 Happy Christmas from
SamA Sermon preached at St. Luke's Church by The Rev. James B. Craven III on the first Sunday of Christmas, December 26, 2004 IN THE NAME OF GOD - FATHER, SON AND HOLY SPIRIT. AMEN. God is considerably less distant in Christianity than in the other monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam. Only in Christianity does the all-powerful, all-knowing God appear/descend/arrive, take your pick, at the level of those whom God created, at our level. God is hard to depict, and to even attempt to do so is taboo in Islam. We have come to know God intimately though, in the person of Jesus, the Christ of God, Jesus who for a time walked on this earth in our shoes, sharing all that makes up the human condition. All truly. Birth, learning to crawl, talk, walk. The joys and pangs of childhood, learning to read, learning about God and love, adolescence, beginning a career, making friends, resisting authority, being understood, being misunderstood, and then at too early an age, arrest, trial, and execution. All of us have been through each of those stages and events except the last three, and some may have been arrested and tried for something. But it is a thumbnail sketch of the human condition, shared fully by Jesus. The Easter resurrection though was decidedly not a part of the human condition, then or now, though without that first Easter, we would not be gathered here this morning. Jesus’ earthly ministry was short, and he has not been seen on this earth since 40 days after that first Easter. We look for him though. As Bishop Charles Gore preached in the East End of London 80 years ago, “You have your altars. You have your tabernacles. Now it is time you found Christ in the poor and rejected.” I have enough guilt to ask myself sometimes just who it is I am passing by on the street with his hand out. Some folks we rule out fairly quickly. About as obnoxious a fellow as I have ever encountered works the post office downtown, loudly and imaginatively cursing those who decline the opportunity to contribute to his endowment. Even he has another side though. Almost four years ago, as I was on my way to Patsy Smith’s ordination in Raleigh, a woman ran a red light and clobbered me. Our hero, an eyewitness to the collision, was seen jumping up and down gleefully yelling, “Whiplash. Whiplash!” I don’t think Christ is that well disguised. Earlier this month I was in New York, and struck up a conversation with two lovely young Salvation Army workers ringing their bells and working the Christmas kettle on a cold night at the heart of Times Square. We talked a good while, just passing the time of night, about how they were going on their shift, and about the Target and Kroger chains excluding the Salvation Army this year. Though one looked just like Julia Roberts, while the other was a twin of Maria Sharapova, the Russian tennis star, and they were both appreciative of the $20 I dropped in the kettle, I was really just into the theology of it all. I decided they were clearly Christ’s servants, but Jesus wouldn’t have legs that long. I tend to see Christ more readily in a teacher who loved me as a child and helped me through my parents’ divorce, or in a nurse who found time to be with me in the middle of the night in a hospital room when I was afraid and felt alone. Or in a wife who has put up with me for 40 years, most of them good years. Well just last week I wondered if I had encountered the living Christ, in Sam, and I have to tell you about him. When I finish, my guess is that you won’t feel much like complaining that you haven’t won the lottery yet, that your car is six years old, that you didn’t find exactly what you wanted under the Christmas tree yesterday, or that Duke is not in a bowl game this year. Sam is in his fifties, but of exceedingly high mileage. Though he has been out awhile, Sam has spent altogether around 20 years in prison, in relatively small increments, nothing major, beyond self-defense manslaughter, just lots of nickel-dime stuff. Sam has also long been a connoisseur of some of our less expensive wines, and in a pinch anything else fermented. He is illiterate, though attending special ed classes for a period. His IQ tests at 72, though he well illustrates the wisdom of what an old man in Indianola, Mississippi told me years ago, “When you ain’t educated, you just have to use your head.” Except for two weeks of near terminal seasickness on a fishing boat some years ago, Sam’s only gainful employment through the years has been in restaurants, washing dishes and clearing tables. He is disabled now, his diabetes out of control, his legs and eyesight threatened, and he has been homeless the better part of a year, going from shelter to shelter, sometimes just camping out in a doorway or parking lot with his Wild Irish Rose. We are working at getting him Social Security disability benefits, which in Sam’s case will amount to $700 odd a month, not much today but Sam already knows what he will do with it. Of course he wants a place to live, and a bit more dignity. Most of all though he wants the freedom to do something he hasn’t been able to do, to contribute to those in need, those less fortunate than he is. You see Sam feels very much blessed. As he explained it to me, he may not have all his health, but it could sure be worse. Sam told me it hurts to see a Salvation Army bell ringer and not be able to contribute because his pockets are empty. It hurts to go to church and not be in a position to make any meaningful, as he put it, contribution when the plate is passed. Or to eat at a soup kitchen or sleep in a shelter, again as he put it, just taking and not giving back. The irony is that Sam gives back enormously, and I think in a way he knows it. He explained to me that wherever he finds himself, he tries to keep an eye out for the lonely, the downcast man or woman over in the corner, not eating, maybe crying, more disheveled than most. Sam is a magnet for those folks. He seeks them out and spends hours listening to them, uncritically and lovingly, sometimes holding a hand, sometimes with a pat on the back or a therapeutic hug, whatever the situation calls for, sometimes a bit of tough love. Sam comes early and stays late to give of himself in this manner, and he is good at it. He told me he thinks of himself as a minister, and he is, in the best sense of the word. Sam told me also of two special favorites of his, one he still sees regularly, another he helped persuade go back home to his parents. That young man, 16 years old, was living in the homeless shelter and eating at the soup kitchen. Sam said he had middle class suburban kid written all over him, so he went over and asked him what in the world he was doing at the shelter of all paces. When told he had left his middle class home in Ohio because his parents wouldn’t let him drink and smoke dope in the house, Sam just exploded, marched him to the phone and made him call his parents in Cleveland and assure them he was OK and would be home soon. Sam then sat the boy down and talked with him about the transcendent love of parents and home, about the transcendent tension between parents and children, and about how he better get on home in time for Thanksgiving. And, the next day, after Sam had shaken down enough of the shelter folk for a bus ticket to Cleveland, he put the boy on the bus, making him promise to call when he got home. And the kid did call. He was probably afraid not to. Sam’s other recent project is a young woman, perhaps 30, ravaged by prostitution and substance abuse. Still pretty, but very weak, she is dying of AIDS, disowned by her own family, frightened, depressed, burdened with guilt, just downright down and alone. Well, let me tell you, there are no wallflowers in Sam’s homeless shelter, but he knew better and is too sensitive to drag her out on the dance floor. No, what Sam did, and has continued to do, is to sit with her quietly, this great hearted black man holding the hand of the sad dying blonde girl, listening to her and assuring her that she is loved, cherished, and above all, not alone. As Sam put it to me, I can’t keep her alive forever, but I can make sure she does not die alone and unloved. Wow. Most of this I got from Sam one day at lunch last week. After I read the menu to him, Sam had an omelet, bacon, sausage, ham, toast, grits, and three enormous strawberry filled pancakes. The bill was $20 and I left a $4 tip. Sam then asked if he might “borrow” a dollar, which he then added to the tip. Well fortified, we then went on to Sam’s disability hearing, where he proceeded to charm one and all. I rather suspect Jesus would see Sam as very much his kind of guy. Homeless, broke, in poor health, high mileage, Sam feels so blessed he just has to share it with everyone. He simply exemplifies Christ-like love in his life. He shows us, he has certainly showed me, how to be, in the words of Therese of Lisieux, the hands and feet of Christ on this earth, in the here and now. In the words of Isaiah we heard earlier, Sam greatly rejoices in the Lord and his soul exults in his God. And thank God for him. Happy Christmas to all, from Sam. Amen |
This page updated 26 December 2004