"There is Someone Here Who Would Like to Talk With a Pastor"

It was Tuesday afternoon, and I was sitting in my office, organizing my week, which is to say (in some ways) organizing my mess.  I was looking at sermon texts, and figuring out my visitation schedule, and doing a little beginning-of-the-week reading.

Then our office coordinator buzzed me, and said these familiar words, "There is someone here who would like to talk to a pastor."

This is a familiar sentence, and could mean any number of things, but it usually means that : 1)  the person who wants to speak to me is a stranger to me, and probably to my congregation; 2) the stranger perhaps wants to complete one particular step of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, or 3) the stranger needs gas, or food, or some kind of crisis assistance. Sometimes I can help them.  Sometimes I can't.

"I'll be out in a minute," I told the Office Coordinator, while I straightened my office a little bit, and made sure I had one more chair in my office.

When I went out to meet the stranger in need, I found that it was a man and his wife, as well as their teenager son.  They looked sort of worn around the edges, tired, bedraggled.  They told me that their niece was in the hospital, that she was very sick.  She had already had a couple of operations, and would need more.  They had paid all of their money in rent, and had nothing to pay for gas so that they could go and visit her.  They also wondered about a coupon for some kind of food.  The teenager wondered if we had any coffee.

I told the teenager that we should have some coffee on, and he should ask our Office Coordinator for a cup.  I asked the couple the name of their niece, and said we would pray for her.  I told them that we could give them a voucher for gas, although unfortunately, it would not fill up their tank.  The high prices, you know.  And I told them about a church very close to ours where I thought they could get sandwiches.

I printed the voucher for the couple, and took it out to them.  I asked the teenager if he got his coffee.  He smiled and said yes.  I told them again we would pray for their niece, and wished them well.

After they left, I had a very fleeting thought.

I wondered, for a moment -- what if it was all a story?  What if when they left the building, the three of them collapsed in laughter because I believed their story?

I don't know why I thought that.  Maybe it was because there are warning stories that circulate periodically, stories about scam artists who visit churches with particular hard-luck stories.  Maybe it was the memory of the time, long ago, when I had helped out a few people with gas, and then watched one of them drive off in a large SUV.

But perhaps instead, it was because I had preached on Sunday about the foolishness of the gospel, and the foolishness of what I was doing struck me, for a moment.  There is a certain foolishness to what we do, listening to the stories of strangers, saying we'll pray for them,  giving them a little help for the road.   And yet I am convinced that it is what I'm called to do.  I'm called to believe them.  I'm called to foolishness.

We're called to foolishness, which is to say, we are called to love.  We are called to listen to the stories of strangers, and believe them, and pray for them.  We're called to give out the cup of cold water, or hot coffee, to a stranger, to give shelter to the homeless, and to pray for our enemies.  Foolishness.

This is not as easy as it sounds.  It is hard to be foolish.  I know that if I saw this family standing by the freeway exit, with a sign that read, "Anything will help," I would be tempted not to roll down my window.  It might seem too foolish.

It is hard to be foolish.  But the truth is:  we aren't called to be foolish alone.  We are called to be foolish together.

Sunday Sermon for All Saints

This week my challenge was to weave together the themes of All Saints Sunday and of Reaching out to Welcome the Stranger (part of our fall theme).  Here's what I came up with....

A long while ago, I live for a year in a Big White Three-Story House in inner City Denver, along with 10 other people --- none of whom I had ever met before.  It was the year I was doing my seminary internship, and I lived in something called a "Community House", along with young people from all over the country, as well as one exchange student from Japan.  We were all there to serve, but in different places, and for different reasons.  We each had our own space, but we shared meals twice a week, and took turns cooking, and also go together on occasion for other social events.  As you can imagine, we had some great times together, and also some times when things didn't go so well.

An then there was this day -- when we got a phone call from Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services.  They wondered if we had space to temporarily house about twelve people who were refugees from Russia.  They had just arrived -- and we had this Big White Three-Story House -- what did we think?  It wouldn't be for very long----

We said yes.

So they were coming over, and we were going to have dinner together.

It was my night to cook.  And I'll tell you a little secret -- I don't cook for 23 -- especially on short notice.  So I had to get someone to talk me through the meal preparation for that evening.

Finally everyone arrived.  I had managed to get dinner cooked.  We found places for everyone to sit and we were just getting ready to eat --  when we found that there was another dilemma.  What would we use for a table prayer?  We did not speak Russian.  They did not speak English.  But we had to pray, didn't we?

