Meditation on Psalm 139 and John 14, selected verses
In memory of Margaret Murray Cowie
January 22, 1921 – January 17, 2026
Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford
First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown
Jan. 20, 2026
Margaret Murray was born on Jan. 22, 1921! Many people, upon meeting her, were surprised to learn her age. I guess you could say that she didn’t look nearly 105 years old. Then again, we don’t often meet people who have lived that long to know what one usually looks like when one lives beyond a century.
She was strong. She was smart. She was curious and caring, always wanting to hear the latest news from the church, sending many cards and letters to remember birthdays and anniversaries and cheer someone who was sick or grieving.
She was funny. She knew how to make people laugh, wherever she was. And you would know the moment she started to speak that she wasn’t from around here, though she had lived on Long Island for more than 60 years.
She was warm and welcoming. She loved people—her family most of all—and loved to get phone calls and receive visitors—from a dining room chair, covered with a blanket and wearing gloves in winter and on the front porch in summer, where she could see the birds on the feeder and the cars with dogs coming to the kennel that her family owned and operated since 1939.
She loved animals, especially dogs, especially golden retrievers, but some stray cats wormed their way into her heart. A white cat showed up once, eating bird seed on her patio. She started feeding it cat food outside, saying they would find another home for it. Then she started letting it in when it got cold. Then she named it “Twinkie,” because it was the color of the cream filling of Hostess Twinkies. She was never going to find it another home.
She learned to love American country music. The radio played 1050 Country all day long. She fell in love with Engelbert Humperdink and Tom Jones and continued to enjoy her Scottish records—the Alexander Brothers and Andy Stewart. Oh, and she did what many women in America did in the 1960s and 70s. She watched soap operas, such as The Edge of Night, whenever she ironed.
She was poised and beautiful, with lovely hazel eyes and fair skin. Whenever I visited her at her home, even with 5 or 10 minutes notice after I finished at church, she was carefully dressed, soft colors complimenting her complexion, highlighting her femininity, accessorized by rings and pins or brooches. Her hair was always neatly styled—wavy with the help of curlers, worn at night, and red with the help of Clairol. She said that she was a redhead when she came into this world, and she would be a redhead when she left it.
She was grateful, as there were some lonely days, for those who remembered her and sent a card or visited. Most of all, she was grateful for the care of her children, especially Sheila who lived with her, and made sure that she was always safe, well fed with three meals and tea and biscuits at 10, 3, and 7. She was never left alone.
Margaret was born to Catherine and William, a fisherman, in Helmsdale, a village on the east coast of the Sutherland area of Scotland. Helmsdale is a fishing port and was once the home of one of the largest herring fleets in Europe.
She was the second of six children—one older named Jeannie and four younger: Jessie, William, George, and James. She was a good student and was recognized with a certificate and prize for cooking from Helmsdale Higher Grade Public School for the school year 1933-34. The prize was the book, Great Expectations.
Her service in the British military in World War II, beginning when she was 19, was the thing that she was most proud of. She kept a picture of herself in uniform from that time with a friend, who served with her, near her favorite chair. I just found out that she was featured in a 2015 book called, Women Warriors of World War II: Told Through the Voices of the Women of Scotland. This is what she said in her interview in 2011:
Well, in 1940, I joined the NAAFI. That’s the Navy, Army, Air Force Institute and I worked in the canteen in the aerodrome in Wick for a year, then to Castletown for another year. Then there was the conscription and the women had to join the service. In 1942, I was 21 years old and I went to Inverness to register. Two weeks after that, I was called up. I did my training in the Cameron Barracks in Inverness, then to South England for more training then to Whitby in Yorkshire. I was in the Ack Ack or Anti-Aircraft unit, and I served until they asked for volunteers to go overseas. I volunteered because they wanted the women to take over the men’s jobs so they could go to the frontline. I was attached to the Military Police in France, and I was there for a while and as the war progressed, into Germany, then into Belgium where I stayed until the end of the war.
It was an interesting experience but it really was a good life! It was a good life. There was 6 in our family. I went into the Army, my two sisters went into munitions. Of my three brothers—two went into the Navy, and one went into the Army. We all got home Scot free![1]
Margaret met Hamish Cowie after the war, when she was working in housekeeping at a hotel with his sister, Sheila, who introduced them. He was good looking, a police officer, but it wasn’t love at first sight.
They were married on Nov. 24, 1948, in Margaret’s church in Helmsdale. The couple lived in Tain and Fearn while Hamish worked as a policeman. They had a son, John, then two daughters, Kathleen, and Sheila after a long gap, before the family emigrated to America on July 5, 1959.
Hamish’s uncle had been living in Commack for about 20 years; he was breeding golden retrievers and had a small dog kennel named Fonab after a castle in the Highlands where Hamish’s father worked as a gamekeeper. The uncle’s grandchildren weren’t interested in taking over the kennel; it was an opportunity for a new life for Hamish, Margaret, and the children.
But life in America was very different than the family was used to. Margaret was terribly homesick. Bringing up three children in a country she didn’t know was almost too much for her in the beginning. Margaret said that if it hadn’t been for the Scottish immigrants on Long Island that they met through the Daughters of Scotia, Margaret said she would have been on the first boat out of here.
The Lyndsay Lodge became like family to her. They shared memories and common struggles and kept alive the stories, history, music, and traditions of the old country. Margaret and Hamish enjoyed the Highland Games, Scottish Country Dancing and the annual Burns Supper, along with other meetings, rites, and socials. Margaret was selected for the highest position of service, the Grand Chief Daughter, traveling to bring greetings and help connect all the lodges around the country.
Margaret and her husband, Hamish, also gained a church home and faith family when they started attending the First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown in the 1960s. They quickly made friends. They were founding members of the Highlanders, which organized the Burns Supper each year, among other Scottish heritage events and activities.
Our reading in Psalm 139 is assurance that there is nowhere we could go in this world where God is not already there. This is assurance for those whose lives take them to unexpected places, that don’t always feel like home. Have you ever been somewhere unexpected? We cannot go anywhere that the Lord God isn’t already there. The Lord God is himself our strength and refuge.
When I read this passage, particularly beginning at verse 7, I think of Margaret, Hamish, and their children’s long journey from Scotland and their new life here, which felt so different than the home of their birth.
7 Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. 9 If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.
Jesus, in our gospel reading in John, assures us that we all have a place, a forever home, in his Father’s house of many rooms. With his death and resurrection, he has prepared a place for all who believe and seek to know and follow him. We have the promise that he will come again and take us to himself, so that where he is, we will also be. The apostle Paul will tell us in his letter to the Romans that nothing can separate us from the love of God revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Sometimes, people would ask Margaret what her secret was for living a long life. She would just smile and shrug. I know she didn’t worry about cholesterol or calories. She ate meat and potatoes and soup. She was a great baker of sweets as Hamish loved his desserts: shortbread and “millionaire shortbread” topped with layers of caramel and chocolate; currant slices; and one-layer cakes, filled with cream and raspberry jam and dusted with powdered sugar; she made tapioca pudding and rice pudding, too. She stayed active for most of her life, waiting on customers in the kennel until she and Hamish retired, cooking and cleaning the house, and exercising on a treadmill she kept under her chair. Interestingly, she never learned to drive—so maybe that was one less stress in her life. Oh, and she read her horoscope every day. She brought a clipping of one to church when she was 102 and it promised that she would live to be 103. Well, what do the horoscope writers know, anyway?
Margaret and I had a moving experience when she was in the ICU last month. For the first 20 minutes or so of the visit, she was asleep. I couldn’t bear to wake her, so I just sat quietly and had my own private conversation with the Lord. When she awoke and saw me, I rejoiced in her look of recognition in what can be a very disorienting place, with IVs and catheters, 24-hour lights and the beeping of machines. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. She made a funny face, as if she were saying, “It’s you, again!” We laughed. Then, she looked out the window at the whiteness and remembered her faraway home of her birth. Snow had fallen and a morning fog hid the sun.
“Look at the mist!” she said, her face brightening. For a moment, she was back in her Scotland home. It was a gift from the Lord.
The promise of Christ’s presence is not just something for the future—for someday, after we die. The Lord is with us now revealing Christ’s love and helping us in so many secret ways. Christ has sent his Advocate, his Holy Spirit, to dwell with us, and teach us everything that he wanted us to know and lead us to be peacemakers, reconcilers, and healers in this broken world.
The Holy Spirit is our comfort and strength when we lose a loved one and can’t imagine a future without her. And the Body of Christ—gathered in this room and beyond, in every place and time—is the hands, feet, and heart of Christ, helping each other carry the burden of grief and find hope and purpose in the Lord every day.
Dear friends, wherever there is the Spirit, we are home. As the psalmist and the apostle assure us, there’s nowhere we go in this world and the next, where the Spirit of God and the love of our Savior is not.
Listen to Christ’s powerful words for all time once more and remember that you are not alone. And that we have all what we need each day to carry on.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
Amen.
[1] Jeanette B. Reid, Ph.D, Women Warriors of World War II: Told Through the Voices of the Women of Scotland (NY: Page Publishing, 2015) 28-29.
If I were to choose a theme for our ministry together this year, I would want it to be a year of slowing down. Would any of you be OK with that theme?
Lately, I have had the feeling that our lives are just speeding by us. That things are moving too fast in a 24-hour news cycle. Most people around us on Long Island always seem to be in a hurry. We are often in a hurry.
