I have been blessed these past few weeks with the opportunity to delve into the Gospel of Luke as I’ve prepared a few sermons. And what has struck me most about Luke’s writing is his focus on the human, on faith, and on relationships – and, how all of these intersect our relationship with God.
Three weeks ago, there was this curious reading. Jesus spoke of faith, saying that if we had faith the size of a mustard seed, we could say to the mulberry tree, be uprooted and planted in the sea. I’ve mulled over this passage for weeks. It’s not today’s reading, and I could easily just let it go, but I couldn’t. It’s so enigmatic, so puzzling, so beguiling. As worshipping members of Christ’s body, we consider ourselves people of faith, but we don’t go around asking trees to toss themselves into bodies of water. And so, this ambiguous passage has been with me for several weeks – and as I prepared for today, I puzzled over how it might relate to Jesus’ parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector.
I sat. I thought. I scratched my head. And finally, my thoughts brought me to a memory. I thought of an older and wiser friend of mine who once told me this about faith:
He said, “Allison, to consider “faith” a noun is missing the point entirely. Faith is not a noun, not a concrete entity from which you can subtract or to which you can add. Faith is a verb, dynamic, malleable, plyable, lived in relationship. It undulates, climbs, dips, advances, retreats, and through it all, matures: an active verb, not a passive noun. You know, changing the grammatical construct could change how you live your faith – how you live as a Christian.”
When I remembered this conversation, a few pieces of this puzzle of a parable fell into place. Jesus told us that, if we only had faith the size of a mustard seed – and let’s fancy, for a moment, that we might – we could move things, which indicates faith’s activity. That faith is an actor – it will uproot the tree. It will not be uprooted.
Now, given the constraints of the English language, I can only flesh this idea out in the most cumbersome way. Please bear with me.
In the former model, where faith is a noun, transitively acted upon:
The world has diminished my faith. The world could/can/or has attacked my faith. My faith is waining.
But in the new model, where faith is an active verb, acting upon:
Faith fills my being, so that when I speak – faith is speaking through me. When I love, faith is loving through me. When I listen, when I learn, when I change, when I grow – faith is acting through me. Most importantly, when I learn , my faith is learning. It is maturing. Faith is lived. Faith transforms us. It transforms us in relationship.
But, I think: one major caveat: we have to LET it.
In today’s reading, Jesus tells a parable to some who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and regarded others with contempt,” that is, he was speaking to people who had a system, as we do, of “us” versus “them,” of “me” versus “those people.” These people to whom Jesus is speaking obviously placed little value on relationship with those people whom they considered “less than”: less educated, less cultured, less wealthy, less dignified, less respectable. More sinful. Perhaps poor.
In light of the memory of my friend who described faith as active, I saw that Jesus was talking to people who were distorting active, dynamic faith by deciding that those people were not worth their time or their relationship, that they had nothing to offer. That there was NO WAY they might actually teach them something. And Jesus says quite plainly (this is not an enigmatic parable), that “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” The Pharisee had a great deal, then, to learn from the tax collector. But he thought too highly of himself to “stoop” down to be in relationship with that tax collector, and to learn from him.
How often have I been guilty of the same thing? Too many times to number. And you know what – it’s because I continue to fall back into this horrible but very human habit that I am grateful for Reading Camp. Because the children of Reading Camp, the families of Reading Camp, the relationships I’ve formed with other volunteers at Reaidng Camp – they help me to remember. They call me back to remembrance of this parable. They call me away from a stagnating piety back to an active faith.
On Friday morning as I was preparing this sermon, I looked up and stared at a small piece of paper pinned to my bulletin board.
Dear Allison
I hope Clay comes back next year. I hope you have a good time when we have ice cream and s’mores. Thank you for making camp fun and letting me come to camp. I hope I can come back next year.
From Billy.
Billy and his twin brother Patrick live in Pineville (pahn-vuhl) with their father Bill, and they attended Reading Camp at Pine Mountain for their second year this past summer. I have notes from my first conversation with their father, back in 2009, when I was calling all the campers’ parents and preparing for camp:
(grumbling): “This’ Bill.”
“Hi, Bill, this is Allison, the director of Reading Camp. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine. That lady done filled out those papers for the boys. They’re comin’ to yer camp.”
“I’m glad to hear it. And I’ve got it down that they’ll be on the bus.”
“mmm hmm. Now, I want to tell you ‘bout my boys. I’m the only one who’s raised ‘em, and they’re good boys. But, if you need to, you use a switch to make ‘em mind. If they wuz ever hateful, you tell ‘em I told you you could use a switch.”
“Oh, I’m sure we won’t have to do that.”
“Well, if you need to.”
“(haha). Alright. Well, Bill, you just call me if you have any questions.”
From the time I received Patrick and Billy’s applications, I knew the boys and their father would be some of the most interesting people I had worked with. The boys’ teacher forms read, in all caps, “NON-READER.” On the part of the application where teachers can check each child’s strengths and weaknesses, the boys had no strengths. Every weakness was checked, and then those words, “NON READER.” The parent-guardian form had been filled out by “that lady,” (Deb Obermann from St. Mary’s in Middlesboro) because Bill was illiterate and could not fill it out himself. His signature was simply, “Bill,” not “William Miracle or even Bill Miracle,” just “Bill,” in a scrawl-like cursive that looked like a first grader’s.
