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Urban Ministries
1548 Eighth Street
P.O. Box 41125
Des Moines, IA 50311
(515) 282-3242
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Going Down Home
Joel 2.23-32, Luke 18.9-14"Going Down Home"
Carmen Lampe Zeitler
Offered October 24, 2004
Collegiate UMC
Ames, Iowa
For whatever reason, I am still trying to figure it out, the phrase that jumped out at me as I read the lectionary texts for today was the phrase Jesus used to describe the tax collector in the parable. "I tell you, this man went down to his home justified (right with God) rather than the other..." Then, without knowing precisely what was to be said on the subject, I gave Cindy the sermon title, "Going Down Home." I am still working with that image of "going down home," the appeal of it, the call of it.
I think it was no coincidence that I spent a part of the weekend going down home. Down home for me is Mount Pleasant in southeast Iowa. I was born there, lived away during grade school, moved back the summer before I began the seventh grade, and stayed until I went to seminary when I was twenty-seven years old. In very many ways I came of age in Mount Pleasant. And in very many ways it was a great place in which to come of age.
Mount Pleasant is beautiful in the fall - lots of oak and maple trees turning color, up and down familiar streets; dropping leaves on old, worn sidewalks; standing like sentinels for the solid homes in their shadows. As I drove and walked around town yesterday there were kids on bikes, older people walking, families raking and playing in leaves, people were gathered in the square uptown for a chili cook-off, accompanied by a serious bake sale, the pumpkins were on the porches, the mums were still in bloom, I caught a glimpse of the Christmas decorations lined up behind the city shed by one of the cemeteries, ready to go. It felt like fall in the heartland, it felt like quintessential small town Iowa life, it felt like going down home.
Going down home is a touchstone. Every fall I feel a longing to connect to the place where I grew up; to the people who, for better or worse, taught me things; to return to what will always feel, in some measure, like home. I recall the Ebenezer stone the prophet Samuel set up in the midst of Israel's struggle with their enemies as a sign declaring, "Thus far the Lord has helped us." Going down home helps me to remember God's gifts and presence in each season, all seasons; and to affirm my intention to continue with God and God's ways within us and among us. As the poet, e.e cummings once put it, "For all that is, thank you, for all that will be, yes." Going down home is being in that place where things feel right, where I feel connected.
In the days of the prophet, Joel, things were not right, there had been a disaster of biblical proportions: a plague of locusts had virtually destroyed the countryside. In an agrarian society that means disaster for everyone and everything. The first chapter of Joel is artful in its description of the interconnectedness of the nation, the community, and how such a disaster affects it all. In the face of this disaster the people are called by the prophet to take stock: to look at where they have put their trust; to assess how connected their worship, their faith has been to their lives, to their life together; and to see what needs changing and change it. The result will be a sort of "going down home," things will be set right, connections will be made.
In the words of Joel we read this morning "going down home" for Israel would mean rain at the right time. (We know something of that in Iowa...we need rain early, we need rain late, we need rain when we need rain if the crops are to thrive and yield.) There will be plenty for all, every need satisfied; the people will live with a sense of their value to the community and the nation's value beyond themselves; and God's spirit will be poured out at every turn, sons and daughters will call the people to God's ways, the old shall dream God's wild dreams, the young shall see God's enormous vision, everyone from every class and distinction will be seen as vessels for God's spirit. All will be right, all will be connected, all will go down home, together.
God knows, on this Children's Sabbath in 2004, just over a week from an election, we are compelled to go down home together, to set things right, to again be connected to God's ways and God's people. For us on this day, our faith and our experience tells us that going down home, setting things right, being connected, begins with the children.
On the way home from work and picking up her son from daycare one evening a single mom began to think about how she might occupy her son while she finished some of the work she had to bring home. She hadn't come up with anything by the time they got home, but as they walked in the door her eye caught the latest National Geographic magazine lying on the table. She had an idea.
She remembered seeing a map of the world on a page of the magazine. After dinner she found the map, cut it into lots of pieces. She gave the pieces of the map and some tape to her son as a puzzle to put together. She thought that surely that would keep him busy while she finished some of her work. But minutes later he showed up at her side with the map all put together. Mom was astonished.
She asked, "Now, how in the world did you get that together so quickly?" He turned the map over and there was a picture of some children. "It was easy, Mom. Look, you just put the kids together and the world comes together, too."
Going down home together in this day means putting the world together by setting things right for the children.
- Children, like the six we know, ages 1 to 12, who live with their three single moms in a dwelling made for one small family because no one mom can make enough at her job to afford childcare and housing alone
- Children who eat bowl after bowl of cereal at the Breakfast Club because they didn't get much to eat the night before
- Children who, without a doubt, will live this winter without adequate heat, blankets, or warm clothes
- Children and their working parents who do not have health insurance and put off going to the doctor too long too often while conditions such as asthma and allergies and depression go undiagnosed and untreated
- Children whose schools do not have the textbooks, equipment, and staff to offer the education children need to be their best selves and to live the lives we need them to live
- Children who worry about things like having enough to pay the rent, to make the car payment, to pay the utility bill let alone having money and gas to go skating on Saturday
- Children who are left at home alone before and after school with strict instructions to stay in and lock the door because parents need to work and cannot afford to pay for childcare
- Children who feel the color of their skin has determined limits for them and for their families, and who experience those limits daily
- Children who see their parents working hard but not getting ahead because too many jobs do not pay a family sustaining wage
Mary Louisa seems to find people to go down home with her, sometimes unlikely people. Earlier this month Mary Louisa, a kindergartner, and her older sister, Graciela, a second-grader, came to the Breakfast Club that began our all-day programming during their school's two-week fall break. They had not been there long when Mary Louisa told the Breakfast Club Supervisor, Carol Kuehnhoff, that her stomach was upset. Her sister and her cousins did not have much sympathy for Mary Louisa, telling Carol that Mary Louisa had eaten too much on Sunday at a family gathering. Mary Louisa does love to eat, and it shows a bit in her round little body and perfectly chubby, cherub-like cheeks. Carol gave Mary Louisa a little soda, hoping the carbonation might do its magic and she would feel better. Then she suggested she lay down on a sofa over in the book corner of the dining room.