I have been reading a book by a Japanese Christian theologian named Kosuke Koyama. The book is Three Mile an Hour God. Some background on Kosuke: he taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York for 16 years. And he had been “a teenager in Tokyo and had come close to dying in U.S. air raid bombings of the Japanese capital during WWII.”[1] He had grown up in a Christian family and never forgot the “incredibly courageous words spoken to him at his baptism by the pastor of his congregation. ‘Kosuke, God calls you in Jesus Christ to love all your neighbors, even the Americans.’” “The ‘even,’ says Union Seminary’s former president Donald Shriver Jr, “would become a theological watchword in the rest of his life.”[2]
Three Mile an Hour God is about a God who is slow. Deuteronomy 8:1-4 tells us that the 40- year wilderness journey of the Israelites was for one lesson: “to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that he might make you to know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
Forty years. One lesson.
God’s lesson couldn’t be learned easily in a comfortable classroom, Kosuke says. “God’s people must learn about bread and the word of God realistically and experientially. He took people into the wilderness.”[3] The wilderness is a place for possibilities, but it is also a “dangerous, desolate space inhabited by demons and evil spirits….The wilderness is full of promise and full of danger.”[4]
In the wilderness, we are closer to God than anywhere else. Or maybe it’s that we sense our being in the presence of God there. In the wilderness, we learn to trust in God for our every need. And in the wilderness, “our speed is slowed down until gradually we come to the speed in which we walk—three miles an hour.”[5]
Kosuke, writing in 1979, says, “We live today an efficient and speedy life. We are surrounded by electric switches, some of which cost us $10 and others may even cost $2000. We want more switches. Who among us dislikes efficiency and a smooth going comfortable life? University students use the Xerox machine in their studies. Housewives use “instant pizza” for supper. Men’s legs are fast deteriorating from the lack of the most basic human exercise, walking. Automobiles speeding at 50 miles an hour have replaced their legs. We believe in efficiency.”[6]
And yet God “moves slowly in the educational process of human beings”[7]—40 years walking in the wilderness, “three generations of the united monarchy,…19 kings of Israel…20 kings of Judah… the hosts of the prophets and priests, the experience of exile and restoration—isn’t this rather a slow and costly way,” Kosuke asks, “for God to let his people know the covenant relationship between God” and human beings?
Our reading in the Gospel of John today tells the story of just two days’ happenings. It is a slow, simple but deep walk through the Word of God. Each day’s story begins with, “the next day.” “The next day…” John was hanging out with his disciples, and he sees Jesus walking by. He says, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” He testifies to the divine revelation, when he baptized Jesus the day before, saying that the whole reason he was baptizing him was so that he would be revealed to Israel. And then, “The next day….” he is standing with two of his disciples and he sees Jesus walking by, again, and he says once more, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”
John’s two disciples then choose to follow Jesus. They are walking behind him. Jesus turns and speaks to them, “What are you looking for?” he asks. Little did they know that the one whom they were following was already seeking him!
This is “the divine initiative. It is always God who takes the first step,” says William Barclay. “When the human mind begins to seek and the human heart begins to long, God comes to meet us far more than half-way. God does not leave us to search and search until we come to him; God comes out to meet us. As Augustine said, we could not even have begun to seek for God unless he had already found us. When we go to God, we do not go to one who hides himself and keeps us at a distance; we go to one who stands waiting for us, and who even takes the initiative by coming to meet us on the road.”[8]
His disciples don’t answer Jesus’ question directly. They ask him where he is staying. They call him, “Rabbi,” teacher. This communicates their desire to spend time with him, learn from him, and know him more. Jesus invites them to his home with, “Come and see.”
Andrew and another unnamed disciple spend the day with him, and by 4 p.m. are moved to follow him with their lives and share Jesus, the Lamb of God, with others who are close to them. Andrew goes and tells his brother, Simon, that they have found the Messiah—the one whom they were looking for. He brings Simon to Jesus, who gives him a new name to go with his new identity as his disciple. Simon will now be Cephas, the Aramaic word for rock or stone, which in Greek is Petros as in our name Peter.[9]
You and I, when we renewed our baptismal vows last Sunday, were reminded that we have taken on new identities in Jesus Christ. We are God’s beloved children, we who have decided to follow him through the wilderness that is all our lives. But here’s the thing. We may think that we have decided to follow him, when the reality is that it was Christ who loved us first and drew us to him. As Augustine said hundreds of years ago, “we could not even have begun to seek for God unless he had already found us.” As we turn and seek the Lord with our whole heart, the Lord comes to meet us far more than halfway, like the first disciples.
Jesus asks us now, as we decide to be intentional about slowing down this year and as we travel through the wilderness, through the storms of life, “What are you looking for?” And, “Who will you bring to me?”
Maybe you used to bring people to Jesus, but you haven’t for a while. The busyness of life got in the way. Who will you bring to meet Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? To whom will you say, “Come and see”?
If you remember anything from today’s message, I hope you will remember the speed of our walk with Jesus. What is it? He walks 3 miles an hour, never faster, but sometimes slower. We are called to follow him, as his first disciples were, though they didn’t know it at the time, all the way to the cross.
“Jesus Christ came,” says Kosuke.
He walked towards the ‘full stop.’ He lost his mobility. He was nailed down! He is not even at 3 miles an hour as we walk. He is not moving! What can be slower than ‘full stop’ – nailed down? At this point of ‘full stop,’ the apostolic church proclaims that the love of God to man is ultimately and fully revealed. God walks ‘slowly’ because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster.
Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is ‘slow’ yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the speed of love. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice it or not, whether we are currently hit by storm or not, at 3 miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore it is the speed the love of God walks.[10]
Let us pray….
Holy One, thank you for your Son, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Thank you for loving us first and drawing us to you. Thank you for your invitation to come and see. Help us to slow down and be more intentional about lingering with you, spending time with one another. When we move too quickly and feel overwhelmed, remind us how slow your speed is. How slow the speed of love is. You are a three mile an hour God. You are with us in the wilderness. You are with us through all our storms. Stir us to share your love and bring others ever nearer to you. Amen.
I have always been an admirer of Dolly Parton. Any Dolly Parton fans in here?
What songs do you like? I like “Here You Come Again,” “Jolene,” “9 to 5,” and “Coat of Many Colors,” which is a true story from her childhood in the mountains of East Tennessee. She recalls, in the song, how her mother made her a winter coat from scraps of cloth and compares it to the coat that Joseph wore in the Bible. While other children tease Dolly about her coat of rags, she draws strength from the love and dignity of her mother. She sings, “Although we had no money, I was rich as I could be, in my coat of many colors my mama made for me.”
For Christmas, my husband bought me Dolly’s most recent autobiography. Published in November, the book is called Dolly Parton:Star of the Show: My Life on Stage.
Dolly was born on January 19, 1946, the fourth of 12 children. Her father, a sharecropper, did not have money to pay for her birth, so he gave the doctor a sack of cornmeal. She often quips that she’s “been raking in the dough ever since.”
Her first stage was her front porch. She ran a tobacco stick down the cracks and put a tin can on top for a microphone. “I sang my heart out on that porch, and I did it time after time,” she says, “always dreaming of one day singing in front of a bunch of people, even though it was mostly the other kids and the animals that I was performing for back then.”[1] Holding onto a vision for the future, she was constantly making up songs and writing them down, planning for that day when she could go out into the world and sing them.
She wrote her first song when she was 5. Little Tiny Tasseltop was about a corncob doll that her mama had made for her. Growing up, she saw herself as a kind of musical evangelist in training. Her grandfather was a “hellfire and brimstone Pentecostal preacher.” She has always been a believer, but not in the same way as her grandfather. She sees her relationship with God a little differently.[2]
The foundations of her sound were developed by her gospel upbringing. One church played an especially big role—an “abandoned chapel with broken windows and a beat up piano that didn’t hardly play at all.” Fascinated by “those black and white keys,” she says, “I’d sing by the piano and even took some of the strings from inside it to create my own makeshift dulcimer. In that church, I talked to God directly …. I told him about my dreams of being a star.”[3]
Not all her church experiences were good, however. “I remember when a few of my sisters and I started singing on the sanctuary circuit,” she says. “Daddy would take us to different churches around East Tennessee. And he’s waiting in the parking lot while we sang for the congregation. At one stop, the worshippers got all worked up, and they kept reaching toward the stage. We were wondering, Are we really that good?
“Well, not quite. When we glanced behind us, we saw that the minister had three snakes in his hands, and he seemed to be teasing them, agitating them, daring them to bite…. Thankfully, Daddy decided this was a day that he was going to come into the church and hear us sing. When he saw the preacher dangling poisonous serpents and moving in our direction, he ran up, grabbed us, and whisked us out the door.”
When she was 8, she received her first guitar from one of her uncles. It was a small model made by Martin. She called it her “baby Martin” and treated it like it was her baby. Her great grandmother was also a musician. She played dulcimer and banjo.
Uncle Bill introduced her to Cas Walker, who had a radio show in Knoxville. He hired her to sing on the show in front of a studio audience. She was only 10 and tired of working on her daddy’s farm. She was nervous, but by the end of the song, she was “full-throated Dolly Parton.” The audience clapped so long and so loud that she had to do an encore. She’d only prepared one song. Her Uncle Bill yelled, “Sing it again!” So she did.[4]
Today, as we recall how Jesus was baptized, we recall with joy our own baptisms, and what this means for us.
As Jesus comes up out of the water, he hears God calling him “Beloved son” and telling him that he is pleased with him. When we are baptized, we are forgiven and claimed by Christ, and, giving up our former identities, we take his identity as our own. We, too, are God’s Beloved Children! God is pleased with us!
I heard a story that wonderfully illustrates what this death to our old selves is like and what it’s like as we try to live out our faith.
