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Mark 5:21-43
It really was great fried chicken, an explosion of wonderful taste as my teeth closed around the juicy white meat. Certainly, I was in heaven, or at least transported back in time and place to the blissful circumstance of a Sunday afternoon around the large table of my grandmother’s dining room, that haven where one so young might be surrounded by good smells, rambunctious telling of family stories, and love, so much love. But the loud scrape of wooden chair legs digging through the soft linoleum floor quickly brought me back to the present.
Jake, one of my small charges, had already wolfed down the massive mound of food and was heading back to the long table that was piled with all sorts of remarkable delights, creations of painstaking precision, special recipes which were only offered up for the most special of occasions. Ahhh yes, thank God for church homecomings. I eyed him as he again stacked his plate to the point of overflowing. Jim and Joe Billy, his younger brothers, would soon be finishing and following their older sibling to the table, where of course, I would be at their side trying unsuccessfully to hold their activity and energy in check. Wild energy, uncontrolled and fully undirected exuberance which always seemed to be at the middle of some minor crisis, whether it was hitting this girl, that boy, or one another, or whether it was dropping a hymnal on the floor, or turning over a glass of tea, or one of a thousand other small catastrophes. Always, always, there was some bit of chaos surrounding their diminutive lives.
A small bit of chaos surrounded by a far greater tragedy, the tragedy of being fully enmeshed in the debilitating realm of poverty. On this day, like so many others, it would be the reality of their existence, wrapping it’s dark hand around their world, making a claim on their lives through a hundred different ways. Speaking it’s truth in their shabby clothing which had been worn too times by someone else’s children, the stained battered shoes they wore on their feet, their small broken-down house shared by their mother, another brother, and a sister. Never having enough, enough of anything but heartache, hopelessness, lack, and rejection. They received plenty of rejection, rejection through the scowls on the faces of the good and proper adults who never seemed to have the time to understand, rejection in the demeaning whispered comments which were not loud enough to hear, not quite; however, seemed always to be delivered so that one would be sure of the intended target. “Unclean,” the voices hissed. “Unclean.” As I watched them pushing and grabbing one another yet again, I wondered why were they even here.
After we returned to the tiny child’s table where I sat, knees up around my throat, I commented, “Jake, this is really fine chicken, isn’t it.” He looked up at me and smiled, a mouthful of food spilling from between unbrushed teeth. “Yeah, I was really hungry.” “Didn’t you eat breakfast?” I queried. He glanced at me for a moment, much more interested in the wondrous mountain of mash potatoes falling from the edge of his overloaded plate then in the idle chatter of some silly adult. After stuffing his mouth with another large spoonful, he answered, “No, Mamma normally sleeps in on Sundays.”
I sat there stunned, the dawning realization of what he had just said slowly overwhelming my emotions. Each Sunday we, either our pastor or my bride, would pick these children up and transport them to church. We would drive to their house, and there they would be, waiting in impatiently in the yard, tugging at one another in a never-ending struggle of sibling battle. Their mother rarely came. But then, we reasoned, if we could give her the gift of a bit of silence in the midst of the maelstrom, a bit of quiet in an ocean of over-energized testosterone, then that in itself was a ministry. Yet, I had always pictured her rising and gladly sending them off to church, thankful that she was receiving three hours of sanity. I had never even considered another reality.
“But,” I stuttered, “Who gets you ready for church?” Between chews, he matter-of-factly stated, “I do. I wake up and then I get Jim and Joe Billy up. I help ‘em get dressed.” I blinked dumbly a few times, and choked out, “How … how do you know when to go outside to wait?” “Well,” he said, “Sometimes Mamma will tell us when it’s time, but when she doesn’t, I just guess.” He again smiled, picked up a crunchy drumstick, and plopped the whole thing into his tiny mouth.
Here I sat with this pint-sized package of misdirected energy, this small child whose life was a picture of chaotic circumstance, limited resource, and misplaced dreams, this small child who had rarely missed a moment in church since the day that two strangers showed up on his doorstep to invite him to a vacation bible school. Here I sat with a poor nine-year-old boy who had ventured to this place, hungry, ill-clothed, and often neglected. Here I sat, with Jake, his mouth full of mashed potatoes, a smile brimming across his dirty face. Jake, who had reached out and touched the cloak of Christ.
We, the more proper church folks, much like the disciples of old, looked upon the miracle before us, enmeshed in the dawning of that which we had never seen. And a voice speaks across the spans of time, speaks into the presence of our being, “My young son, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed.”
Go in peace and be healed.
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