****

So today we celebrate All Saints Day.  It's a day we remember the saints who have gone before us -- it's  the day we remember the saints who have been important in our lives.  -- and it's a date when we remember what a saint is:  after all, a saint is someone who has lived trusting Jesus, hoping in the life he promises us, and holding on to the vision of his reign. One of the promises that we hold on to, one of the central visions that we see is this one from Isaiah 25:  the mountain of the Lord, with all of the people streaming to it, and the great banquet that awaits us there.  What is the hope of the saints?  It's the banquet table filled to the brim, the feast of victory, the great celebration where we will all be re-united, and where there will be abundance of food, and abundance of fellowship.  This is a wonderful image of our hope, and a wonderful vision of the saints -- to imagine those people who we will name shortly sitting around this table together, isn't it?  To imagine our friends Chuck and Vernon and Mark and Shane, Jeanette and Clarence and Mae and Harriet  --- and well, all of the others, sitting and celebrating at this table together, with Jesus the host.

Except that one thing is missing from this vision -- it is the names of all of the people we don't know, all of the saints who are strangers to us, all of the people who maybe aren't even saints yet, because they haven't heard of known to trust Jesus with their lives.  But the vision from Isaiah, if we really hear it and imagine it, is wider than that -- the vision talks about all nations being drawn to the mountain of God, all nations coming together at the banquet -- not just friends, but strangers, too.  So we have to adjust our vision, on All Saints Sunday, to see the wideness of God's reach.

Sometimes adjusting means that our vision gets wider, but sometimes it means getting smaller, just for a moment.  Like that tiny story from Mark, of Jesus healing the leper.  The leper was probably a stranger to Jesus, for many reasons -- probably just because he was a leper, and lepers were supposed to stay far away from everyone else.  But he calls out to Jesus, wondering if Jesus wants to heal him, and Jesus reaches out his hand and touches him.  This is an amazing action, for many reasons.  For Jesus to be close enough to touch a leper -- is to risk being contaminated, to risk being associated with him.  But he did it.  And the leper was healed, and he could against be a part of a community -- no longer a stranger. Jesus healed him.

We still don't know that leper's name.  He's a stranger.  But I imagine that he's a saint, too.  He's a saint simply because Jesus reached out to him.  Even though Jesus told him to be quiet, he went out and told people anyway.  Pretty soon, the people were streaming to Jesus.  Some of them came for healing.  Maybe some of them came just to be touched.  And maybe some of them came just because they didn't want to be a stranger, any more.

Father Greg Boyle, a priest who works with gangs in South L.A., slays it this way.  He says, "There is no them and us.  There is only us."  -- In God's eyes anyway.  It's not often that we see it.  Most of the time we fit ourselves into categories:  them and us, friends and strangers, rich and poor, young and old, "good" and "bad."  Most of the time we divide ourselves, but to God we are all the same:  "There is no them and us.  There is only us."  We are all beloved, and of infinite value.  And we all need to be healed, we all need to be fed, we need someone to know our name.

We don't catch a glimpse of it often, but on this All Saints Sunday, I hope, for a moment, we catch a glimpse -- of the saints and the strangers, standing around the throne of the Lamb, seated at the banquet table.  We don't know their names, but we know they are wounded, grieving, hungry, lonely.  We know they need someone to reach out to them -- because they are like us, and we need someone to reach out to us, too.  They are hungry, too, but maybe we don't speak the same language.  How can we pray together?  Saints and strangers, this is what unites us:  our common hunger, our common value to God

****

So there we were, all together, waiting to each dinner.  Who would pray?  What would we say?  Whatever it was, we know that half of the room would not understand what the other half was saying, at least not with our minds.  After an awkward pause, I asked the Japanese woman, Kayoko, to teach us a prayer in Japanese.  Then we would at least be all on the same level:  no one but Kayoko would know what it meant.  So she taught us this pray, or sang it to us:

"Hibi no kate wo Atetamo
Megumi no Mikami Wa Homu beki kana.  A-men.

So, saints and strangers -- today we give thanks for the feast that is being prepared for all people.  We give thanks for the God who reaches out to us to heal us and to draw us to him.  And we give thanks, because God is teaching all of us a new language, one that none of us is very fluent in yet, but God is teaching us the words, and even singing them, for us, and with us.  God is teaching us a new language, a new Word, and the Word is Jesus, and the Word is Love.  If you listen hard, you can hear just a piece of it:

"Be present at our tables, Lord
Be here and everywhere adored
These mercies bless and grant that We
May feast in paradise with Thee.  Amen"