Have you heard of the French acrobat Charles Blondin? He walked across Niagara Falls on a tightrope in the 19th century. After a few trips, he asked for a volunteer to ride on his back. No one stepped forward. Finally, his manager, Harry Colcord, accepted the invitation to ride on his back across the falls. Blondin told his manager as they began, “Look up, Harry… You are no longer Colcord, you are Blondin. Until I clear this place be a part of me, mind, body, and soul. If I sway, sway with me. Do not attempt to do any balancing yourself. If you do, we will both go to our death.”[5]
This sounds much like Paul’s explanation of his spiritual formation in Galatians 2:20. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Sisters and brothers, faith is a drawing near to God and the walk is like a tightrope. We encounter danger and risk as we seek to walk with God. The important thing is that we cling to Jesus along the way. And in the end, if our hearts are firmly fixed on the One who is Faithful and not on ourselves—our strengths or shortcomings—we discover that “it is not we who are holding onto him but he who is holding onto us.”[6]
While our journeys of faith are unique, the one thing we have in common is that we each have a calling from the Lord. We each have a ministry that is a gift from God, who knows the number of our days before we live them and has engraved us into the palm of God’s hand. God knows everything about us—everything that makes us who we are. And the God who knows us completely and is with us always loves us unconditionally.
Dolly Parton, whose musical talent and passion were evident as a small child, nurtured her relationship with the Lord, and never lost faith that music was God’s calling for her. What I didn’t know about her is that “throughout her artistic life, she has focused on improving the experiences of Appalachia, women, and children.”
People didn’t always take her seriously. Her own advisors laughed when she had the idea of creating a theme park in, about, and for the people of the Smoky Mountains in the early 1980s; 3.5 million people now visit Dollywood each year. The park brings $1.8 billion to the region annually.[7]
In 1988, she organized the Dollywood Foundation with profits from the theme park. The foundation, in the beginning, sought to help struggling students and provide scholarships. By 1995, she was sending free books to young children in Sevier County, Tennessee, through a program she created because her father, “whom she deeply admired, didn’t know how to read, and she saw how that inability limited his opportunities.”[8] Today, her Imagination Library inspires a love of reading by giving books free of charge to children from birth to age five in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and Republic of Ireland.
Other good works for her community include raising money for a new medical center in East Tennessee in 2010; “the hospital now boasts the Dolly Parton Center for Women’s Services and the Dolly Parton Birthing Unit. After her children’s album came out in 2017, she donated $1 million to the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, another $1 million in 2020 to help fund COVID-19 research and still another $1 million in 2022 for pediatric infectious disease research.”[9] After wildfires caused significant damage in Eastern Tennessee, she raised $13 million for survivors. After Hurricane Helene devastated East Tennessee and western North Carolina, she personally donated $2 million for the recovery.
Friends, you are God’s beloved. The Holy Spirit that came to you in your baptism and blessed you with spiritual gifts is still at work in you.
Knowing God’s love and grace frees us to be exactly the people that the Lord wants us to be and to find God’s purpose for our lives.
So, draw near to the Lord and take risks without fear! Fix your hearts on Jesus and cling to Christ as you walk across the tightrope. And may you sense the loving presence of the One to whom you cling, the One who is carrying you!
Let us pray.
Holy One, thank you for Jesus, baptized though he was without sin to show us the way back to you when we had gone astray. Thank you for claiming us in our baptisms and filling us with spiritual gifts. Thank you for giving each of us a calling, a ministry, in Christ’s name. Grant us a vision for our ministries, dear Lord, as individuals and your church. Strengthen us to trust not in ourselves but in your Son and live bravely into our baptisms, day by day. Thank you that we, like Jesus, are your Beloved and that you, in your grace and unconditional love, are pleased with us. Help us to cling to you as you carry us across the tightrope that is our life of faith, like Blondin and Colcord, walking across Niagara Falls. In the name of Your Beloved Son we pray. Amen.
[1] Dolly Parton, with Tom Roland, Dolly Parton, Star of the Show, My Life on Stage (NY: Ten Speed Press, Nov. 11, 2025), 21-25.
Dr. Dixon Chibanda’s greatest failure was the catalyst that drove him to change his whole approach to treating people struggling with depression.
He was working as a psychiatrist in 2005 in Zimbabwe when one of his patients—Erica—took her life. She was just 25 years old. He was shocked because he believed she was making progress and doing well.
Her family, however, knew she needed help. But they lived 200 miles away from the hospital where Dr. Chibanda worked. They didn’t have the equivalent of U.S. 15 dollars for the bus fare.
At the time, he was one of only 10 psychiatrists serving 13 million people in Zimbabwe.
That failure stirred a personal crisis, which led to him developing a mental health program in 2006 that was a departure from his medical school education. He reached out into the community and trained 14 grandmothers to take turns sitting on a public bench and listening to people share their problems and stories. The program was free and the grandmothers were happy to donate their time as first responders to those seeking mental health assistance in underserved communities.
The program had a bit of a rocky start, first because Dr. Chibanda had his doubts that grandmothers without college degrees could do the work of psychologists or psychiatrists. But once he had trained them how to listen, when to keep silent, and when to speak or ask questions, they exceeded his expectations. Then the problem was the program’s name; it was first called The Mental Health Bench. No one wanted to sit there because of the stigma of mental illness. The grandmas were the ones to suggest that the program be focused on “friendship” rather than “mental health.”
It was nothing short of genius.
During that first year, the volunteer grandmothers shared the Friendship Bench with several hundred visitors. The program soon expanded to more than 3,000 older listeners (not just grandmothers) attending to more than 300,000 people all over Zimbabwe.
“There are a lot of people,” Chibanda says, “struggling to just connect with another human being.”
He is anxious to share his story and has written a memoir called The Friendship Bench: How 14 Grandmothers Inspired a Mental Health Revolution.
The crisis of mental illness isn’t limited to the continent of Africa, as you know. The statistics are sobering. The World Health Organization says that globally, about 300 million people are struggling with depression. Only about a third of them receive any treatment. In an age of what has been called an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation,” the Friendship Bench has expanded to serve vulnerable communities in 9 countries, including the United States.
While the program is not specifically faith based, it embodies Christian ideals—such as the importance of our being present with people in their time of need, just as the Word became flesh and lived among us.
This Word or Logos as it is in Greek, meaningreason or speech, was there at the beginning when God was creating the earth. The Word is the Light that shines in the darkness, a Light so powerful that darkness cannot overtake it.
The start of this gospel is meant to be an echo of the start of Genesis. This is no accident. “The illusion to Genesis connects Jesus, the Word made flesh, with God’s acts and promises in the Old Testament. Through the Word, Creation was spoken into being, the Law was revealed to Moses at Sinai, and truth was spoken through the prophets. Through the Word the heavens were made (Psalm 33:6). This is the same Word that Isaiah proclaims will never fade away (Isaiah 40:6-8) and will bring true life (Isaiah 55:10-11).”[1]
Dear friends, this is a God who didn’t just come to us as Emmanuel because the Lord had nothing better to do. The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem was all part of the divine plan for salvation. And here’s the thing. This is what gets me every time. God sent the Son because God loves the world. God loves us! Emanuel, God with us, came to be with us not out of obedience or obligation, but because the Lord God wants to be with us!
It seems almost a rude interruption in this beautiful hymn to the Word made flesh when John is introduced. He isn’t the Baptizer here; you will find no River Jordan in this scene. We will have that next Sunday. John’s entire role in this passage is to be a witness to the light, to testify to the light. Yes, this is meant to be legal language. If there is a credible witness, a witness that everyone knows or has heard about, then whatever they are testifying to is true, beyond a doubt. The reason for John’s appearance is so that all might believe through him. This is the whole point of the gospel. Near the end of the book, John will say that this has been “written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (20:31).
But here’s the rub. The one who wanted to be with us and has come and made his home with us was rejected by his own people. These are the people whom he has known since childhood—not just friends and neighbors, but his own family; his mother, brothers, and sisters try to restrain him in Mark 3:21 when he comes home to Nazareth because the crowds have followed him there, have come for healing, and now Jesus is so much in demand that he can’t even eat.
Sisters and brothers, though we have had different experiences of it, we all know what rejection feels like. Rejection seems to me to be a particularly human thing to happen to Jesus, doesn’t it? He truly has experienced all the hurts that we have ever experienced—and more than we have ever known or could imagine.
But the power of love is more powerful than the pain and rejection that the Lord has experienced. This is the Light of which no darkness can overcome. Here’s what I need to tell you today. This power of Love and Light is within us, as a gift from Emmanuel. As 1 John 4:4 tells us, “You are from God, little children, and have overcome (the world), because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”
So, I am still thinking about the Friendship Bench, the program that was begun in Zimbabwe by a psychiatrist and 14 grandmothers after the tragic loss of a 25-year-old woman.
I am thinking about how powerful it is to be present with someone and listen to their stories and problems. You don’t have to have special training to be someone who listens and cares.
And I am thinking about what Dr. Chibanda says, how “there are a lot of people struggling to just connect with another human being.”
It makes sense that the program is fueled by ordinary people, like us. Maybe we could do something like this, too. Perhaps an actual public bench isn’t necessary when it comes to offering friendship to someone in need. We have plenty of space here in our church. Our parish hall is full of chairs and tables, and, after worship, food and drink. But you wouldn’t need to be in the church building. You could share the love and peace of Christ outside the church, just as well.
