“Bakers’ Dozens – Everyday Saints” -- sermon 10/31/10

The Letter to the Hebrews was probably written in the late first century, although the scholars cannot determine who wrote it or to whom. In any event, it seems that the purpose of the letter was to exhort the community to be faithful, in part by remembering the example of those who had gone before. (read Hebrews 11:32-12:2)

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            Today, as you cannot help but notice, is Halloween, and what a great day that is, as any one who is a kid these days can tell you, and probably anyone who ever was a kid can tell you as well! I would guess we all have memories of getting dressed up in that special Halloween costume – my favorite was at a party after college, when I went as the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, the one who wished he had a brain, and ended up with a Th.D – a doctorate of thinkology. And then there is the candy – I still get excited about the candy, and my kids have learned to hide their hoard when they get home. Especially the Dots.

            But today we also celebrate All Saints Day, and while we don’t get the candy, we do get something special – a day on which we can remember, as we sang earlier, “all the saints who from their labors rest.” 

            And who are these saints? The saints we remember are not just the capital “St.” saints, the ones from the early church with the “St.” in front of their names, the St. Marks and St. Theresas etc. No, when we remember the saints, we remember not just those specially called out as such, and not just those who are remembered as being especially “saintly”, but all the members of the church universal in every time and place – and not just the dead ones, whose names we read out each All Saints Day, but those who live today, the members of the church.

            We often tend to remember those saints who stand out in memory because of their remarkable deeds of faith, just like those mentioned by the author of the Letter to the Hebrews: the ones who toppled kingdoms, made justice work, resisted torture to the end, endured incredible hardship. But today, I want us to think more of what some might call everyday saints, the just plain folk who walk the streets with us or maybe even join us at the dinner table. And, in particular, the ones who, by their humble example, might make it a bit easier for us to imagine ourselves as those who others might look up to because of our faith and the way we live it out.

            Perhaps this is all because two of those folk came to my house for dinner a couple weeks ago, up visiting Cape Cod from their home outside Philadelphia.  Charlie and Weezie Baker are of my parents’ generation, and they were my parents’ friends when I was a teen. For my part, I was friends with their elder son, Pitman, and we had lots of fun times together, many of them revolving around an old Ford Econoline van that he restored, complete with captain’s chairs up front, shag carpet, a poker table, a small refrigerator, a platform bed, and of course some curtains for privacy. Pitman had (and still has) a younger brother, Justin, who was a few years younger than us. Justin was a nice enough kid, but he was, well, he was different.

You see, Justin almost died at birth, and as a result experienced uncontrolled seizures and learning disabilities. The epileptic seizures worsened as he grew older, and Charlie and Weezie went from doctor to doctor in a vain search for a cure, and Justin went from school to school, where the combination of learning disabilities and seizures and frustration at being smart enough to know that he should have been doing better all combined to prevent him from finding a suitable situation. So at age 16 they took Justin out of school, and for the next three years he was employed at the small company Charlie owned as a gofer. But when Charlie had to sell the business three years later, they found that no one would hire Justin.

When Charlie sold the business, he kept one product line, a product called Nonequal Furniture Polish. So they hired a college student to help, and Justin and his cohort started mixing the polish in the family garage. They then sold it to family and friends and anyone else who heard about it, which mostly happened through word of mouth. Later, a friend offered them free space at his business, and over time, more people were hired: one suffered from head trauma, another was epileptic, some had mental health problems. Charlie and Weezie eventually formed a 501©(3) corporation, and made two key decisions: not to take government funds to support the operation, and not to derive personal financial gain from what had been come to be called Baker Industries. To this day Charlie has not taken a salary from the business.

Over time they branched out to take on other work to keep all the people they were hiring busy, undertaking packaging operations for a manufacturer, matching checks to statements for a large mutual fund, repackaging rolls of paper towels to sell to club stores like Costco, making Styrofoam end pieces to package toner cartridge, anything that they could find.

Over the past 29 years – years when by rights Charlie and Weezie should have been enjoying retirement – they have stayed true to their mission, a mission which started with their one, seemingly unemployable son. And that mission is to employ those who have the most difficulty in getting and holding jobs, to teach the work ethic through real world experience, to act as a transition step toward outside employment, and to help those who are unable to move on to reach their highest level of achievement.

            That mission is to help people like Kim. Through some unknown trauma she had stopped talking; the most they could get out of her was an occasional whisper. They put Kim to work making beeswax candles, which Kim proved very adept at, and over time her supervisor worked on drawing Kim out, until one day she finally began to speak. She improved so dramatically that they promoted Kim to receptionist (did you get that? The woman who once could not speak became the receptionist?!). Kim went on to be employed by a nursing home.

            That mission is to help people like Vince. His youth was without direction: theft, drugs, alcohol, a downward spiral that led to eight years in prison. In prison he surrendered his life to the Lord and began the long road back, but on release found he could not get a job. The halfway house that he lived in connected him with Baker Industries, and he entered their work rehabilitation program. His energy and commitment to improve soon led him to the position of quality inspector at the plant, and after a time he took another position at an outside firm, where he was promoted to supervisor.

