doors swung open and cool air rushed out. A group of six Bahamian, heavy set women climbed out, adorned in expensive shoes and skirts, their Bible in one hand and a fan in the other. Their makeup was so thick I wondered if it could be removed in one piece. I sat there on the ground in my sweat soaked shirt and shorts, still looking better than those who called this place home, because I had a change of clothes. They walked down the newly constructed path between the resident’s homes. They were headed to see Thomas, a 30 year resident of the camp.

Thomas had been at the camp since he was a child. Even though the camp was created decades earlier as a leper colony on the island, it now housed mostly those with HIV or AIDS. Sprinkled between those with the terrible disease were others with varying degrees of other things, from addiction issues to undiagnosed metal illness. In a way, I guess it was still a leper colony -The camp had become a housing area for the social fodder of the island. It was in the center of the island because, like most of the larger islands, the outer ring was lined with resorts and high paying tourists, most of them white Americans or Europeans. Just outside the camp lay a Haitian community ripe with violence. We heard stories of murder and rape by these residents who would sneak into the un-fenced camp at night to prey on the weak, but we did not know how much of that was to scare us. Huge rats and feral dogs would enter the rickety and mold infested shacks looking for food, crawling over the bedridden who often became the victim of a bite.

Most residents didn’t make it out of the camp alive. This camp had become a dumping ground for people no one wanted anymore.

Thomas doesn’t have AIDS. Thomas has Cerebral Palsy. He cannot take care of himself and no one else wants to. He is confined to a wheelchair or his bed. He has great difficulty speaking, but he can smile and he does so often. Over the past week I had bonded quite a bit with him, as we both shared a love for God and music, and what had started as a relationship born out of some spiritual obligation had blossomed into genuine kinship. I would strum on my ukulele and sing and his eyes would light up and he would smile and ask me to play another. Then it would be time to help him eat or change his linens, as there was no bathroom in his home, the only bathroom was quite a distance down a broken pathway so he would just go and then wait to be changed.

The women walked up to Thomas, who sat outside in his wheelchair. All the women placed their hands on him and one began to pray, eyes closed with one arm held high. They were too far away to hear, but I could see that one was speaking in “tongues”, a behavior common to this area. Whatever, at least they were praying.

The summer staff intern walked up to me, noticing that I was watching. She was an American, like me, but in her early 20’s, though the summer had added years of wear to the lines on her face.

“I hate this. I just hate this”

“Why? No harm no foul I suppose!” I said with a smile.

She looked at me through her mirrored sunglasses that doubled as safety glasses.

“I hate this because when they leave, he’s devastated. He thinks that if he has enough faith, God will heal him – that he will get up and just walk. I hate this, and I hate them for telling him that. They go home and he will shut himself in his room and refuse visitors for days because he says that he is worthless and God has forgotten him and that we should too."

 I look on in awe, helpless to make a move.

In Jesus’ time, Lepers were unclean. They were physically unclean, as in “sick” and they were ritually unclean, as in “can’t be near anyone else”.[i] This was a legal issue – they were literally separated from society. So if a Leper came up to Jesus we know that Jesus wasn’t in a city.[ii]

 Jesus was there on purpose.

Before Christ, no one sick ever got well. The curing of Leprosy, as one theologian put it, was “akin to raising the dead”.[iii]

When this man with leprosy says “You can make me clean, if you want to” he actually suggests that Jesus, through not wanting to be unclean, or because he was busy, or whatever…. That Jesus maybe wouldn’t want to make him clean.

As though he were not worth curing.

This is so telling because it shows that even then, this man who has been marginalized by society has already beat himself up. He already has such low self-esteem and such a low value on his own life that he thinks that the very man who is known for curing this kind of thing won’t want to bother.

This is what being marginalized does to people. It beats them up. The Bible hates it. God hates it. Things like widows and orphans and immigrants were shunned. The sick were, too.

But Jesus went to them. Always moving to the outside. He was about the outskirts, the outsiders, the marginalized.

He called the forgotten his “brothers and sisters”

Because of the way people worshiped in Jesus’ time, having leprosy also meant that you could not worship your God. You could not enter the temple.

The man with Leprosy says Jesus could make him clean if he wanted to.