I would like to challenge you this week to be aware of when you are being fully present with others. This could happen naturally, as you sense someone in need of Christ’s loving, peaceful presence. Or it could be intentional. You could plan a time to be present with someone who is going through a difficult time. You could take a drive or a wintry walk together or share cocoa or hot tea at a kitchen table. Choose to be present with someone in need just as the Lord promises his everlasting presence with us in Matthew 28:20, “And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
With our presence, we testify, like John, to the light of Christ. A true light has come and is coming into the world. This light shines in the darkness—and the darkness cannot overtake it.
Let us be witnesses through our faithfulness and kindness to the Word made flesh, who still lives among us, so that others may come to believe in the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing they may have life in his name.
For we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
Let us pray.
Gracious and Loving God, thank you for sending your Son, Emmanuel, the Word made Flesh, the Light of the World, our Savior, Messiah, and Lord. We praise you for the promise of his presence with us always, even to the end of the age, and that his Light has the power to overcome any darkness in this world. Thank you for those who have been His loving, peaceful presence to us when we needed a friend. We lift up those who are right now struggling to just connect with another human being. We ask for your healing for those suffering with depression and other forms of mental illness and for those who cannot afford or don’t have access to the medical care that they need. We ask for help and wisdom for family members who worry about their loved ones with depression and don’t always know the right thing to do or say. We ask for a blessing upon the grandmothers who started a revolution and on Dr. Chibanda, as he perseveres through all the challenges to find a healing path for people in need. In the name of Emmanuel, we pray. Amen.
[1] Kristin Stroble, Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship: Year A, Vo. 1(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2019), 141.
When I was growing up, I always enjoyed setting up my mother’s porcelain nativity scene or creche, as she called it. I carefully unwrapped each figure from its protective tissue— Mary and Joseph, the Baby, the wise men, shepherds, and angels, and a variety of animals—camels, donkeys, cattle, and lambs. One by one, I placed them on a bed of cotton, creating a scene that told the story that I envisioned from the Bible, and from Christmas cards and light displays in front yards, churches and shopping malls.
My older brother would sometimes frustrate me by changing the positions of the figures. One year, he placed the Baby in the center and all the other figures surrounding him in circles. He was less concerned, I think now, about what the scene looked like and more concerned that everyone who had come seeking the Child would be able to gaze upon him with nothing to obstruct their view. Now that I am grown, I have come to understand that his scene reflected his own perspective and interpretation of the story—what he believed.
And this is what the Lord desires for each of us, dear friends, that we see ourselves in the story of Christ’s birth! May it not just be an intellectual exercise but rather a work of the heart. Martin Luther in the 16th century says, “We must both read and meditate upon the Nativity. If the meditation does not reach the heart, we shall sense no sweetness, nor shall we know what solace for humankind lies in this contemplation.”[1]
The story begins with Mary, a vulnerable young woman, who is terrified when visited by the angel Gabriel, whose name means “Power.” He “was commander in chief of the heavenly host, the keeper of the sword, the marshal of the divine Majesty,” says Luther in one of his Christmas Eve sermons. “A thousand angels were at his beck, and their radiance was more dazzling than a hundred suns. If angels were to speak to us in the majesty they enjoy in the presence of God, we could not endure the sight.”[2]
The lowly shepherds, outside working in the rural countryside all night, are fighting to stay awake and stay alive to protect the flocks when they are visited by angels. They, like Mary, are terrified at the visitation, not only because angels are powerful and scary, but because they are living in a time of Roman oppression and violence. They live afraid to say anything against emperor or empire or the puppet leaders of their towns, cities, and villages. Those who do would be severely punished or disappear, never to be seen again.
Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem, a small town of maybe 400 people now overflowing with travelers forced to come for the census. This census isn’t just a gathering of random demographic information; it has a dark purpose—to calculate the wealth of the people. It will undoubtably mean higher taxes and more oppression for the poor. The couple arrive on foot, exhausted after their long journey of 7 to 10 days, with no money, no house, no place to rest.
And then, it happens. It came to pass, while they were there, “the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.” Why on earth would God choose such a time and place for Mary to go into labor, without a midwife or female relative or friend to help her? And this is her first child. Luther estimates that she is between the ages of 13 and 15 years, although others say she could have been as young as 12—just a baby herself.
Luther says of the Nativity story, “God allows the godly to be powerless and oppressed so that everyone thinks they are done for, yet even in that very moment God is most powerfully present, though hidden and concealed. When the power of man fails, the power of God begins, provided faith is present and expectant.”[3]
Why didn’t anyone help them? Luther asks his flock. Shame on the town of Bethlehem! He goes on, “There are many of you in this congregation who think to yourselves: ‘If only I had been there! How quick I would have been to help the Baby! I would have washed his linen. How happy I would have been to go with the shepherds to see the Lord lying in the manger!’ Yes, you would! You say that because you know how great Christ is, but if you had been there at that time, you would have done no better than the people of Bethlehem.”[4]
Luther challenges his hearers to respond to the Christmas story with acts of compassion. “Why don’t you do it now?” he asks. “You have Christ in your neighbor. You ought to serve him, for what you do to your neighbor in need you do for the Lord Christ himself.”[5]
How are each of you are feeling tonight? There’s always a time, usually within a few days of Christmas, that I suddenly feel overwhelmed. Any of you feel that way tonight? That happened to me last night. My way back to peace and joy was to dig deeply into Luke’s gospel to what the real Christmas is all about—the story that happened thousands of years ago in Bethlehem and, in its hearing and contemplation, is still working in us, transforming our hearts and minds into the likeness of Christ. Sisters and brothers, you and I know that hope of Christmas isn’t connected with most of the busy stuff that we take on during this time of year that leads to our feeling overwhelmed.
Are you ready for the message of Christmas, according to Luke? Before I share it with you, will you promise that you will take it with you and share it with others? The good news has always been meant for all people, and with Luke, especially those who are poor and marginalized. As Jesus, in Luke 4:16-19, will quote Isaiah in his first sermon in Nazareth, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
The message of Christmas is Emmanuel—God with us. We are not alone here. A gracious and loving God has come to us as one of us—a baby in a feedbox. God in Christ is physically present with us.As John says, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”
Luke declares that the Son who came to us as a human being is Savior, Messiah, and Lord. Historian and Bible Scholar Justo Gonzalez urges us to think of Christ’s salvation not as an avoidance of eternal damnation but rather as “healing, liberation, freedom from the bondage of sin, and the promise of eternal life.”[6] “Messiah” or “Christ” in Greek means “Anointed One.” Luke believes that Jesus “is the one who will fulfill all the promises made to Abraham and his descendants, that he will restore the throne of David and do away with all oppression and injustice.”[7] The most radical title, yet, may be in calling him “the Lord.” This is the Greek translation of the sacred, unpronounceable name of God (Adonai or YHWH) in the Hebrew Bible. “Luke’s Savior and Messiah is not one more among the long line of saviors, liberators, and anointed ones whom Israel has known along its history; he is the Lord!”[8]
The message of Christmas is God’s perfect gift. Isaiah 9:6 says, “Unto us a child is born, a Son is given.” We don’t do anything for this gift. And we can’t do anything to make the Lord change God’s mind and take the gift back. But the gift of Christ is not just for humanity, in general—but for you and me. It’s both plural and particular. Luther says, “This is for us the hardest point, not so much to believe that He is the son of the Virgin and God himself, as to believe that this Son of God is ours.”[9] “Of what benefit would it be to me if Jesus would have been born a thousand times and it would have been sung daily in my ears that Jesus Christ was born but that I was never to hear that Jesus Christ was born for me?”[10]
Finally, the message of Christmas carries with it PEACE and JOY that cannot be taken away from us because their source is Christ. The joy of the Lord, Nehemiah 8:10 tells us, is our strength. The good news of great joy brought by the angel to the shepherds is, like the Gift, both plural and particular. The Greek word is second person plural (in the sense of y’all) but also dative, a case we don’t have in English. In Greek, it is used for things that come directly to another party. “So the announcement of the angel is not a generic, all-purpose bulletin. It is personalized. This good news is for you.”[11]
I still love my mom’s creche, which has come to live in my home. I have many other nativity scenes, too, collected over the years from cultures around the world, some of which I leave out all the time as a reminder of the message of Christmas. For Christmas isn’t just a day that we celebrate with gatherings, food, and presents. The gift of Christ and the work of spiritual transformation in our hearts, minds, and lives go on and on.
A favorite nativity of mine, which I keep in my church office, features Native American children dressed as Mary, Joseph, and the Babe, along with wise men, shepherds, angels, and a collection of animals, including dogs. When little Grayson and other children visit, they are often drawn to it and want to touch it. The stable is a porcelain teepee with a tea light candle that when lit, glows as if it is a comforting fire rising from the roof.
Each creche reminds me of the importance of every person, everywhere, being invited by the Lord to see themselves in the story of Christ’s birth, and to contemplate the meaning of it for their lives. My prayer is that you will share the message of Christmas with a world that so desperately needs to hear it. Share it through your words and compassion. For whatever we do to help a neighbor in need, we are serving the Lord.
Let the words of angels ring in your ears as we sing Joy to the World and walk out into the darkness: “Fear not; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.”
This good news is for YOU!
Let us pray.
Holy God, thank you for coming to us as one of us, a child in a manger, who has promised to come again, not as a helpless babe, but as the King of kings, Lord of lords and Prince of Peace to bring the fulfillment of the angel’s announcement. Emmanuel, help us to feel your loving presence with us always—in the happy times and in the painful times, as well. Remind us that the message of Christmas isn’t just for humanity, in general, but for us in particular. May we be filled with gratitude for the perfect gift of your Son, our Messiah, Savior, and Lord, and be stirred to serve you through our words and acts of compassion for neighbors in need. In the name of Emmanual we pray. Amen.