            Justin, Kim, Vince, just three of the people whose lives were changed by Weezie and Charlie Baker. Today, Baker Industries employs over 200 people.

            The world will say that Charlie and Weezie Baker don’t get it. Everyone knows, it is a mathematical certainty, that there are twelve to a dozen. But just as a Baker’s Dozen means that a dozen is never just twelve, that there is always room for one more, Charlie and Weezie believe that while society thinks there is only enough room for the “normal”, God calls us – and love requires us -- to make room for more – for the handicapped, the homeless, the recovering substance abusers, those on probation or parole. And the Bakers not only believe, they act on that belief, they live it out daily, and surely they sacrifice in living out their faith just as those heroes of the faith named in the Letter to the Hebrews did.

            The communion of saints of which we are all members is marked by those heroes of old like Samson and Samuel and Deborah and David and Peter and Augustine and Martin Luther and Elizabeth Crocker Jenkins.

And it is hallowed by those everyday saints like Charlie and Weezie Baker.

And yet it is also peopled by all those who sat on the sidelines risking nothing, who tossed water on the Spirit’s fire every chance that they got, who were content to count their blessings even as countless others held their hands out in need.

            So here, today, in our celebrations of All Saints Day, perhaps we would do well to take stock. What will be our legacy? Will we leave a legacy of justice or will we leave a bequest of selfishness? Will the inscription on our tombstone read, “He was always willing to serve”, or simply, “I got mine”? Will we be content to sit on our hands, or will we, O saints of God, rise up, and will we stand tall, and will we brace our shoulders to God’s work of living out our love for our neighbors, so that someday those who come behind us will have those shoulders to stand on?

            O saints of God, what will it be for you?

            Let us pray. Gracious and calling God, you set before each of us the ways of life and death, and in this life offer each of us our own unique challenges and opportunities, together with the gifts needed to rise to them. And yet you leave it to us to choose. Encouraged by the examples of those who have gone before and those who walk besides us each day, grant that we might choose your ways, and serve your people, that it not be said that for the want of love a soul was lost. Amen.

That Great Cloud of Witnesses

"Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses...." Hebrews 12:1

Their pictures decorate my study -- my wife, my children, those closest to my heart, all smiling out of their frames at me, not just reminders of my many blessings, but the embodiment of them. But there are others as well -- there are Roderick and Jane Thorpe, the rector of a small village in northern England and his spouse, and the Rev. I Rajkumar, pastor of a village church in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. And there is a picture of a sari-clad woman who lives in the fishing village Raj serves, proudly sitting in her tiny, two-room, open-air hut, excited that this visitor from an unimaginable distance has asked to take her picture.

Surely each picture bears witness to the miracle of love graciously bestowed upon this one person, upon me.

And there is one more, a picture of a young man, silhouetted by dawn's early light, carrying a cross over a dune to an Easter Sunday sunrise service. Rusty, Aune's only son, all of 18 years old.

Who took his own life a short time thereafter.

It was all of fifteen years later that Aune told me the story behind the photograph, and in thanksgiving for the ability to finally forgive -- to forgive Rusty, to forgive herself, to forgive this cruel world, to forgive even God -- she gave it to me.

November 1 the church celebrates All Saints Day, a day dedicated to remembering not just the giants of the faith, the ones who get official names like St. Mark and St. Theresa, but also all the saints, in all their varied degrees of faith and struggles to make their way.

On Monday, I hope to remember many of them, and especially Aune, and Rusty.

Who will you remember?

“Its Just Not About Me” - Sermon 10/24/10

In the beginning….

            What better, more fitting words, to open our Holy Book, than these: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth….”  What better, more fitting words, to open the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, than the similar, “In the beginning was the Word….”  So here, in the beginning of my time back with you after a restful, renewing, re-energizing sabbatical, let us begin again with these opening words from John.

            John’s words for us are as much poetry as prose, and his message is, at heart, that words matter. In the opening of the Book of Genesis, God speaks the world into existence; remember how it goes, God said “Let there be light” and there was light. But this time, John tells us, God’s word is not just spoken – God’s word takes on human form, and comes to the world as Jesus, comes to bring freedom, and justice, and healing, and joy, and grace, that we might have new life, and life abundant.

            So that we might here these ancient words afresh, you will be hearing two versions spoken alternately: the New Revised Standard Version translation, and Eugene Petersen’s translation, The Message.

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            John the Baptizer is the original preacher – at least in the New Testament – and he has served as a model for preachers ever since.  And since a big part of what I do here involves preaching, and since a big part of worship in our Protestant tradition revolves around the preaching of God’s word, it seemed that this might be a good occasion to take another look at John.

            John’s main activity is preaching, and he preaches in the wilderness. He preaches in the wilderness, out there where the wild things are, out there in that uncharted, trackless waste, a place of danger, a place where hunger and thirst are an ever-present menace, a place, so lore had it, where the devil and evil spirits lurked.

