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Children and Family
Urban Ministries
1548 Eighth Street
P.O. Box 41125
Des Moines, IA 50311
(515) 282-3242
Email info@cfum.org
The Case for Welcome
Genesis 18.1-15, Matthew 9. 35-10.15"The Case for Welcome"
Offered June 11 and 12, 2005
Grace UMC, Des Moines, Iowa
Denise Levertov ends her poem, "To Live in the Mercy of God" with these lines: "...not mild, not temperate God's love for the world. Vast flood of mercy flung on resistance."
And do not the stories before us this morning illustrate that very experience? Vast flood of mercy is the news for Abraham and Sarah that they will, at this late date, after decades of barrenness and hopelessness and limitations, have a child. But Abraham and Sarah resist that flood of mercy; Sarah with her laughter at the announcement that she will bear a son, Abraham with his stony silence at the question, "Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?" Vast flood of mercy is the compassion and healing and wholeness Jesus' disciples have at their fingertips as they move out among the people. But Jesus warns his friends of certain resistance: there will be those who will not welcome mercy.
Abraham starts out well, does well to welcome the stranger in his midst, no resistance there. In the first part of the story we see him busy, almost to the point of frenzy, with hospitality, welcoming those strangers. As people of faith in this time and place, we do pretty well with that also. We do it together at Children and Family Urban Ministries.
A couple of weeks ago Denny Coon, the pastor at Trinity UMC, where CFUM rents space, came to tell me about a visit he had just had with Dorsey, who is in jail. When we first met Dorsey, a lanky, older man, he was a little scary. He was living in an abandoned house, came to the nightly Supper Club meal smelling of wood smoke, built barricades around his plate of cups and bowls, and odds and ends out of his pockets, would hardly speak. When we found out that he was a veteran and tried to connect him with services through the Veterans Administration he revealed some significant paranoia. But he kept showing up for meals, including the breakfast at the Breakfast Club, served throughout the week, for children. The children were curious about this odd man but mostly steered clear of him. Through Dorsey we found out that a child in the third grade could hardly read. (He was trying to get Calvin to read his driver's license, as a test, and discovered he couldn't read even the word "none" in the restrictions box.) As a result, a volunteer (Jane Wood) began spending time with Calvin on a daily basis working on his reading. From time to time other children would gather around Dorsey to talk with him. One of his favorite topics was encouraging them to learn to read well. He had quit school in New Orleans as a boy and didn't learn to read until he was an adult. He sometimes read, even borrowed, the encyclopedias from the bookcase in the dining room. Dorsey's life is not one any of us would choose, he has lived in his car, with family and friends, in num-erous apartments, he is homeless sometimes, he is hospitalized sometimes. He struggles equally with mental illness and the medications prescribed for it. We have come to look forward to seeing him, receiving the kiss on the hand, the warm words that he offers on most days. When Denny visited Dorsey in jail, he ended the visit asking if he would like to have prayer. Dorsey welcomed the offer and Denny prayed. When Denny finished, Dorsey prayed. He said, "Thank you, God, for the Breakfast Club and Supper Club. They are the only places people treat me right."
Jennifer and her four children were at first cautious guests at Supper Club. Watching them sit very close together, quietly eating their dinner, you had the feeling they were hoping that no one would notice them. After a few nights they asked if they could read the children's books in the bookcases in the dining room. And for several nights, as the staff and volunteers cleaned up around them, they sat at the table devouring the stories in the stack of books they would gather. Finally, I invited Jennifer to take some books home each evening to read, bring those back and take another stack home. They did that for months. In those months CFUM staff and volunteers got to know Jennifer and her children. We found out that they had all been traumatized by an abusive husband and father, they had come from the Family Violence Center to live in transitional housing in the neighborhood. One night Jennifer said to a CFUM staff member, "If I had not found this place and you people, I think I would have committed suicide."
This spring child after child, young person after young person whom we had not seen for a while, have shown up after years of our not knowing where they went or what happened to them. Five-year-old Fancheon is now in the sixth grade beautiful and smart, "I'm on the honor roll!" she told me, and "I miss the Breakfast Club." Seven-year-old Julio, whose favorite song in our summer program was "Child of God," (If anybody asks you who I am...tell them I'm a child of God...If anybody asks you where I live... tell them in the love in the love of God...If anybody asks you where I'm going... tell them to the children of God). He is now in the seventh grade at Harding. "I still remember that song," he told me when I started to remind him. Fourteen-year-olds Quentin and James, are now twenty, Quentin has been in jail for car theft, but now has his GED and is work-ing at a restaurant doing prep for the cooks. James graduated from high school, is work-ing, but wants to go back to school, maybe be a teacher. They showed up after Breakfast Club one morning, they ate, and I invited them to come volunteer at the Breakfast Club, play some ping pong (Quentin was a killer ping-pong player), he said he still loved to play ping-pong; James said he would like to come and read with the kids. As they left, Quentin hugged me and said, "Thanks, Miss Carmen, for everything."
We are sons and daughters of Abraham. We welcome the stranger well. And the vast flood of God's mercy flows over us all. But the message of the strangers often meets with resistance.