[1] Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Christmas Book (Kindle Edition).
[2] Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Christmas Book. Kindle edition. “Annunciation” sermon.
[3] Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Christmas Book. Kindle edition. “Visitation” sermon.
[4] Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Christmas Book. Kindle edition. “Nativity” sermon.
[5] Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Christmas Book. Kindle edition. “Nativity” sermon.
[6] Justo Gonzalez, Luke, from Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible series (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010 ), 36.
[7] Justo Gonzalez, Luke, 39.
[8] Justo Gonzalez, Luke, 39.
[9] Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Christmas Book, Kindle Edition.
[10] Roger Nelson, “God in the Particular,” The Nativity of the Lord, The Christian Century, Dec. 19, 2025.
[11] Roger Nelson, “God in the Particular, Dec. 19, 2025.
Edward Hicks, “Peaceable Kingdom,” National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., image is public domain
What did you picture in your mind as I read this familiar passage? Did anyone see the tree stump sprouting? A lion, ox, asp, adder, lamb, cow, wolf, and bear? Did any of you see Jesus as the little child that led them?
If so, you are not alone. The 19th century American artist, Edward Hicks, imagined the same thing. Have any of you seen some of the paintings from his “Peaceable Kingdom” series?
I have seen one at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., but there is also one on display at the Met in New York City. And there are others, all of them different, but all based on this same reading from Isaiah. You could say that this artist was more than a little obsessed with Isaiah’s vision. He longed to share Isaiah’s vision with his broken world. Most of all, he longed for Christ’s Peaceable Kingdom and hoped that it would happen in his lifetime.
Edward was born in 1780 in Bucks County, PA, to Anglican parents. His mother died when he was just 18 months old. His father, being a Loyalist, was left without any money after the British defeat in the Revolutionary War. Edward was adopted by two family friends—David and Elizabeth Twining, who brought him up as a Quaker on their farm. When he was 13, Edward was apprenticed to a local coach maker, William Tomlinson. During the 7-year apprenticeship, he discovered that he had a talent for ornamental painting. When his apprenticeship ended in 1800, he went into business for himself, “painting with decorative motifs not only on carriages but also signs, furniture, and household objects.”[1]
When he officially became a member of the Society of Friends in 1803, he was criticized for his choice of vocation, “which was at odds with the Quaker values of simplicity and utility. Painting is a worldly indulgence, they said. Taking their rebukes to heart, Edward gave up painting for a time and tried his hand at farming, but this venture was unsuccessful.”[2] It wasn’t until he reconciled these two passions—art and faith—and pursued both that he found happiness and success. In 1811, when he was 31, he set up a painting shop in Newtown, PA, and became a minister. This meant that he was often called away to other states to preach. As Quakers were not paid for preaching, his painting provided the income for his growing family. Edward and his wife, Sarah, had four children at the time and were expecting a fifth.
In 1820, he painted his first “Peaceable Kingdom.” He would paint the “Peaceable Kingdom,” with variations in the scene, more than 100 times in his life, but always with “predators and prey lying down together in harmony, and a little rosy-cheeked child—the Christ child—leading them.”[3] Rev. John Buchanan, former pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago and moderator of the PCUSA, says that Edward “portrays the animals looking straight at the viewer with wide-eyed wonder.” “Peace is startling,” says Buchanan, who went home to be with the Lord in February. “You don’t see it often, maybe ever. In the middle of the picture is a child…with eyes also wide open as if startled by this unlikely reality.”[4]
Edward didn’t attempt to commercialize his “Peaceable Kingdom” paintings. Most were given away to family and friends, works such as the one now housed at the National Museum of Art, with William Penn signing a treaty of perpetual friendship with the Lenape Indians in 1681 on the banks of the Delaware. “This, Edward thought, is what it looks like to put into practice the values of brotherly love and peace that Christ came to teach us. Penn did honor this treaty, but his successors did not—a fact that Edward was painfully aware of.”[5]
By bringing to life on canvas the ancient prophecy of Isaiah, he expressed his “yearning for unity and peace, especially in light of the 1827 … schism within the Society of Friends, the first in the denomination’s history.”[6] “His Kingdom paintings reference the schism through a blasted tree trunk, which doubles…as a reference to the ‘stump’ of Jesse out of which Christ sprung up.”[7]
The author of this Isaiah text most likely lived in the 8th century BCE, a time when the Israelites were facing “impending doom by Assyrian conquerors coming from the north.”[8] They chose words and images to “evoke hope and longing for a Davidic king who would rescue the threatened people.” This righteous, God-appointed leader, will care about and pay attention to the meek and the poor, reflecting God’s care toward all God’s creatures. “Upon the earth, evil and wickedness will be brought to ruin by his word and breath. … Young animals will curl up together. Cows and bears will graze in the same place. Even the lion will eat straw. The nursing child will play with venomous snakes. There will be not hurt or destruction in God’s holy mountain.”[9]
David’s house is symbolized by a tree cut down with an ax. But a shoot shall come out! A branch shall grow from his roots. “All is not lost for the people of Judah, because from the Davidic line will emerge a king whose reign will be one of peace and righteousness.”[10] “A king will emerge from Bethlehem who will lead his people with wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, and the knowledge and fear of the Lord.”[11]
Over time, Edward became more cynical about human beings’ ability to live in peace. His attitude is reflected in his work. “While his early Kingdom paintings from the 1820s show animals in joyful company with one another, the animals in many of his middle- and late-period paintings are tense or exhausted, or even bare their teeth in open hostility.” One displayed at Yale and in the DuPont Winterthur Museum reveal the Christ child holding onto the lion’s mane in “forcible restraint rather than gentle guidance.” Later, the artist would say that witnessing the dissension in his faith community “destroyed his hope of ever seeing established in the here and now a kingdom like the one Isaiah envisioned. But that realization only caused him to cling to Christ all the more tightly.”
I think Edward had come to grasp the nature of Advent living—not just the four weeks we set aside in the church year, but an extended time of living in the already and not yet. This is what characterizes our life as Christ’s followers. We are in the long season of waiting for Christ to come again and establish his Peaceable Kingdom, once and for all.
The image that stands out to me, as it must have for Edward Hicks, is of the little child that will lead them. Christians can’t help but see a prophecy of Jesus our Messiah in this ancient text written hundreds of years before his birth. But we also yearn for a different world for our children and grandchildren right now. Don’t we? This longing for a different world for our children is reflected by Edward’s images of children in his time, painted in period clothing. It isn’t a vision that comes easily in this age, though, of children living in peace with one another and all God’s creatures, just as it didn’t come easily in Isaiah’s time or in the time in which Edward lived. It’s hard to imagine something we have never experienced but always wanted.
While I can’t imagine what our church will be like centuries from now, I know that one thing will not have changed. It will always take a village to prepare the children for their callings, just as it took a village—including adoptive parents, the Society of Friends, and an apprenticeship to a coachmaker—to equip Edward Hicks for his vocation as an artist and unpaid itinerant preacher. He traveled by horseback from his Pennsylvania home to Friends’ meetings in New York and Canada, Maryland and Virginia, Ohio and Indiana, to share Isaiah’s vision of peace on earth, something he once thought would be possible for human beings to bring about simply by living out biblical principles.
On this Second Sunday of Advent, when we light the candle of peace, we hold onto hope for a peace that we cannot yet see, except by faith and in holy glimpses, such as when we baptize and celebrate Communion.
In a moment, we will come to the Lord’s Table to experience God’s love, mercy, and grace and be reconciled, forgiven, and healed. We come to eat of the bread and be nourished in our faith, to drink the cup of salvation and be transformed, more and more, into the likeness of the One who is with us now and coming again to bring about his Peaceable Kingdom.
When the wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion will feed together, and a little child shall lead them.
Let us pray. Gracious God, thank you for the vision you gave to your prophet, Isaiah, the vision of the Peaceable Kingdom. We long for that Kingdom to come to fruition. We long for a different world for our children and grandchildren, a world where your lovingkindness, peace, and justice shall reign over all Creatures and no one will be hungry, hated, oppressed, sad, or afraid, ever again. Thank you for your Spirit that lives with us now and helps us cling to our faith, cling to Jesus, when nothing else makes sense, as Edward Hicks did. Show us a glimpse, dear Lord, of this Peaceable Kingdom when we partake of the bread and cup at your Table. Then send us out, equipped, to share your vision as Christ’s Body for the world. Amen
Today Jameson and Susan Gensinger light the candle of hope on our Advent Wreath. Thank you to Betty Deerfield and Peg Holthusen for making our wreath, once again, this year and to Jonathon Deerfield, Betty’s son, for making the stand.
Jim and I recently returned from a trip to Ireland. Many times, over the years, I had heard him talk about his Irish relatives and the farm where his mother had grown up. Both of Jim’s parents were immigrants from Northern Ireland in the early 20th century. His father was from County Antrim, his mother, County Down. Jim had traveled to Ireland to meet his family with his parents in the 1960s and then 30 years later, after they had passed. We both felt it was time to go back.
Jim reached out to his cousin George Heaney, who lives not far from Belfast, in Ballyclare, County Antrim. George immediately responded, graciously inviting us to stay with him and his wife, Karen, in their home, with a visit to George’s childhood home in County Down near the Mourne Mountains, which was also not far from the farmhouse where Jim’s mother and George’s father had grown up, with their other siblings.
Cattle grazing in County DownGeorge’s childhood home in County DownSheep grazing in County DownKaren and George HeaneyJim’s mother’s and George’s father’s childhood home in County DownMountains of Mourne in County DownJim and George Heaney in Carrickfergus Castle.