            John in the wilderness has been a model for preachers ever since, for those who pursue their calling in their own wildernesses. Think of St. Francis of Assisi, preaching to the birds in the wilderness because no one in the wealthy, indolent churches would listen; think of puritan Henry Jacob preaching to his fellow inmates, our spiritual ancestors, in the Clink, London’s notorious jail;  think of John Wesley preaching on the street corners in London, and later out in the Fields; think of George Whitefield, America’s first traveling evangelist, preaching on Boston Common and in fields and forests throughout the colonies, sparking the First Great Awakening. Think also of today’s preachers seeking to bring the word of God to those lost in a modern spiritual wilderness, where seekers long for true community amid the technological babble which everywhere surrounds us, where individuals long for truth in a culture awash in “truthiness”, where souls strive for authenticity in a culture which flits from fad to fad, scandal to scandal.

            John, preaching in the wilderness, sent from God, has, or so the Evangelist tells us, only one purpose: to witness. You know what a witness is. A witness is someone who is called to testify, to tell what they have seen or heard. A witness is not supposed to embellish or exaggerate – in the words of Sgt. Friday from Dragnet, “Just the facts, ma’am” is what a witness is asked for.  And the significance of a witness is not in themselves, but in what they have to say about the matter to which they witness.

            And so we hear very little about John the Baptizer in the gospels. He speaks, and then he is gone. When he is asked who he is, he says, simply, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” He has one function – to point to the coming Christ. To make the I.D. To give us a glimpse of the truth. To be a voice speaking the truth. To witness.

            As you know, I was away the past 13 weeks, off on sabbatical. I don’t know how its been for you here – I am sure both Dirkje Legerstee and then Bill Barker did fine jobs. But I suspect some of you have been wondering what I have been doing and learning.

            For me, it was a wonderful time. After an initial time of resting and recharging, once the kids got back to school and things quieted down, I plunged in in my usual “Type A” personality way. I was going to discern a vision for us; I was going to read the latest and greatest authors, meet with exciting and vibrant pastors, digest what they had to say, and then come back to you ready to get to work and lead you forward into the next glorious chapter here at West Parish of Barnstable. With all these “I” “I”s, you’d think I was in the Navy.

            But then, thank God, with just a few weeks left in the sabbatical, I came across this ancient text and John the Baptizer, that model for all preachers. And also these words from that other early preacher, Paul the Apostle: “For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ our Lord.”

            So today, here on this first Sunday back with you, a day when I had hoped to wow you with a new vision of a new way forward for us, a day on which you may have hoped for something similar, the message is this: “It’s Just Not About Me.” 

            It was, it is, is always will be, about Jesus Christ.

            About the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

            About one who taught, and healed, and reconciled people.

            About a preaching career – the preaching career of Jesus – that ended in failure, on a cross.

            About a God who would not let the cross be the last word, but who instead raised Jesus from the dead, and through him offers us new and abundant life both in this life and the next.

            So at the beginning of this next chapter in our life here together at West Parish, in a time when perhaps you are wondering what I am bringing to you to address the concerns many of you have raised about the diminishing number of young families in worship, in the midst of a time of what still feels like recession here on the Cape, a time when revenues here are down and expenses are up and some hunger for a magic formula which will get us back on an even keel, in circumstances when we are looking for new growth in many areas – so right here, in the beginning of this new chapter, comes a refreshing reminder. A reminder about right-sizing, about humility, about how our focus need always be at the right place, and that place is not the pastor, is not the programs we offer, is not even the outreach we do – that focus needs always be on Jesus Christ.

            But if it is just not about me, it is also not just about me.  I began by telling you that John, as the first preacher in the New Testament, has been taken as a model for preachers like me ever since. But wait a minute – where does it say that John was a member of the clergy? A graduate of seminary? A trained professional?  If John has something to say to me about what it means to be a preacher, he also has something to say to you as well. We are all, in fact, called to preach the good news of Jesus Christ, to be witnesses, to point to him so that others might see, and turn, and follow, and have new life, and life abundant. Sometimes we do this in words; more often, we do this in the way we live, in the way we treat one another, in the way we share of the resources with which we have been blessed, as we live out our Savior’s call to love God and one another.

            It is really that simple. Everything else we do is subsidiary to this, worthy of doing, yes, but only because they are ways in which we witness to the love of God we have known through Jesus Christ. At base, it is just not about you, either. Not about your needs, however pressing they are, not about your concerns, however legitimate they certainly are, not about your wants and what you might get out of this church, this faith, or your God. Radical as it might sound in this consumer-driven, individualistic, what’s in it for me society, it just not about you.

            And thank God for that.  Thank God that it is about something much bigger than me me me, thank God it is about a project far vaster than our personal sound and fury, signifying nothing. Thank God it is about a light that shines in the darkness, a light that has never been overcome, a light that graciously allows us to see the true purpose for which we were created, and who is its true Creator. Thank God it is just not about me and you.

            Please join me in a moment of prayer. Gracious Creator, Light that shines in the darkness, today we welcome you into our lives, and into our hearts, rejoicing in a love so broad and deep that it fills the world. With such joy in our souls, how can we help but stand and sing together? Amen.