I missed this the first time and I bet you did too. The leper did not ask Jesus to heal him, as though that was simply too much. He wanted to be made clean.

What the man really wanted was permission to worship his God, to go to the temple and know this God that he was not allowed to know.

All he wanted was to be a part of that love.

And Jesus “Moved with compassion”….some translations say that Jesus was “Incensed”, some say that he was “Angered”,

 he says “I do want to”

There it is.

Jesus isn’t angry at the man. Jesus doesn’t like this. Jesus doesn’t want this man to suffer anymore. Jesus is sick of the shunning. Jesus is sick of the marginalization and so he reaches out and touches the guy. [iv]

Jesus does what the Levitical laws say not to do – Jesus touches the unclean.

The guy was immediately clean AND healed. Right there is an extreme turn of events. From the Jewish perspective, the very opposite of normalcy happened.[v]

Jesus’ cleanliness, his holiness, his love, is contagious.

Jesus affirms the man as a human being and a legitimate part of God’s creation. Jesus shatters the wall that stood between this marginalized man and God and tells him to go to the Temple

in one touch.

The sadness here is that this man thought his life was worthless and that it was, essentially, over.

Millions of people feel this way. Not just the sick, but the poor.

The sinners. The marginalized, pushed to the outside of society.

They are trapped. Trapped in the idea that their flaw has created a wall between God and them.

Like Thomas, the long days continue for them, they hear church bells in the distance and hear the whispers of the Good News that promises that they are loved and they believe that it is another lie, like so many they are told.

Jesus healed the broken and the sick. He saw those with mental illness as genuine people, and he went to them.

He healed and cleansed them when healing and cleansing required touching and touching was simply not allowed.

And it was Jesus’ compassion, God’s love, that demanded this touch.

The leper did not do anything to deserve to be separated from God, and so God found him, and he made him clean.

He does the same for us. God searches desperately in the margins for us, when we had thought that for some reason we are not worthy, not perfect enough, with enough talent. Maybe because of addiction, or abuse, or our mistakes and decisions.

Perhaps it was nothing we did. Consider the homeless desperately seeking shelter. Think of the orphan who wonders why she has no one to call mom or dad. Think of the refugee, fleeing the only home they know and not knowing if they will survive long enough to call another place home.

Think of the child stuck in the cycle of abuse, or human trafficking.

Where is God?

God is there. He is in the eyes of the kind stranger, in the gentle, honest touch of the missionary motivated by love. God is in the police officer who takes a moment to put a blanket around the shoulders of the victim of the tragedy, looking in their eye and saying “you are now safe”

God’s just, powerful, unyielding love, ripe with mercy and grace is there, “Incensed”, “Moved with compassion” telling us that “I do want to”

Though we may not be healed, we will be made clean in God’s touch.

Dare I say that at some point we may all be in their place and I pray that at that time we remember that God is also there, on the outside with us, God’s love and mercy Through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross ready to make us clean again, but we need to eliminate the idea that anything we do or we are can stop God from being with us.

As the women walked away from Thomas I wanted to scream at them. I wanted to ask them if they knew what they were doing to him, but I said nothing. Instead, I placed my lunch back in the cooler and picked up my ukulele. I waited for the women to get back into the van and for the driver to pull the massive beast away and then I walked over to Thomas, who was sitting silently in the same spot, now watching the pigeons roost in the massive branches of the trees. When I got to his chair I said his name.

“Thomas?”

He did not look up at me.

“You okay, Buddy?”

He didn’t look, preferring the safety of the birds who would not judge his tears. “Yes” He said

I didn’t know what to say, so I reach for the only thing my mind can think of “God loves you, buddy”

“I know.” He replied quietly. “Want to sing?” he asked, knowing I had the tiny guitar in my hand.

“Yes.” I said aloud, “I do want to” is what I meant.

Amen.

---

[i] Leviticus 13:1–14:57

[ii] Edwards, James R. The Gospel According to Mark. The Pillar New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.

[iii] Kelber, Werner H. Mark’s Story of Jesus. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979.

[iv] Marcus, Joel. Mark 1–8. The Anchor Bible. New York: Doubleday, 1999.^[iv]

[v] France, R. T. The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 2002.