The trip would include a reunion of the Heaney family living in the area. We met in a small hotel in the nearby fishing village of Kilkeel. Jim and I were seated in the middle of a long banquet table. George gave a speech, welcoming all the cousins and their families, those who were able to come. It was the first time the group had ever gotten together in one place, though they all lived, except for George and his brother Roland, in the same rural area. It took two relatives coming from America, George said, to bring the family together. After dinner, Jim and I pulled up chairs to visit with people at the far ends of the table. Somehow, I ended up by myself with the mostly male farmers at one end, while he was with other relatives at the opposite end, including George’s younger brother Roland, a church planter in the Irish republic, and his wife, Susan.
It turns out, sheep farmers in Ireland aren’t that talkative. At least, they weren’t with me, not at first. I tried to think of something to say to break the ice. I could only think to talk about the weather, as people in Ireland often do. It had rained every day of our visit, with the sun only occasionally peeking through the clouds for a few minutes or, if we were lucky, a few hours.
“Do you ever get tired of the rain?” I asked. The farmers burst out laughing, as if I had made a joke. “YES!” they said.
The night of the reunion was the beginning of a warm conversation with folks who live without the technology we take for granted. Most of these farmers don’t have computers, internet, or cell phones. They don’t know each other’s mailing addresses, which came as a surprise to us! They don’t have to. They know where each other lives. If they want to talk with each other, they can pick up a landline phone or go to the other’s home.
They were curious about our family and, yes, American politics. They were curious about me, first because I am Jim’s wife and then because they learned that I am a Presbyterian pastor. In Ireland, few pastors are women, especially in the Presbyterian Church. At the end of the evening, we gathered for group photos, and then came the hugs, some of which were so hard they nearly took my breath away. Cousin Elizabeth’s son, William, who had listened silently to my conversation with the other farmers, had tears in his eyes when he said how easy it was to get busy with his work, which he loved, and let the time go by—and not take time to do the things that really mattered, such as this visit with family. “We have to make the time,” he said, his voice shaking with emotion. He thanked us, again, for coming, as did the others. And we promised that we would write.
***
This getting busy with the day-to-day work of living, of which we both love and by which we can be consumed, is what this passage in Matthew is about. Jesus is trying to convey the urgency of preparing our hearts for his return, without having any idea when it will be. We must stay awake to spiritual realities and stay strong in faith, even while we go about the routine of everyday living. This is what Paul tells the church at Thessalonica in his letter, which predates Matthew’s gospel. Paul says that Christ’s followers must aspire to live quietly, minding their own affairs, working with their hands, behaving properly with outsiders, and being dependent on no one, because there may be a long wait for the Lord. The Early Church assumed that Christ’s return would be sooner rather than later, and they were beginning to lose hope when years begin to pass without the promise being fulfilled. Paul offers this vision of Christ’s return:
“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.” (I Thess. 4:13-18)
It is interesting to consider the context in which Matthew’s gospel was written—after 70 CE and before 107 CE. Theologian Anna Case-Winters say this was during a time when “there was conflict and division in the community of faith; when some were insiders and others were outsiders; when political and religious leaders were coopted, mistrusted, and discredited; when the great majority of the common people were without power; when cultures clashed.”[1] Jesus tells his followers, who keep pressing him for details, that when he comes again, it will be unexpected. Only God will know. Earlier in this chapter, Jesus speaks of the suffering of the community of faith leading up to his return—suffering from within and without. “There will be ‘wars and rumors of wars’ (24:6). Hatred and persecution from ‘all the nations’ will put them at risk of torture and death. In their own faith communities, there will be those who betray one another or are led astray by false prophets. Their love for the Lord and (the Torah) will ‘grow cold.’”[2]
Christ gives four examples of what his return will be like. The first one is from the Bible. It will be like the time of Noah. He built the ark for his family and some animals to escape the flood that was to come. His neighbors had no idea this was going to happen. They were busy eating, drinking, marrying, and giving their children in marriage when the waters suddenly came and swept them away.
The next three examples are from the time and place in which Jesus and his disciples lived. These provide a window into daily life in his agricultural society. The first two remind me of the popular and controversial Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins of the 1990s. Two are working in the fields. One is taken, the other left. Two women will be grinding meal together. One will be taken, the other left.
Keep awake, Jesus tells his disciples. Keep awake because you won’t know when I am coming back.
The final example is the most intriguing to me. Jesus compares himself to a thief in the night. His society, like ours, knew well the habits of burglars. If the homeowner knew the thief was coming, he would have stayed up and prevented the thief from entering. But how can one stay awake all the time, just in case a thief will come?
The point is that we will never know when he is coming back—until he has come. Friends, let us not worry about the timing, but focus, instead on making sure our hearts and minds are in the right place, so that we are doing the things that really matter, as William, our Irish relative said so emphatically when we said our goodbyes.
Let us encourage one another to do the things that the Lord wants us to do—engaging in acts of kindness, love, and generosity—throughout Advent, and especially on this day when we light the candle of hope. For this is how we live into hope—we stay in prayer and keep on doing what the Lord calls us to do, so that when he comes unexpectedly, he will find us faithful.
The most touching goodbye of the reunion was when one of the women, after William had spoken to us, had tears in her eyes as she held my hands. She looked deeply into my face and said with confidence and longing, which reminded me of the confidence and longing of Christ’s followers as we wait in hope for the Lord’s promise to be fulfilled.
“You will come back,” she said, warmly, squeezing my hand as if we were sharing an intimate secret. “I know you will come, again.”
Let us pray.
Faithful, gracious God, thank you for your Son’s promises to us—his promise to be with us always, even to the end of the age, and his promise to come back at a time when we won’t expect him. We trust you, Lord, for this mystery. But Lord, teach us what it means to keep awake, for how can we be awake and ready when you come like a thief in the night? Stir our hearts and minds to be focused on spiritual things and doing the things that really matter throughout this season of Advent and Christmas, and the new year to come. Don’t let us take any steps on a wrong path or go astray. Keep us walking in your will with hope and confidence, shining the light of Christ through our acts of kindness and generosity. May we long for you as we long for the ones we love in this world when we are apart. In the name of Emmanuel, God with us, we pray. Amen.
[1]Anna Case-Winters, Matthew from Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015), 1-2.
Marge loved the feeling of the sun on her face. She looked for any window with sun.
She liked a warm bath. She loved the beach.
Her outfits always matched. She liked sparkles and fuzzy blankets and soft clothing. She always wore lipstick. She loved a good meal, such as homecooked steak. She loved red wine. In a box!
She loved to travel to faraway places: South Africa, Asia, Europe, Aruba, Turks and Caicos are a few of them. She flew with her two girls, Nancy and Janice, to Hawaii when Nancy was 12. She liked camping and traveled to Mount Rushmore and other destinations in an RV with Janice, her son-in-law Matthew, and her two grandsons. She took her whole family on cruises. She liked skiing. She was brave enough to pet the sting rays at the Riverhead aquarium. She loved the holidays and enjoyed hosting family gatherings.
She loved chocolate. Any kind.
Marge was born in 1943 to Inez and Randolph Ellis. Her father served in the military in the early years of their marriage, and they moved from place to place. She was born in Washington, D.C. but never talked about it with her girls. She wasn’t there long. Inez and Randolph moved to New York and Marge grew up in Rosedale. Randolph became a NYC fireman. Inez, a nurse.
Marge was an only child. Her mother said it was never the right time to have more children. The family thinks that Inez may have been traumatized by the experience of having a baby, then having to move from place to place because of Randolph’s service.
Marge followed in her mother’s footsteps and became a nurse. She attended Brooklyn Hospital’s nursing school after she graduated from high school in 1964. She gained many dear friends from her nursing class. They remained friends throughout her life. They carried the honorary title and role of “aunt” and were extended family for Marge’s daughters.
She was a good nurse, dedicated to her patients. She would help neighbors, family, and friends who came to her for medical advice or assistance. She went back to school and became a board-certified diabetes educator.
Everything in Marge’s life wasn’t all sweetness and light. You would never know it from meeting her and sitting at her lovely table exquisitely set for guests. She chose not to dwell on difficult times or past disappointments. She never got stuck. Her marriage ended after 18 years. But that was a new beginning for her. That was when she bloomed! She became more and more herself!
Marge chose to live in hope and faith.
Her daughters say she could do almost anything. She worked full time, bought food, cooked dinner, cleaned house, washed clothes, helped them with their homework, and drove them to all their activities. She cut her own lawn and planted flowers—impatiens and yellow daffodils at their Valley Stream home. She became skilled at home improvements. Sunday afternoon visits with her family often included a project—such as spackling and painting a wall, putting up wallpaper, pulling up carpet.
“She was an incredible Mom,” Nancy says. “Fiercely independent, she taught us there wasn’t anything WE couldn’t do.”
Martha of Bethany in this passage in John is another strong woman. She is the same one who was trying to whip up a feast in her home for Jesus and his disciples. But her sister, Mary, was no help at all. She just sat at Jesus’s feet, hanging on every word. Martha had no problem complaining to Jesus about Mary. She asked him to tell Mary to help her with the meal.
But Jesus saw how worried and distracted Martha was. He lifted Mary as the example, that day, the one who was choosing the “better part.” Not that serving Jesus and his disciples a meal was not a good thing to do. Without Martha, there may have been no meal at all.
We never hear about Martha’s husband or children. She may not have had any. She is the head of this household, which includes a younger sister, Mary, and younger brother, Lazarus, as well as some servants. Martha may have chosen not to marry or perhaps she was a widow, some say. In any case, she doesn’t rely on a man to provide for her or complete her.
