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John 20:1-9
Resurrections …
He wasn’t a bad person you understand, at least within the framework of goodness and badness as it’s typically defined. He was just going through the world, forging a life in a manner which seemed to suit his personality, neither bad nor good, much like the boy next door, or the man down the street, much like Mr. Thompson the local grocer, or Bill the neighborhood cop. No, he wasn’t a bad man.
He was a member of a flight crew, flying on one of the Air Force’s most sophisticated communications aircraft. They were based in Honolulu and on occasion would fly across the Pacific stopping at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, “a good place to stop,” he thought. After all, there was good food and much shopping to be done. And then, there was always the odd nightclub with it’s loud music and cheap beer. “Yes, a good stop indeed.”
Like so many of the lesser developed nations, anywhere there is an enclave of wealthy westerners, the impoverished children gather to beg. And just outside of the main gate at Clark Air Base, one could always find scores of begging children mixed into the scene of loud street vendors and the noisy scream of music cascading from the multitude of bars. Chaos. And to the young airman and his friends -- a scene which represented the promise of laughter, revelry, and the merriment of debaucherous diversion.
As they made their way through the mass of humanity the young airman suddenly found his way blocked by a small bare-footed girl. She could not have been more than six or seven years old. She stood in his path, her face streaked with the grime from the streets, her dirty dress draped about her small undernourished frame. She held out her hand and in broken English she said, “Please, GI, please.”
Now, it wasn’t that the airman was necessarily an uncaring person, but after all, there were scores of other children surrounding them, and he knew that if he gave a few coins to this girl, then all the other children would demand it as well. He watched as his friends continued on to their waiting taxi and he started to push by the ragged small street urchin. Suddenly, with strength which belied her size and condition, she grabbed his pants leg and tenaciously again demanded, “Please, GI, please.”
The young man struggled to remove himself from the young girl’s clutches but in the ensuing fracas, somehow she managed to wrap her leg around his leg. And there he was, stumbling about from side to side with this small dirty creature hanging on to his leg, stumbling about in the street to the greatly increasing amusement of his friends, the street vendors, and any other persons who happened to venture by. Louder and louder the laughter became and he began to grow more and more irritated with the rag-a-muffin that clung to him. Finally, in an exasperated and greatly humiliated gesture, he placed his hands are her shoulders and shoved her onto the dirty street. And that is where he left her, like some discarded piece of filth. He went on and joined his friends, refusing to return, refusing even to look back.
The young airman didn’t think about the incident for a long while, until one day, without welcome and without warning, this person came to him, came to him out of the fog of past promises, came to him from a faith that he had forgotten, came to him and said, “I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was naked and you did not even toss me your rags, sick and you did not care for me, a stranger and you refused me. I was a prisoner, and you never once visited me.”
And suddenly, in a flash of recognition, the young man knew to whom he was speaking. He stammered, “When Lord, when!? When did I ever see you hungry, or thirsty, or naked. When did I ever see you a stranger or sick. And certainly, Lord, certainly, when did I ever see you in prison!? Jesus looked at him and said, “Right outside of Clark Air Base, that’s where you saw me. For when you failed to do unto this little one, you failed to do unto me.” With sadness in his eyes, the Christ who suffers, turned his back – just as the airman had once done – and too, went on his way. And the young airman, who was neither very good nor very bad, watched him leave, a small bare-footed girl, in a tattered dirty dress.
The years go by and the seasons change and in a country-seat town in eastern North Carolina, far removed from the steaming hills of the Philippines, there was a small Methodist church with 12 members. They shared solid, working middle class roots. They were smaller and perhaps older than most congregations, but all in all, they looked much like any other small church. They had made their own way and it had not been easy. Now, almost all of the members were retired and their children had grown and moved away – hearing the call of other opportunities, hearing the call of life from beyond boundaries which must be broken.
Services were quiet, looking more like a funeral than not. There was little singing for there was no one left to play the old, battered piano. Any who ventured into this place would have agreed, it was a dying congregation in a dying little rundown church. Maybe, it was already dead. Yet, they still clung to the hope that maybe God might respond to their prayers, that God might somehow again give them life. They clung to the hope, even as remote as it seemed.
One summer, a new pastor was appointed to the rundown little church, appointed right out of seminary. She had not been in the Methodist system long enough to be properly credentialed and as the church didn’t give much in the way to denominational causes, they had little sway with the powers that be. So, here they were, a young Lutheran pastor who was not even yet part of the system, and this dying congregation – stuck with one another.
That summer a local community ministry was sponsoring a Vacation Bible School led by a group from a large suburban church in Raleigh. The ministry effort was being directed toward several high risk, high crime neighborhoods near the church. The hope was to provide an opportunity for children to escape the environment in which they existed, to escape … at least for awhile. As the small church was empty during the week, they had allowed the VBS to be held in their building. The church members had shared with the new pastor that they deeply desired the laughter of children to once again be heard within their walls. So, the young pastor had a wonderful idea, a wonderful and crazy idea – “Why not bring some of the children to church!” She extended the invitation, and to her amazement, that Sunday several children did come.
Attendance at worship grew from 8 or 12 to almost 25. The pastor was excited. Certainly the congregation would be pleased! Certainly they would rejoice with her, rejoice for these broken children, rejoice for this unbelievable opportunity.
Yet, there was little rejoicing. They had said they wanted children in church. But these children were not like them. These children were brown and black and some of them even spoke a different language. These children were unkempt and unruly. These kids would not sit quietly and would not sing sweetly during the hymns. Instead, sometimes they would run about and shout and fight. Sometimes they would rustle paper and drop books and shoot spit-wads. These kids came without their parents and these kids would offer little to the dwindling coffers of the church. Without a doubt, these kids were not their kids. There was little rejoicing.
Yet somehow, somehow small miracles do occur and these children kept returning. Time after time, Sunday after Sunday, month after month, they returned. They seemed not to understand that some in the congregation did not want them there. They seemed not to understand that the life they brought was not the life that had been. They seemed not to understand that they were a most disruptive group. Yet somehow, they continued to come. By and by, they began to behave a bit better. By and by, some of them grew in faith and maturity. And in small miracles, sometimes even a mother would accompany one of the children or a father could be found sitting on the back row.
Today, life in that broken down little church can still be chaotic. Every so often a child will still act out or you can still hear the resounding sound of a hymnal hitting the hard tile floor. Some members have left and life in this place is still a struggle. But other members have stayed, stayed in this church where order may never be the rule of the day, stayed because the hope of the past has become the promise of the future, stayed because they are needed. And in small miracles, there have even been a few new members who have joined this small strange community, including a young mission intern who can even play the old battered piano. Life in this place is not perfect, if perfect means showing no imperfection. But that’s ok, because that’s what real life looks like, that’s what real life brings.
This Sunday, sitting on a pew filled with squirming children, you will find a gray bearded, balding man who is neither good nor bad. He will be sharing his hymnal with a child who has no father. He will caress the head of a child that rarely receives the touch of love. He will sit there and watch these beautiful, dirty, rambunctious children. He will sit and thank God for a wonderful wife who gives so much of herself to these children. He will thank God for a young courageous pastor who opened herself to the promise of Christ. He will sit and thank God for a church that is willing to love children who no one else wanted.
And in moments of quiet reflection, in moments of silent prayer, he will contemplate this Resurrection Day. He will sit and remember a dusty street just outside of Clark Air Base. He … I … I will sit and remember a small brown-eyed girl in a tattered, dirty dress. I will sit and I will thank God that resurrections really do occur.
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