Pretty soon we noticed that Halen had joined Mary Louisa on the sofa with some books. Halen is in the fourth grade and is an enormously creative and sensitive kid, who also has frequent lapses of judgment with regard to his behavior. (We're all a mixed bag, aren't we?) He overheard that Mary Louisa was not feeling well, and with no one even suggesting it, he went over and asked if she would like for him to read to her. She agreed and Halen read for quite a long time, until Mary Louisa felt good enough to get up. The next day Mary Louisa sought out Halen again - she can be quite persistent and somewhat demanding. He started reading to her again, but she was feeling better and kept trying to tickle Halen in the ribs, which he put up with patiently for a while, then started tickling back, pretty soon they were rolling all over the sofa in the book corner and I had to step in, encourage the return to reading.
On Friday of that week Mary Louisa was drawing, when I walked by. "I'm doing this for you, Carmen," she said. "Thank you, Mary Louisa, that is a great picture. When you're finished you come give it to me." By the time she finished I had left the dining room and gone back to the office to do something. Apparently Charles noticed her wandering all around the Breakfast Club, looking for something. Charles is in the seventh grade and totally off the hook - cool beyond cool - and little kids are not his thing. He even resists any interaction with his younger sisters at our programs. But he saw Mary Louisa's dilemma he asked what she needed. She said, "Where is Carmen? I have to give her my picture." Charles told her he thought I might be in the office, so Mary Louisa reached up and took Charles' hand and waited for him to take her there. And he did, when they came into the office, he stooped down low and, pointing to me at the far end of the office at the computer, he said as kindly as I have ever heard him say anything, "There she is, Mary Louisa." Once again, Mary Louisa had found someone to go down home with her, a very unlikely someone.
All month Halen and Charles have continued to go down home with Mary Louisa. She does not hesitate to ask them to read with her or play or draw or sit down and eat with her. And they accept her invitations. Mary Louisa is good at making the connections, she is good at finding people to make things right for her, even unlikely people. I pray that will continue her whole life long. But we cannot take any chances.
We are called this Children's Sabbath to go down home with children, to make things right, to make the connections. We are in some ways unlikely people to do this, just middle class, rather white, churchfolk, not much power, not all the resources required, not all the skills needed, but we are ones who know something about going down home, about setting things right, about making the connections.
Unlikely people can do some surprising things, can make things happen. In August we spent an afternoon in the right field grandstand at Fenway Park. As a Yankee fan I went incognito, no Derek Jeter shirt, no NY hat (in Boston they wear YH hats - Yankee Hater). We went because a baseball fan has to go sometime to Fenway Park, it is legendary, like Wrigley Field. They call it The Chapel. I understand that. We saw Pedro Martinez pitch nine innings, a shut out against the Seattle Mariners. It was a great afternoon.
We found that remarkable and surprising things happen in the right field grandstand, in the cheap seats, where you least expect it, at Fenway Park. Turns out, it's the place where claps begin, you know, the loud, rhythmic claps that tell the players the fans are behind them in crucial moments. I watched an unassuming loud clapping fan repeatedly begin a clap that went round the stadium in minutes. Later in the game another, more animated fan, began leading cheers like Let's Go Pedro! Let's go Red Sox! He would begin and pretty soon the whole stadium, again, would join in. A group of girls started the wave there, several times, and each time it traveled further than the time before. Then along about the eighth inning the PA began playing Neil Diamond's classic, "Sweet Caroline," and the most surprising thing of all happened. Everyone started singing along...kids, teenagers, adults...what was that about? They particularly loved the chorus, "Sweet Caroline, good times never seemed so good, I'd be inclined, to believe they never would, so good, so good."
39,000 fans were moved time and time again by someone putting their hands together, someone standing up and shouting, someone waving, someone deciding to make a song from the 70s the hymn of the faithful. It felt like going down home, and if a Yankee fan can feel that with a stadium full of Red Sox fans, anything is possible.
Children's Sabbath is a day for going down home, it is a day for setting things right, for making connections. How do we begin? The tax collector began with prayer. Karl Barth once said, "To clasp hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world." With that hope before us on this Children's Sabbath, in this election season, may we join hands and pray this prayer of going down home from the Franciscans:
May God bless [us] with DISCOMFORT...
at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
so that [we] may live deep within [our] hearts.
May God bless [us] with ANGER...
at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people,
so that [we] may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless [us] with TEARS...
to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, starvation and war
so that [we] may reach out [our] hands to comfort them
and to turn their pain into JOY.
And may God bless [us] with enough FOOLISHNESS...
to believe that [we] can make a difference in the world,
so that [we] can DO what others claim cannot be done.
Amen.