In today’s passage, Martha had already sent word to Jesus that the one he loved—Lazarus—was seriously ill. But Jesus didn’t answer right away. When he finally made it to Bethany, Lazarus had already been in the tomb 4 days. But Martha, hearing that Jesus was coming, met him on the edge of town. She didn’t wait for him to get to her house. She took the initiative. Mary, on the other hand, stayed home, overcome with her grief and not able to move forward.
Martha, this time, is the example of strong faith, the one who chooses the better part by bringing her grief and disappointment right to Jesus. She says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Still, she holds onto hope. She isn’t stuck in the past. She is quick to forgive and trust. She says, “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”
“I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus says. “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Martha, even before Jesus raises her brother from the tomb, says. “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
Marge retired from nursing after about 40 years. She sold the house in Valley Stream and moved to a 55 plus community in Lake Grove for a new chapter. She was ready to spend time with her daughter Nancy and her twins, Brianna and Nicole, when they came into this world. She was ready for more adventures and to make new friends.
One of the first things she did after moving to the area was find a church. She was determined to become more active in volunteering in a church in her retirement. The Presbyterian church in Smithtown was warm and welcoming. She joined the congregation on March 17, 2009. She immediately began serving. I discovered last night that her name is on the inside cover of the 2010 picture directory. She served on the new directory committee as soon as she joined, calling people and making appointments for them to come and have their photos taken.
Her faithful involvement with the flock deepened. She was ordained a deacon on April 11, 2011. She served as our church’s volunteer coordinator for the Smithtown Food Pantry. She joined one of our women’s circles. And she found that she had a talent for cleaning the glass and brass of the church until everything shone and sparkled.
The part of Marge’s story that touches my heart is that, even though she liked everything sparkling clean, and even scrubbed out the refrigerator when she was at a weekend rental, she was the kind of grandmother who wasn’t afraid to get dirty. Gaga, as her grandchildren called her, would get down on the ground with them and make a mudpie. Build a castle in the sand. Draw with chalk on the driveway. She even tried to ride a bike when the children were riding theirs. Gaga was the kind of grandmother to have a picnic with her grandchildren on the front lawn. She dressed up every year on Halloween in a banana costume to go trick or treating with Brianna and Nicole.
Marge’s last home on earth was Good Shepherd Hospice in Port Jeff. She was there less than one day. But there, the Lord provided for her need for a peaceful, caring place where she could be made comfortable after struggling through some uncomfortable days and nights. At her bedside, the family and I and those who were like family held hands and prayed. We took our concerns right to the Lord, like Martha, and the Lord answered our prayers.
The beautiful woman in her red flowered gown, silver hair neatly combed, traveled to her everlasting home on Thursday, Nov. 20. Just imagine! She now sees her Savior face to face. He has wiped away every tear, taken away all her pain and confusion. She has entered the joy that he prepared when he died and rose again and sent his Spirit to live with us and be our Comforter, Healer, Strength, and Guide.
That same joy is waiting for you and me, for all who trust in God’s grace, mercy, and love and in the Son, the Light of the world. For those who sometimes struggle with difficulties and disappointments but also see life as a great adventure for those who, like Marge, bravely embrace it—taking time to build castles in the sand, draw with chalk on a driveway, pet sting rays, and enjoy picnics on the front lawn with grandchildren. Those who choose hope and faith each day, like Marge, and don’t get stuck looking back. Those who offer friendship to their neighbor and the stranger, serve the Lord with gladness, and share God’s love.
The Lord spoke to Martha in her grief. He speaks to you and me, today, in this place. The Spirit is urging us to grow in faith and trust and receive the Lord’s comfort and healing for a broken heart. Christ says to us, we who yearn to seek his face and have every tear wiped away, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
May you answer your Lord, as Martha did, with confidence, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
Today, as we baptize little Saylor, we share more stories of the leaders of the Church, beginning with the dramatic conversion of Paul and his need to be baptized, like Saylor, as he began his journey of faith. But before talking about the apostle, I would like to share the story of Smithtown’s most famous preacher, the Rev. Joshua Hartt.
Hartt was born on a farm in Dix Hills on Sept. 17, 1738. He was a 34-year- old Princeton grad when he was ordained an evangelist by Suffolk Presbytery in 1772. He was installed to serve Smithtown, his first church, on April 29, 1774. This was the year the British Parliament imposed the Intolerable Acts, an attempt to disarm the colonists, which led, a year later, to the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775.
Hartt often preached on Liberty. His sermons contained inflammatory phrases, such as, “He who hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one!” and “Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning shears into spears and let the weak say I am strong.”[1] Not surprisingly, he was arrested and imprisoned at least 5 times. One time, he was arrested after he “overtly attacked the conduct of officers and soldiers of the British Army.”[2] He “was chained to a slave and thrown on a wagon for transportation to New York’s Provost Jail, located on what is now the site of City Hall Park.”[3] Along the way, “he was taunted by a young lieutenant, who reportedly said, ‘How do you like your company?’ Hartt replied, ‘Better than yours.’”
Smithtown was without a preacher while Hartt languished in prison from May to October 1777, where he became ill with fever. The surprising twist to the story is that Hartt befriended Ethan Allen in prison. Allen, when Hartt came near to dying, “knelt at (his) bedside and prayed for his recovery.”[4] Hartt was soon released and paroled. Allen shook Hartt’s hand as he left, saying, “Goodbye Rev. Hartt, when you go home tell your wife that while you were sick and nigh unto death, Ethan Allen, a servant of the Most High God, prayed over you and you recovered.”[5]
Hartt returned to ministry and continued to preach his Liberty sermons. He “so enraged the British who were occupying Long Island, that it is said that two soldiers went to the door of the Smithtown Church and fired their rifles at Reverend Hartt in the pulpit.”[6] But the bullets whistled over his head and left him unharmed. For many years, bullet holes over the pulpit of the old meeting house were proof of the attempt at his life. As for the story of Hart being prayed for by Ethan Allen, “it became a matter of considerable pride, and he mentioned it frequently in public.”[7]
Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus has been shared for so long in so many faith communities that having “a road to Damascus experience” has become synonymous with “a sudden, dramatic turning point in a person’s life, a moment of profound realization … that leads to a fundamental change in direction.” So profound was Paul’s change that he would no longer be known by his Hebrew name, Saul of Tarsus. He would, by Acts 13:9, be known only by his Latin or Greek name, “Paulos” or “Paul,” as we say.
It’s easy to forget when we read Paul’s letters that Saul was breathing threats and murder for Christ’s followers before the Lord stopped him in his tracks. Christ appeared as a great light from heaven and a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” The Lord would tell him to get up and continue to Damascus, where he would be told, “everything that has been assigned” for him to do. The light left Saul completely blind. The only way he could reach his destination was by holding the hands of his traveling companions.
His first mentor in the faith was a devout Jewish man named Annanias who heals him of his blindness. He tells him how the God of his ancestors had “chosen him to know God’s will,” “to see the Righteous One, and to hear his own voice.” He tells Saul about God’s plan—that he would be a witness to all the world of what he has seen and heard. But there was one thing that Saul must do, first. He needs to be baptized. “And now why do you delay?” Annanias asks. “Get up, be baptized, and have your sins washed away, calling on his name.”
Friends, now you know of Paul’s conversion and baptism, but I have more to tell you about our most famous preacher. Do you want to hear the rest of Hartt’s story? I want to share with you about his more human and pastoral side, which began to be revealed after his near-death experience in the British prison.
Hartt’s contribution to the ministry and his community’s wellbeing was so much larger than his patriotic acts and inflammatory speeches. He was a doctor, “giving out potions and nostrums, as well as bleeding anyone who seemed to need it.” He was “a local scribe and wrote many legal writs for residents of Smithtown and Huntington.”[8] He was a farmer and land surveyor who pressured the federal government into building a lighthouse at Eatons Neck. He surveyed vast areas of the Mohawk Valley in western New York, working “the frontier, sleeping by campfires and bringing the order of a Christian God and civil engineering to the wilderness. Afterward, he (told) stories, like the time he awoke one morning to find a rattlesnake in his blankets.” After a few years of frontier living, he returned home to his wife, Abigail Howell, and his 10 children in Fort Salonga, where he planted a church after he left Smithtown in September 1787. Oh, and he worked as a teacher of some of his own and his community’s children, recording their names and tallying their attendance in a journal.
Evelyn Briggs Baldwin, a member of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, had this to say about him in 1911, “Blessed with a vigorous mind, he also possessed a splendid physique, weighing three hundred pounds, and notwithstanding his spirit of progressiveness, he was in manner mild and conciliatory.”[9] The Rev. Joshua Hartt went home to be with God on Oct. 3, 1829, in his 91st year.
What his churches would remember him by, most of all, was that he was “The Marrying Minister.” He would marry more than 1,000 couples and would have an even longer list of baptisms. They all would be recorded in his journal. Many were done in Smithtown. Reading the list, we can imagine just how many young people were settling here and building homes and growing families. In 1776 alone, the year that our country declared its independence, he married 30 couples, four of them on January 14 and four more on October 14. Dick Mehalick says that “it was the general feeling of engaged couples of that period that they were not properly married unless the Rev. Joshua Hartt performed the ceremony.” Are you wondering about his marriage fee? His grandchildren said that “he was wont to remark that he had received in fees “all the way from £50 to a copper ladle.”
