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LINKS TO THE SERMONS |
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| “Family” My mother, among other things, just may be the world’s oldest Avon lady. She’s had that route for about thirty-five years now; same customers. There numbers have been whittled down by death and attrition over the years but there are still about a dozen faithfuls. They will call because they need a new supply of Skin-So-Soft or want to check out the Christmas gift catalogue and my mother will drive over and spend a couple of hours. They will sit there with the catalogue open and talk about everything. My mother knows about their physical ailments, there family problems, and the intimate details of their lives – and they know hers. It’s certainly not a cost effective procedure; the money it costs to gas up the big old Ford Galaxy and drive over there is probably more that the profit margin on a bottle of Skin-So-Soft – but it’s not about that - is it? It’s about community, about family. A couple of years ago the Avon Company decided that they would have all their representatives send in their order forms on line. My mother doesn’t have a computer so she told the company she would have to retire. A regional representative came out to see her and decided that they would make an exception. So my mother is not only perhaps the oldest Avon lady but the only one who still checks the little boxes on the order form and sends it in snail mail. Every once in a while the corporate world does something that makes you think perhaps there is a soul there after all – like they care about community – like family – like church: the Church of Avon. My dad died a year ago last January and it was amazing how many Avon customers suddenly need to renew their supplies of Skin-So-Soft. She had comforted them all in times of grief or despair, now they were returning the favor. When I was a kid growing up in a small town, one of the things I hated the most about it was that everybody knew who I was, and whose kid I was. I couldn’t get away with anything. My parents would know about it before I got home. But after a lifetime of living where you never meet your neighbors, I’m having a change of heart. I lived in a condominium in Newport Beach for four years and never even saw the guy who lived six inches away on the other side of our common wall. In the morning the garage door would open, automatically, and his car would glide out, darkly tinted windows up thanks to air conditioning. In the evening the car would return and be swallowed up by the garage. The door would close behind it. Never got the chance to wave and say “Hi neighbor.” And of course I never went over and rang his door bell. You don’t do that without an excuse, like the new Avon catalogue. Splendid isolation in one of the most heavily populated metropolises in the world. Not so with my mom; she is part of a community that knows her and cares about her. Her mail box is on the other side of the street. The neighbor across the street brings her mail over in puts it in the screen door. The neighbor down the block cuts her lawn. When it snows, some body shovels her drive way – we don’t know which one that is. And a young man named john stops by on Sunday morning to take her to the Methodist church, which has surrounded her with love since Dad died. My mother has complained for about sixty years that both her sons moved out of state, (me to California and Donald to Arizona) and she had no family left in Kansas. But she does. Her family is called Avon and neighbors and the church. All of the recent surveys show that there are only two things people want from the church, spirituality and community. It’s especially true in Southern California where neighbors and the church of Avon are so rare. They come to the church for some instruction, encouragement and inspiration for there spiritual journey, yes, but also some place to connect with other human beings – some place where you can be yourself and know you will be accepted and loved regardless of how you look or feel or behave on a particular day. They want what it used to be assumed that family would provide. Except homes have become places to sleep and stop off for a change of clothes. A recent survey showed that the average parent talks to his or her child an average of six minutes a week. The rest of the time we are passing in door ways, economic realities necessitating multiple jobs, advanced technology that is obstensively supposed to enhance communication has nearly destroyed it. We are a generation that can’t communicate face to face without the technology buffer. We don’t talk, we text. I saw a couple on the beach last month, bare foot, pants rolled up, walking hand in hand, each talking on a cell phone. I wondered if they might be talking to one another. Are we to the point where we can’t communicate at all without electronics involved? The only time we get honest face to face is in the professional councilor’s office. I think it was Will Rogers who said, “When I was a kid we couldn’t afford psychiatrists, so we just had friends. What we used to think of as family life is woefully absent in many lives and sometimes it’s much worse. The extreme cases show up on the news, a father in Austria who kept his daughter and grand children in a dungeon in the basement. There are many families where the abuse of absence is the least of it. I did some work years ago at an after school center in the ghetto of Dayton Ohio. I had a preschool class and when Mothers Day was coming I brought construction paper for the kids to make Mothers Day cards. I had them draw pictures on the inside of what gift they would get for their mothers if they could afford anything. One kid drew a gun. I asked why and he said, “So my mom can shoot my dad when he comes home drunk and beats her up.” There are things worse than poor communication. At the same time I worked the night desk at the downtown YMCA. I was surprised at the number of young children who would hang out there until the early hours of the morning; didn’t their parents worry? I was curious about their lives and it turned out that one ten year old named David was curious about mine. One night at the pool table he asked me if I had ever stabbed anyone. When I told him “No” it nearly ended our friendship; he was sure I was lying. Nobody can grow to adulthood without stabbing someone. There are people who are starving for community, family, neighbors. The extreme cases make the news but the others are ubiquitous. What people want from the church is spirituality, yes, but also community, family. A messenger came to Jesus a said your family is outside. Jesus gestured to his disciples and said, “Here is my family.” The church is family – those who share the spiritual journey. Those who share the pain and the intimate fears and longings and love you in spite of everything just like God has loved you in spite of everything. It was something like that that many commentators have been trying to explain about the Black church after the Rev. Wright controversy. That was rhetoric that was supposed to stay in the family, not for public consumption among people who didn’t have the trust and covenant relationship to understand what weight to give it. It’s part of the strength of the Black church. Most of us put on our church persona and leave everything else at home. They bring it all, anger, grief, disappointment. Part of the expectation in worship in Black churches, almost sacramental, is that there will be catharsis. To try to interpret that cathartic language rationally in another context is unfair. One of the psalms says, “Happy are those who bash your children’s heads against a rock.” That’s anger and grief talking. It doesn’t represent official Hebrew dogma. The church has to be a place where people can vent, reveal the jagged edges of lingering resentment in the prospect of the healing touch of the community of faith. We make ourselves known in that family in the hope that our brothers and sisters in the family of faith know the song of our heart and will sing it to us when we have forgotten the tune. When Emily was baptized we lived in Hawaii, the other side of the world from Isla’s relatives in South Africa and an ocean away from any of mine. So on baptism Sunday I designated church members as family. I recruited grand parents and aunts and uncles. I called them all up front and they promised to be family to our daughter. When we moved here we brought that expectation to this congregation. You are family. We who enjoy that affirming, compassionate community here in this church, need to remind ourselves that all around us are those who crave just that, to be connected with a caring community. Being in a crowded community makes it less, not more likely. (“Hello in There” John Prine) The John Prine song is about old people but the condition called loneliness and isolation is not age specific. There are family members of all ages who are still living in isolation because they haven’t been invited to the family reunion. Today is Mothers Day on the secular calendar and, on the church calendar, the festival of the Christian home. Let’s tell folks without the joys of family that this can be home. On the day of Pentecost, they added 3000 to the church. From then on they did it one at a time, sort of like families grow. Then there is the hard work of nurture, education, discipline, all requiring some expense and lots of patience. But, that’s what families do. We are the family of faith. The words community
and communion are the same word. When it was supper time in Kansas
my mother would stand at the back door and call to my brother and
I; and no body ate until everyone was there. It’s something
like that, that God expects from the church.
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