Dismissals

My parents ate once at McDonald’s. It was confusing … pay first … find table … carry food … bus table … but they allowed it wasn’t the worst meal they’d ever eaten. I ate my first fast food in California when I was 19. A day laborer, I spent a morning digging trenches for two-fifty an hour. By noon, I could have passed out from hunger. The other guys all headed for a Jack-In-A-Box. I wasn’t keen on the fast food idea but for a buck and a quarter I ate my fill … and learned to not be so particular. 

I go to the homeless shelter to visit the men, to listen and encourage. I’ve made friends there. Last week, Ray was fuming. A new shelter rule infuriated him and someone had looted his knapsack. I listened. I encouraged … but I was an easy target. Ray seemed angry at me. I left without a word. I sat in my car, certain I’d never go back. Who did Ray think he was? I thought and prayed. I returned to the shelter. I found Ray and we said words that were needed … we said that we would see each other next week. 

Norman always sat in a pew up front. He knew the words to the hymns and the first names of most Sunday regulars. One day after the service I spoke with Norman. He said that in matters of faith, “I have more questions than I have answers.” He shared with me about his busy professional life and his several ministries in the world. “Sundays are my day of rest. The church is my refuge, my port in the storm, my sanctuary. I come to church to gather my strength for the week ahead. Communion is my food for the journey.” 

As a boy, I took lessons on an old hand-me-down flute. Everyone told me, “Practice every day!” I most assuredly did not. Decades later, I heard a man play a flute so beautifully, so effortlessly, that I rummaged through closets, boxes and bureaus to find that old flute. Now, I am trying again. I practice daily, and every day I struggle, I stumble and forgive myself. My spiritual life is somewhat more advanced than my flute playing. Yet, even in spiritual practice, I struggle, I stumble and forgive myself. Like the flute, the Spirit also requires daily practice.

Maundy Thursday: “The disciples were keenly aware that someone needed to wash the others’ feet. The problem was that the only people who washed feet were the least. So there they sat, feet caked with dirt. It was such a sore point that they were not even going to talk about it. No one wanted to be consider the least. Then Jesus took a towel and a basin and redefined greatness.” [From Richard Foster’s book, Celebration of Discipline]

My father, a stockbroker in the 1930’s, had a client of low repute … a hoodlum, some would say … who owed the brokerage firm money. The man came into my father’s office with two bodyguards. They closed the door and stood. “What’s this I hear? I owe you money?” Nervously pointing to the ledger, my father said, “You see, sir, it’s all right here. You owe $500.00.” The man laughed. “Only five hundred? That’s all?” He turned to the men behind him, “Pay this man!” And they did. The man remained a good client. It was, after all, only $500.00.

We gathered around a table in the cafeteria of the men’s shelter. There were a dozen homeless men, some volunteers and a few college students. I brought tangerines and passed them around. I saw the college kid throw the tangerine. It arced across the room, hit the far wall near the trashcan and fell to the floor. Tangerines are a luxury anywhere, the more so at the shelter. Eyes followed the boy as he crossed the room, stooped, retrieved the smashed tangerine and mimicked a trashcan jump shot. The boy raised his arms in victory but the cafeteria was silent. 

My mother was an artist. I was a boy when she won the $500.00 “Best Oil Painting” prize at the Ohio State Fair. She thought long and hard about where to invest her prize money so that, one day, she would have “a little something set aside.” Her brother was a stockbroker and he was adamant: “Invest in the military! Lockheed Martin! Dow Chemical!” My mother heard not a word of it. She intended to support art and not war. My mother bought shares in the Walt Disney Company. It was then only dollar a share. That worked out well. 

A disheveled old man sat in a booth of the fast-food joint. As I walked by he asked, “Can you help me?” I kept walking. I ordered my usual but with an extra burger. I paid and started out but stopped to ask the old man, “Hungry? Want a burger?” He looked at the burger and said, “Mighty kind of you but what I need mostly is help tying this darn shoelace. I can’t bend to reach it.” I knelt, tied his shoelace, took the one burger for myself and left the rest for him. I learn every day. 

Nonbelievers who know I’m a deacon sometimes ask what I find valuable or fulfilling about the church. Then, before I can gather my thoughts, they will tell me all the reasons why they don’t go to church. Everyone needs to be heard and I try to be a good listener. When it’s my turn, I want to be straightforward and I often quote Verna Dozier: “I don’t accept every single thing that the church says and does, at its best the church expresses what I believe is God’s message to us, and I want to be part of that.”*  Amen. *Verna Dozier, Lay Theologian, Confronted by God: The Essential Verna Dozier

He told me he’d never been to an Ash Wednesday service before. I asked him if he intended to go forward for ashes. He said “no” and gave me several reasons. None seemed very good to me but I let it go. We listened to the collect, scripture, sermon and then the bidding: “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent.” I went forward for ashes and there he was in line! Later he said, “I’m a doubter and nothing’s changed … but the ashes … that was a powerful moment for me.” 

“Rash Boon” is a term from Celtic and Arthurian literature, a promise made without knowing precisely what will be required. A rash boon is an oath that binds for a lifetime, laughable in our modern era. The Knights of the Round Table, Gawain, Lancelot and Percivale, are long gone. Still, to this day, some pledge their lives to the service of others. Imagine a world ordered around this rash boon: “I will seek and serve Christ in all persons, love my neighbor as myself, strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”