As we remember our church’s history for our 350th anniversary this year, recalling stories from our congregation’s early days, I have to say that my experience in ministry has been both similar and different from the pastors who have come before me. I feel very grateful for them because I know I would not be here—and nor would you—if it weren’t for the 33 installed pastors who came before me.
I encourage you now to consider the legacy of our church. What will it be, centuries from now? How will our faith and service be remembered by our community?
If I am remembered, I hope that my flock will recall my love for the children. And that there was always joy when we baptized.
I have some connections with Hartt’s experiences. I served as a schoolteacher and writer, though never a doctor or frontier land surveyor. And I never found a rattlesnake in my blankets! My family has always been important to me, as I am sure that Reverend Hartt’s wife and 10 children were important to him. Like Hartt, I graduated from Princeton. But I don’t give fiery, political sermons. And I have never been shot at in the pulpit or gone to jail for my preaching. Not yet.
It gives me a good feeling to consider that Hartt and all the pastors going back to that little meeting house have all shared messages from the same Holy Scriptures and proclaimed the same gospel of salvation by grace through faith, a gift from God.
May the Spirit help us to do God’s will in the future, with the bravery of Rev. Hartt and dreams and visions like Paul’s to guide and sustain us along the way.
May our love lead us to hold one another’s hands as traveling companions on this journey, like Saul when he was blinded by the light.
And may we bear witness to all the world to what we have seen and heard.
Will you pray with me?
Let us pray.
Gracious and Loving God, thank you for our congregation’s leaders for the last 350 years, such as Joshua Hartt, and for all the faithful who gathered for worship and to be equipped for service in the little meeting house and in this beautiful place. Thank you that we continue to baptize, as Paul was baptized, and Your Son, our Savior was baptized for our sakes. Thank you for your Spirit that continues to claim our children, such as Saylor, in their baptisms and empower them and us to do your will. With your help, dear Lord, may we bear witness to the world to all that you teach us in your Word and from our ancestors’ stories and our own stories. May we be moved to speak of all that we have seen and heard. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
[1] Richard Mehalick, Church and Community: 1675-1975, A History of the First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown (NY), 66.
[2] George Wallace, “He Preached His Way into Prison,” The Northport Journal, (March 16, 1995), 20.
[3] George Wallace, “He Preached His Way into Prison,”20.
[4] Richard Mehalick, Church and Community, 66.
[5] George Wallace, “He Preached His Way into Prison,” 20.
[6] Richard Mehalick, Church and Community, 66.
[7] George Wallace, “He Preached His Way into Prison,” 20.
[8] Richard Mehalick, Church and Community, 67.
[9] Evelyn Briggs Baldwin, TheNew York Genealogical and Biographical Society (New York, NY, April 1911),129.
“Call me Sis,” said Julia Beckman, when I first met her. “My friends call me Sis.”
So, we were to be friends, from the first moment, though I was also her pastor. Sis was a member of Merritt Island Presbyterian Church. She was 88 when we met.
The tall woman with long legs, naturally blond curly hair going grey and twinkling blue eyes, had many hobbies since she retired from teaching and coaching in 1989, including golf. Nothing stopped her from doing them until her body started catching up to her age; she had chronic back pain but seldom complained. When I asked how she was, she would say, “Same old, same old.” She had never married, never had children. It was a choice, she said, shaking off any regrets. “I’ve had a good life.”
She was still driving a car she called Big Red when we met. She drove me around town in it, and we went to lunch. Big Red had taken her frequently to Panama City to see family 7 hours away or to Daytona or New Smyrna to spend a week or weekend with a friend.
Julia was born on rural Merritt Island, when it was sand, palm trees, mosquitos, snakes, and bungalows without a/c. This was decades before the space race and the Kennedy Space Center, long before the causeway was built. Julia had to rely on her long legs to carry her over a wooden bridge to high school on the mainland each day. For there was no high school on Merritt Island until the 1960s. And her family didn’t have a car.
Her mother raised Sis and her 4 older brothers on her own. Her father had left the family soon after Sis was born. This was in March 1927—when the Great Florida Land Boon of the 1920s had crashed and the area had sunk into a deep economic depression.[1] Her mother gave birth at home as there was no hospital on Merritt Island and no money for a hospital birth, if there was. The doctor made house calls, but he didn’t get around to recording her birth until days later and then forgot which day she was born. Her mother always said that her birth certificate was wrong. Birthdays were not big celebrations when she was growing up, anyway.
Sis overcame many obstacles in her life to achieve what she could dream. She graduated high school, went on to earn a bachelor’s from Florida State in 1949 and then a master’s from Vanderbilt. She taught physical education in Miami, then as an assistant professor at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. She often wished she had finished her Ph.D., but she didn’t need it to teach or coach, she said, which she went on to do for 35 years, most of it at the high school from which she graduated.
After I had moved to Ohio, I received a call from her nephew, Roy. I feared he would be telling me that she had passed. But he shared happy news; she was being inducted into the Space Coast Hall of Fame. She was 95. The Space Coast Daily told how her female players, with no varsity opportunities, sought her help to offer them wider-ranging opportunities for play. The result was her creation of the Girls’ Athletic Association. This allowed players to compete with other teams in basketball, volleyball, softball, track and field, gymnastics, cheerleading, tennis and golf.[2] She shared how she had played women’s softball and basketball in WWII, and how it was for girls in what she called the “Dark Ages,” when women were considered “too delicate to play full-court basketball.” “Glad that changed,” she said. [3]
Sis was always an encouragement for me. I hope you have people like Sis in your life! She urged me to pursue a doctorate before I was seriously thinking about it. She continued to encourage me years later when we talked by phone, even after she had to give up her house on Banana River Blvd and move to a nursing home. Sadly, the once athletic and energetic woman was wheelchair bound for the last months of her life.
She worried that I would forget about her. I assured her that we would always be friends.
On All Saints Sunday, we encounter Zacchaeus, someone we know from Sunday School and that wonderful song. His story has always connected well with children because he was small and had no friends. So eager was he to see Jesus, he climbed a sycamore tree. Doesn’t every child want to climb a tree?
If you picture Zacchaeus in one of our massive American sycamores, with the peeling bark, you’ve got the wrong tree. It was a sycamore fig tree, cultivated since ancient times, native to Egypt, and brought to Israel by the Philistines in the Iron Age.[4] The sycamore fig tree is mentioned 8 times in the Bible, but only once in the New Testament—right here with the story of Zacchaeus, found only in Luke. “Its figs, although inferior in taste and sugar content to a true fig, were in ancient times widely consumed by the poor. Its wood was also important and was used as building timber for homes and ancient Egyptian coffins.[5]
This was a popular and valuable fruit tree in Jericho during the time of Christ. And there are other stories, outside the Bible, about Jesus and sycamore fig trees. One says that the Holy Family took refuge in this tree when they fled to Egypt after Jesus was born. The Coptic pope Theophilus of Alexandria, who lived until the early 5th century, tells the story that Joseph had a walking stick, which Jesus broke as an infant. When Joseph buried the pieces of the stick, a sycamore fig grew forth and provided shelter. [6]
Zacchaeus is the chief toll collector. And he is rich. Jericho is an important customs station for the major trade route between Judea and lands east of the Jordan.[7] His fellow townspeople see him as a sinner and corrupt because he is a Jewish man working for the Romans, collecting tolls from his own people. [8] Jesus sees Zacchaeus and calls to him by name, looking up and saying, “Hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” The small man hurries down and is “happy to welcome him.” But the crowd grumbles about Jesus going to the home of a sinner. Both Jesus and Zacchaeus ignore the complaints.
Arriving at the small man’s home, Jesus declares that salvation has come. For this is a conversion story. Zacchaeus won’t look back. He already had the right attitude toward wealth. The text never says that he intentionally cheated anyone. In fact, he is revealed to be more generous with his money and possessions than is required by Mosaic law.
We don’t run into Zacchaeus again in the Bible after this passage in Luke. But we know that he remained faithful to Christ’s call. Early Christian literature identifies “Zacchaeus the Publican” as the first bishop of Caesarea, a port city on the coast of the eastern Mediterranean.
We come to the end of our passage, overjoyed with the choices that Zaccheaus has made to look for Jesus, look to be seen by him, and welcome him into his home and heart. But then we realize that all along, when we thought that Zacchaeus was the one looking for Jesus, Jesus was the one looking for him. He says, “For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.”
Today, on All Saints, we remember and give thanks for the people whose lives touched ours in countless ways and helped to make us who we are and who we will become. We give thanks for the gift of loving them and being loved by them. People like my dear friend Sis, who drove me around in Big Red and threw her curly blond head back whenever she laughed. Who remembered to send cards on my birthday and call on Christmas Eve. And how we cried and cried when I moved away.
Sis went home to be with the Lord in March. She was 98.
As we continue our worship and after you leave the building today, may you remember the one who called to Zacchaeus, “Hurry and come down,” and feel the loving presence of the Spirit. And if you ever feel lost, may you see a tree that reminds you of the story of the chief toll collector who became a bishop. And that the One who sought out Zacchaeus is looking for you, too.
Let us pray.
Gracious God, thank you for the gift of our salvation through the sacrifice of your Son and that we can always come to you and seek your face. Thank you that we are no longer lost, but that we have been found by you. That in your Kingdom, we are not defined or judged by our bank accounts, geography, or occupation. We have new identities that will never be taken away from us; we are all beloved Children of God. Thank you for the gift of family and friends to love and for the love they offer us. Thank you for the faithfulness of all the saints, the Body of Christ in every time and place. Dear Lord, strengthen and comfort those who are grieving the loss of loved ones today. Lighten the burden that they are carrying. Grant them your peace and healing. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Sharing God's Love and Grace 