I met Samuel last winter, at a gathering of the three entities that share space at Trinity, the congregation of that church, CFUM, and Comunidad de Fe Las Americas. Samuel is a part of the Las Americas community. He is from El Salvador. The first time we went around the circle he was determined to answer the first task assigned to the group-tell us about your family-in English. It was difficult, but he did it quite well. For the second task-tell something about your experience of faith-he relied on the translator to try to keep up with his response. I think, perhaps because my name is Carmen, he thought that I understood Spanish, because he looked at me throughout his long, animated answer. Iglesia and barrio, and a few other words with similar counterparts in English, were about the only words I understood. But through Samuel's gestures, facial expressions, and what I could catch from the translator, I heard that his experience of a Church (big C) more connected to and concerned with the elite of the university in his town than with the struggling people of the barrio, was a hurtful and defining experience for him. He came to an experience of faith only because he came in contact with a group of Christians who understood the connections among the economic and political and spiritual aspects of life and the gospel. The stranger Samuel brought a message of challenge for the Church to connect the dots and work for the justice to which the gospel calls.
A month or so ago I was taking Abigail and Holly home after a Wonder Girls event at the United Way Campus. (The Wonder Girls is a new gender-specific program at CFUM for girls in the fourth and fifth grades.) I knew where Abigail's grandmother lived. But I asked Holly if she could get me to her house from the United Way. Abigail commented how well another CFUM staff member, Janelle, knew her way around the neighborhood. I told her that Janelle had lived in the neighborhood for ten years, you get to know a place pretty well over that time. Abigail replied longingly, "I would just like to live in the same house for two years." The stranger Abigail brings a message of the need for good, affordable housing and family-sustaining wages that would allow her single mom to maintain the stable, settled life for which her daughter longs.
Moulton School, the school the children in CFUM programs attend, has been designated a School in Need of Assistance under the standards of the No Child Left Behind Act. During one week of their spring break this year they held SINA Week, a week for Students in Need of Assistance-those reading, doing math, below grade level-to receive additional instruction. As we were walking children over to the school from the Breakfast Club during SINA Week, Monte announced, "We go to a poor school!" I asked, "What makes you think that?" "Our school is so poor we can't afford to go on field trips! Our school is so poor we have to go to have SINA week! Our school is so poor they have to sell Friday treats and get money from us! (The PTO sells some kind of treat to students every Friday for a quarter.) I wish I went to a rich school!" I tried to convince him that his school was rich in many ways: great teachers (some great teachers Monte conceded), a beautiful building (yeah...), good students (some good students). I don't think I convinced him as he walked into the school shaking his head. The stranger Monte brings the message of the critical need to create rich public education for all children, so that beyond the rhetoric, truly no child is left behind .
There is resistance to the message of the strangers-the message that something that is wrong needs to be set right, the barrenness of too many neighbors lives needs to become fullness, hopelessness needs to be replaced with hopefulness, limitations need to be removed. The vast flood of God's mercy is at the gates, but we resist. We know some-where within us that if we open the gates something will be required of us...perhaps a change of heart or mind, an investment of body and spirit, even a commitment of our lives. As the poet wrote, not mild, not temperate God's love for the world.
The question of the strangers also evokes resistance, "Is anything too wonderful-other translations say too hard, impossible-for the Lord?" and Abraham falls silent. He knows what the answer should be-of course not-but that's not how it feels at times. I don't know about you, but I'm with Abraham. Sometimes the best I can do is to answer that question with silence. I want to believe that nothing is too wonderful, nothing is too hard, nothing is impossible for the Lord. But sometimes I am overwhelmed by what feels like endless barrenness and hopelessness and limitations in the life we share. That which might give new life to the strangers which we so earnestly welcome: the public education system, the justice system, the economic system, the medical system, even the Church-seem broken almost beyond repair. Can God truly bring new life to the barrenness, the hopelessness, the limitations of our life together. Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?
Josue's latest obsession is dinosaurs. When he began coming to the Breakfast Club over a year ago it was Spongebob. He talked about Spongebob, drew Spongebob, told Spongebob stories. Then came Spiderman. For months he talked and drew and told stories about Spiderman. He was so obsessed with Spiderman that he spent one whole morning at the Breakfast Club watching a tiny spider make its way around the CFUM office floor, certain that there was some connection between that tiny and Spider-man. The past few weeks it has been dinosaurs. He is learning about dinosaurs, drawing pictures of dinosaurs, creating stories about dinosaurs. A few days ago he came up to me out of the blue and asked, "Is it true that God is bigger than the dinosaurs?" I said some-thing like, "Well, Josue, God is a spirit and so God is bigger than everything. God is a mystery, hard to understand. We don't know all there is to know about God, except that God loves us and has wild dreams for our lives." He just looked at me and walked away.
Kind of like Abraham, kind of like me, maybe kind of like you...The biggest thing in Josue's mind, for the moment, is dinosaurs. In ways that we cannot imagine, the biggest thing in the minds of Abraham and Sarah was their barrenness. In my mind the biggest thing I can think of is injustice. Is God bigger than the biggest thing that delights our minds, weighs on our shoulders, burdens our souls? Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Our faith teaches us that nothing is too wonderful, too hard, impossible for God.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel says that The beginning of faith is not a feeling for the mystery of living or a sense of awe, wonder, and amazement. The root of [faith] is the question of what to do with the feeling for the mystery of living, what to do with the awe, wonder and amazement. [Faith} begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us.
And so it is, Jesus sends the twelve disciples, and every disciple since, out into the world with a vast flood of mercy at their fingertips. May mercy not find resistance, at least among us this day. May we welcome the love of God, neither mild nor temperate; and may we welcome and offer endlessly the vast flood of God's mercy.