In 1994 during my first summer of
seminary I did an internship in a large country church in Virginia in the area where
my parents’ families originated. One
afternoon I went to visit a man, Mr. Lotts, who would’ve been a distant cousin
or something of my great-grandmother. My
great-great-grandmother had married twice due to the death of a spouse. The first husband’s last name was Lotts so Mr.
Lotts was related from there and my great-grandmother was a child from the
second whose last name was Thompson. Mr.
Lotts lived about three or 4 miles from where Great-grandma lived and every so
often he would drop by as country people do from time to time.
Now, Mr. Lotts was on the membership list
of this church, but it had been years since he had been there. He had been rather active but he got
disgruntled a decade or so prior about something that didn’t seem right to him
and so he just stopped going. Regardless,
he was family. My dad had mentioned his
name a time or two and I wanted to meet him.
Well, I dropped in on him unannounced
one afternoon as people out in the country do and introduced myself. Not that I needed to. He had heard through the grapevine that I was
working at the church that summer and I look so much like my dad it was obvious
who I was. We sat and talked and he was
a bit emotional about my visit.
He told me a story about my
great-grandmother and a visit that she had received back in the 70’s from the minister
of that church. She had been widowed
since the early 60’s and rarely went anywhere.
(I guess she’s the one I got my hermit instinct from. My wife would find that funny.) She was a member of that church too but
didn’t go. She didn’t drive and nobody
came to get her and that didn’t matter because back in the day my
great-grandfather wasn’t exactly the church type so they never went.
The story went that one day the
minister of New Providence Presbyterian just dropped in to visit my
great-grandmother. Of course, he didn’t
call ahead. That’s the way it’s done in
the country. I can’t see the visit
lasting more than 15 or 20 minutes because Great-grandma wasn’t much of a
talker. As he was leaving Great-grandma
made him wait a moment while she went to get something for him to take with
him. She had less than a little, but if people
visited she didn’t let them go away empty handed. She came back with a jar of homemade jelly
and with tears in her eyes she gave it to him and said, “This is the first time
a minister has ever been to my house.” Apparently,
that visit really meant something to Great-grandma. It honoured her and I’m pretty sure it said
to her that God remembered her and cared.
I don’t know why this story would
stick out to Mr. Lotts other than it was an example of why he had gotten upset
at this church years prior. Or, I might
have been the first minister-type to come to his house. Great-grandma was a widow and lived by
herself, but the church people rarely if ever checked in on her for some
reason. I haven’t heard too many stories
about Great-granddaddy. He died before I
was born. But, what I have heard was
that he was a very hard worker, but also he could drink and had a pretty decent
temper. According to my dad who was
actually raised by them rather than my grandparents, the two of them could have
fights that were so intense that he hid under the table.
Maybe this story was important for
Mr. Lotts that this story because it was just an example of how church people
don’t act Christian and ministers…well, how ministers can get pinned down to
looking after the people who pay their salaries to the neglect of those who
can’t. How much would it have been a
support to my Great-grandmother in her grief or in the storms of her marriage
if the people of the church thought as much about the real needs of their
not-so-churched neighbours whom they all knew the gossip about rather than the
things and people of their own at church and simply went and visited like that
minister did? I think it was the lack of
that authentic, godly, personal caring that had upset Mr. Lotts so that he stopped
going to church. And it is not that they
were hypocrites or anything like that.
They were good, solid down to earth people who cared but like us, like
myself, we just forget to love our neighbours sometimes. We fail to see people in their real needs. We fail to sense how lonely and hurting
people can be or if we can sense it, we lack the courage to act.
Anyway, this story about my
Great-grandmother is one that comes to mind when I read the story of Zacchaeus. Jesus didn’t get pinned down to being the
Messiah of just the religious folk, but rather saw Zacchaeus for who he was. I also think of this story because of
Zacchaeus giving back quite a bit more than a jar of jelly because Jesus came
to his house. (During that summer I once
came away from a visit with a couple of fresh picked onions.)
Zacchaeus enacted something similar to what in
the Old Testament was called a Year of Jubilee.
Every fiftieth year Israelites were to return lands to their ancestral
families and free any Israelite slaves they had acquired. It was a fair and just redistribution of
wealth that God commanded but as far as we know it never happened until the
days of the early church in which the Book of Acts says:
Awe
came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the
apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they
would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as
any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in
the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous
hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.
And day-by-day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. (Acts
2:43-47 NRSV)
Today, Ascension Sunday, we celebrate
Jesus enthronement as Lord of all Creation.
He is that ruler who has gone away to a distant country to receive power
and is coming back. In the meantime, he
has left us to look after a few things pertaining to his reign. He has left us each with a bit of his wealth,
meaning the Holy Spirit, and he’s given us one commandment – to love as
indiscriminately as he has loved us. Acting
according to that love is what I call living under his reign. It is important we follow this commandment
because it gives a picture of what things will be like when he returns.
Here’s an idea for how we might live
in the reign. What if we got together
sometime and made a bunch of jelly and put it into small, little half or
quarter pint jars. Put little labels on
them that said something like, “Because We Care”. Then, we go out in two’s or three’s to every
house in the area and give it away. making
special effort to talk to those we know are grieving. It would take about as much work as a
fundraiser, but would say a lot more. I think
it would get the message across. Think
about it. Amen.
