Online Sermons

4th Sunday in Pentecost (proper 8): June 28, Martha Rogers

"Go to him, Martha, touch him. See if he's alive." That's what they said to me when I showed up on the scene in Atlanta where the group had gathered under the highway overpass, near the trash and garbage that had been strewn along that spot. Someone had come into the help office at our homeless program out of breath and terribly agitated. :"You gotta come, come quick, you just gotta come now" was what I heard. So I did. I grabbed my stuff and ran out the door with the messenger.
I had no idea where we were going or what was happening.

And there I found him. Lying in a fetal heap, filthy from head to toe, the body smelled like he'd been dead for months. Nobody wanted to touch him. Nobody knew his name. But we knew his face. At least we thought we did through the bloating and the dirt on it which was making recognition hard. It was hard to even tell if there was a person in that trash heap.

My first reaction was to wonder 'why me?'   Why me? Why couldn't they help him? Why couldn't they touch him? I was the clean one here. I was my office clothes. And I stuck out like a sore thumb in this kind of crowd. The contrast between me and them was obvious.

After assessing the situation, I realized everyone was pressing in and the crowd was growing larger and more scared.   They kept tugging me closer: "Martha, what do we do? Help us….is he alive…..can you get him help?"

After swallowing down the bile that had risen in my mouth from the stench and the trash, I knelt down by his side and touched him. He was breathing, but very faintly. I recognized him immediately. It was Frank. Frank was a daily visitor in our food line, sometimes arriving at 6 am when we started distributing the 400 entry tickets we could hand out for a free meal that day, a meal made from the left-over's of restaurants and grocery stores our volunteers had gleaned that morning.

Frank never complained about getting in line early for his noon meal….6 hours of waiting for that noon meal…..cuz, he said, you could be one of the first 50 each day and wait in the stairwell where you could lay down on the step and feel the cool air of the fans on your skin. After 50 people, the other 350 had to wait in line outside on the sidewalks in the hot Atlanta sun, heat and with the security guards. So 6 hours of waiting in line for a meal was nothing to Frank. He was thankful.

Frank was one of my teachers that summer when I served among the homeless street people of Atlanta. And what a contrast we were: I have trouble waiting in line at the bank or the grocery store if there are only 3 people ahead of me.   There were so many other contrasts between Frank and me: white, black; female, male; owned a home, lived on the streets; educated, illiterate; served in a war, prayed against war; outcast, privileged…..oh, the list could go on and on.

Frank would come into the help office once a week to try to get a bus token from us to go to the veteran's medical center. We were limited on how many times we could give him tokens and sometimes I wondered if he didn't just make the appointment to come in for a little personal attention.
So instead of fussing about tokens we would sit, share a cup of coffee and talk about life.

Frank thought he had come into the help office to find help for himself. By the end of that summer, he had helped me more than I did him.

And what did he help teach me? It was about the power of new life in the midst of no life. He taught me about hope and with God's help, about becoming resurrected.

Frank was a risk taker, living every day on the street. Frank was a risk taker, living every day with God as his only companion. Frank was a risk taker, carrying the cross of Christ as his only possession other than the clothes he had on his back.

And this is how Frank taught me: "Martha, Martha, Martha", he would say, slowly shaking his head side-to-side, "you gotta practice what you say you believe. You just gotta practice living. You just gotta practice Jesus."   Sure, Frank, I would think to myself. I'm doing that, aren't I? And besides, we Episcopalians just don't talk like that.    You gotta practice Jesus?

And how do you practice Jesus anyway? How do we practice trusting and believing in God? How do you and I practice faith?

The characters in today's gospel might give us some insight to help answer those hard questions. Jairus, a wealthy, educated and esteemed leader of the synagogue went to Jesus. I guess he could have stayed home with his daughter so very ill. But he got up and went to Jesus. The unnamed woman, who was ritually exiled for being unclean by her 12 years of bleeding, risked all she could, fighting the crowd, and reached out. Even if it was a behind-the-scenes sneak-up-on-you kind of move.

Risk-takers. People of contrasts: 12 years old full of life, 12 years bleeding and ill; one an outcast, one living in privilege; one named, one unnamed, one a daughter, one called daughter by Jesus, one reaching out for herself, one needing another to reach out on her behalf. Does any of it matter? Not to Jesus, who teaches us that God's resurrecting and redeeming love is for all of us. Rich or poor. Dirty or smelly.   Sinner or saint. All and everyone. Sometimes just for us, sometime just between us and God. And at other times, that divine love is there for others for whom we intercede and plead.

Could that be what practicing Jesus is all about? Risking, reaching, seeking out for ourselves or pleading and praying on behalf of others? Do we practice Jesus when we help to heal our broken and confused world? John Pilch says that healing is the restoration of meaning to people's lives no matter what their physical condition might be.    The restoring of meaning to people's lives. Restoring is practicing Jesus. So I'll add that to our list of practice behaviors: risking, reaching, seeking out, pleading, praying and restoring.

Isn't that the divine Christ at the heart of all our stories?
The power of new life, new hope, new being, resurrected meaning?

Macrina Wiederkehr, who lives practicing Jesus, says: "A grace I couldn't see flowed through me….a power I didn't understand began to fill the depths of me."

Practice Jesus. Experience that grace flowing through you, just as the woman did in today's gospel.
Practice Jesus and receive the power of God which you may not understand but you will know, as it fills the depths of you, restoring, healing, not only yourself, but others as well.

And Frank? Well, with some medical help, a hospital stay, a shower and some good hot meals in his tummy, Frank recovered from his heart attack under the overpass that night. We stayed in touch for years after that night. Since he didn’t' die that night, Frank believed even more deeply, and told everyone he met, that Jesus must have need of more practicing God on this earth.   And with each and every baby step of our practicing, he was positive that we get a sneak preview of the kingdom of heaven.   Amen

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