In my years volunteering with Reading Camp, I had met many families and many children whose way of living, way of speaking, and way of being were different from my own. But, Bill, Billy and Patrick Miracle were a whole new type of foreign.
The Miracles stopped me dead in my tracks, and I felt before camp even started, that they might affect me more than any other Reading Camp family ever had. I wasn’t wrong.
The boys arrived at camp on Sunday very sullen, shut-off, and internal. They were gruff, they were abrasive. Most volunteers had an immediate reaction of “uh oh, these kids are trouble.” I have to admit, I didn’t particularly like them. However, part of the transformational nature of Reading Camp is that there’s this quiet understanding that permeates the staff, that informs how you treat the children, speak to the children, and eventually feel about the children: the ones who are the hardest to handle, the easiest to dislike – those are the ones that you commit to loving, the ones that you don’t give up on. You make a purposeful decision to be patient. You intentionally take deep breaths. You pray for active faith. And, there’s a collective sighing prayer that Reading Camp might be a conduit for the Holy Spirit – because you know, you’re sure gonna need him.
Patrick and Billy remained gruff, mean, and monosyllabic until Wednesday morning, when it finally seemed to “click” for them that everyone at camp cared desperately about them, that no one cared that they struggled so much to write their name, and that the teachers were ecstatic when they finally named all the letters of the alphabet. By Wednesday, they started opening up. They formed a close bond with Aaron, a young man who was a writing center teacher – and Aaron worked patiently and tenderly with the boys on their writing. Billy and Patrick really wanted to write letters to Marcie, a young woman who was our Pleasure Reading “librarian.” It took Aaron’s coaxing, prodding, encouragement, and help with every letter of every word, but by Friday morning, the boys had written their letters to Marcie, and they beamed when they handed them to her. It was a sobering moment for the whole staff – an awe, a “hush,” and not a few tears that these boys had been able to achieve something their public school teacher never thought possible. And I guess, an awe at the fact that in the course of a short week, we had fallen in love with those two stubborn boys.
The year passed, and the majority of our volunteers from that first summer returned again in 2010, and all of them wanted to know if the twins were coming back. And, they were! I picked Patrick and Billy up in Pineville and brought them to camp – and I cannot describe to you the level of excitement that was pouring out of those two. They knew what they were coming back to – an environment where it was okay to make mistakes, where people were patient, where people really cared about them, believed in them, and were going to help them to learn. A place where they could be children: curious, joyful children who wanted to learn. And I’ll tell you, their approach to camp this year was a 180-degree turn around from 2009. They were telling the other kids how to behave in the learning center. They were focused and engaged with each teacher, working SO hard to write more letters, stumble through simple books.
They were transformed. We were transformed. Faith asked us to be patient, asked us to open ourselves to those boys. And we soon realized that Patrick and Billy had just as much to teach us and to offer us in relationship as we had to offer them. We helped them write their names and read simple sentences, but they taught us humility. They taught us not to take our literacy for granted. To acknowledge children like them, families like theirs – people who perhaps don’t read, don’t speak English like we do, and have radically different lifestyles – as complete as we are, worthy of dignity, brimming with potential, full of things to offer in relationship. They taught us that all those letters that were either behind our names, or that we were trying to get behind our names through decades of school, didn’t matter. They taught us the meaning of grace. And they taught us to be grateful.
I am a proud follower of St. Raphael’s on Facebook, and so I know that your congregation raised $12,000 at the recent Mediterranean Gala – a significant portion of which will go to support Reading Camp in South Africa. Fundraising can be a very trying endeavor, especially when economic times are hard. What you have done for the children of Reading Camp in Grahamstown will transform their lives. And not only that, but the experience of working with those children will call the volunteers to remembrance of active faith – it will nourish and deepen their spiritual journey, and sustain them in dark moments. It will be with them throughout their walk with God.
I want to invite you to have the same experience in summer 2011. I don’t know of any budding travel plans amongst members of your congregation (though I hope Mary Jane will be returning to Grahamstown as a nurse and will be sending me pictures from her iPhone), but I want to invite all of you to a transformative week of Reading Camp. The Cathedral Domain and Pine Mountain camps sustain vibrant Reading Camp communities with interesting and passionate volunteers – who learn as much from the children and from each other as they may impart.
There’s another reason I want to invite you to volunteer at Reading Camp next summer. It comes from the wisdom of the rabbis of the Talmud:
They taught that Gemilut Chesed (loving-kindness) is greater than charity. For charity is done with one’s money, while loving-kindness may be done with one’s money or with one’s person.
You have fulfilled gemilut chesed through your Mediterranean gala, raising money so that children and volunteers in South Africa will be transformed by their experience. Won’t you consider fulfilling gemilut chesed again by joining us next summer?
One of the Pine Mountain volunteers wrote me after camp this summer, saying, “I received more than I gave at Reading Camp.” That is grace, and that is Reading Camp. You give all of yourself, and yet, at the end of the day, you have always been given more. There’s always a net gain.
So this “active faith” stuff, this loving kindness…. ....
isn’t that bad, eh?
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