| June 1, 2008 |
“LIVES THAT MATTER” I want to tell you a story. It is a story from Will Campbell, an 84-year-old Baptist preacher, writer, civil rights activist, truth teller, and ornery messenger of God. Get to know Will Campbell. He was the inspiration for a comic strip character, Will B. Dunn, from the late Doug Marlette’s comic Kudzu. When Campbell was a young man he met a trapeze artist in a small traveling circus. Campbell asked him why he chose that particular way to make a living. The man told him about the romance and travel and adventure of circus life and about the pleasure of bringing joy to “children of all ages.” He told him that the job paid well. He also told Campbell about “the thrill of hurling through space,” then, at the last possible moment being grasped by two hands at the wrist, then hurled to the next set of hands, that swung him through the air, back safely to the platform. But finally he said what Campbell had not expected him to say, “Do you really want to know why I go up there on that **** thing night after night after night?” Campbell said he did. “... I would have quit a long time ago. But my sister is up there. And my wife, (and she’s kind of a risk-taking)-nut and my old man (who is) is getting older. If I wasn’t up there, some bad night, man...smash!” His foot stomped the floor with a bone-cracking thud.” As the trapeze artist began to walk away Campbell asked him one more question, “But why do they stay up there?” The man ... looked Campbell up and down and then said: “Because I drink too much!” (“Vocation as Grace” in Callings, Holloway and Campbell, p. 279-280 as retold by Odette L-S)
Paul says ... “there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall sort of the glory of God.” To which we say ... to ourselves and to each other ... “What part of all don’t we understand?” We’ve all fallen short and we’re all given to each other and to the world for help and healing.
Earlier just that week, Karen had decided to leave the church. Another member, Tom, had confided in her that he was still drowning in pain after the death of his girlfriend in a car accident months earlier. She had been killed by a drunk driver. Karen panicked to her core. She went to the pastor saying she didn’t belong at the church and why. Years earlier, she had killed someone while driving drunk. For years she had hidden her shameful secret, her crime, her jail time and her ongoing addiction. The pastor told her that she did belong in the church and that she needed to tell her story for her own recovery, beginning with Tom. She did. Then that next Sunday during Joys and Concerns at Central Park United Methodist Church, Karen testified. She confessed for the first time what she had done, and that she was an addict. She was terrified of what people in the pews would do or say, but when she had finished testifying, she saw tears, and she received hugs ... Then she helped serve the bread and the cup. (Christian Century, November 13, 2007 p. 26 as retold by OLS) Paul says ... “For all alike have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified by God’s free grace alone, through God’s act of liberation in the person of Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 3: 23) To which we say ... to ourselves and to each other ... “What part of all don’t we understand?” All means all. All are saved, reconciled, liberated by the grace of God. All are welcome.
We cannot earn God’s grace ... we don’t have to. It is a gift. Our challenge is to simply, gratefully, accept it. And Jesus said, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise one who built a house on rock.”
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