THE ONE WHO STAYS

I discovered that even back in the days of the stagecoach, with their two identical bench seats, one could buy first, second and third class tickets. A first class ticket allowed you to remain seated during the entire trip. If you had a second class ticket and the stage coach broke an axle or got stuck in the mud, you could be required to get off until the problem was solved. If it happened to be raining, you can envision the disadvantage of second class. However, if you had a third class ticket and the stagecoach got stuck in the mud, you could be required to get out and push. ¹

I wonder what kind of ticket we think we have on this coach to the kingdom of god we call the church. Did we buy a ticket to sit, a ticket to watch or a ticket to push? I flew to Wisconsin years ago when my brother was dying. The woman in the seat next to me began indignantly telling me how her flight had been held up for hours in Holland because the baggage handlers were on strike. It didn’t seem to occur to her that they may have deserved a raise. All that mattered to her was that she was inconvenienced. If I had opened my mouth, it would have been to side with baggage handlers. Or I could have told her why I didn't want to talk, but it wasn’t any of her business, nor was she likely to listen, so I ignored her until she gave up. But the right to ignore others is not acceptable behavior in a church.

Some folk seem to think this religious journey is strictly about their personal and private faith, bereft of responsibility for relationship with the rest of you folk and all that it takes for a church to be a church. If that is what you believe, you have missed an essential truth about Christian community. Some of us act as if Jesus' great commission to go into all the world, not only doesn't apply to us, but doesn't even apply to the extent of embracing the world that comes through our doors. Let me forewarn you that you will have some new names to learn next week.

Does our ticket on this coach called the church allow us to stand on the side when there is trouble or work to be done? Does it allow us to just sit and comment? I have used this illustration before, but it is good enough to bear repeating. It came from a black preacher I heard on the radio one Sunday morning saying that church members were like types of dogs. He said, "You know, there's setters and there's pointers." I guess they had first and second class tickets.

The third class ticket is reserved for those of us who pay to work; to work on our faith, to work for our church and to work in the world. The radio preacher didn't come up with a breed of dog that does that. Maybe they are the Saint Bernards. Fortunately, there are a lot of workers in this church.

Of course, not everyone can do everything; and the point is not to make you feel guilty. It is important however, to do what you can do. In one church, a young woman was asked if she would teach Sunday School. She didn't feel she was capable of teaching Sunday School, but she would volunteer to recruit children and bring them to Sunday School; and she did. Each Sunday morning she would fill up her car with children and bring them to Sunday School. Because of her, there were some Sundays when the number of children was twice what it had been. Unfortunately there was some grumbling about the rowdiness of all of these unattended children.

There were some who thought they should only allow children to come to Sunday School if their parents were present. Then one of the children brought his younger brother, and together they brought their mother. She brought another family. All I can say it that it was a good thing that woman couldn't teach. ² The basic responsibility of every Christian is to invite, to be hospitable, to bring people and take people into our community of faith, to learn their names, befriend them, support them, love them.

Of course, the church isn’t always a wonderful place. Anybody who has been in the church very long has had a bad experience in the church. You may have been criticized for what you have done. I try to make light of such experiences by saying that “no good deed goes unpunished.” Or I say that this is a full service church. We always make sure that those people who have a need to complain will have something to complain about. You may have wanted to participate or offered a good suggestion and felt dismissed or rejected. It would have been easy for the woman who picked up kids and brought them to Sunday School to let people's criticisms stop her from doing what was right. That is why God offers the Holy Spirit. It is God's presence in times of trial.

We could take a lesson from old time screen actress Mary Pickford, whose career went on the skids. She soon discovered that her fans were not loyal. Her so called friends disappeared. Still she endured it all with such grace that she was asked how she maintained such poise and good cheer in the face of all her troubles. Pickford replied, "All the water in the world can't sink a ship unless it gets inside."

To our dismay, we may have discovered that the church is full of hypocrites. Well, yes it is. Where else are you going to find them, if not amongst people who have been called to a higher standard and try to be better than they are? As poet Robert Browning said, "A person’s reach should exceed their grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

Sometimes we feel that we have paid our dues, put in our time, or done our part. The primary difference between people is at what point they decide how much is enough. How else do we explain why some people who have gotten their kids through Sunday School, think they have done their part, while others in their seventies and eighties are still working. The youth group in my first church had over twenty kids. It was an over 65 year-old spinster. Do you suppose these old folks didn't do their share when they were younger? I think not.

This is Ascension Sunday. Jesus was about to depart for good and the disciples must have been hoping that their payoff was about to come. They asked Jesus before his ascension, if this was the time when God would restore the kingdom to Israel? His answer was that this was not the time for respite or reward. Instead, they needed to become his witnesses in Jerusalem, the center of power; and in Judea, where they came from and lived; and in Samaria with Samaritans whom they despised; and to ends of the earth. When the world would become like the Kingdom of God was not their concern, but it was their responsibility. What they needed was not to know what was coming, but strength to face whatever comes. What he offered them was not reward or retirement, but the Holy Spirit.

What does God expect of you? I found an answer in a place I wouldn't have thought to look. I have books in every room in the house in the process of being read. I read a lot, though usually just a few minutes at a time and I tend to avoid those books considered "classics;" those books you find in the "literature" section of the book store. Somehow the word "literature" seems synonymous with boring. Never-the-less, I have found that one way to read that kind of material is put it in the bathroom. You only get to read a page or two at a time and it is far more edifying, significant and reliable than the Reader's Digest. I read the book "Ivanhoe," all seven hundred pages in the bathroom of the Quinsigamond United Methodist Church. It took me three years to complete it.

When I finished "Ivanhoe," I read a book by Albert Camus called "The Plague." I probably wouldn't have read it in any other setting, because I have never read a more depressing book in my life. The story takes place in Oran, North Africa, a city suffering from a plague. People were dying every day in great numbers and the parish priest, Father Paneloux, felt obligated to preach about what was occurring.

In his first sermon, he told the people, "Calamity has come upon you, my brethren, and you deserve it." he said. "Plague is the flail of God and the world is God's threshing floor, and implacably God will thresh out the harvest until the wheat is separated from the chaff." ³

Time passed, and still more people died, including children, and Father Paneloux entered the pulpit a second time to preach on the subject of the plague. This time the priest did not say "your sins, but "our" sins had caused the plague. "But to those who confess their sins," he consoles, "death was not a thing to fear." ⁴

The plague still continued and Father Paneloux returned to the pulpit a third time to raise the question of what to do. What is the proper course to follow? There had been other plagues, in which those of the faith had tried to infect their enemies, thus reducing the resistance to Christianity. In yet other instances, Christians simply tried to avoid contact with those who might infect them, and so did not care for the sick and dying.

In the Black Death at Marseille, only four of the eighty one monks in Mercy Monastery survived the epidemic and three of those four took flight. Father Paneloux thought of that monk who stayed on by himself, despite the death of his seventy seven companions and above all despite the example of his three brothers who fled. The priest then fixed his eyes on his people and cried, "My brothers and sisters, each of us must be the one who stays." ⁵

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1. Yes, Lord, I Have Sinned. James W. Moore. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991, pp. 45 46.
2. E. Ross Helton. The Upper Room. September/October 1992, p. 28.
3. Albert Camus, The Plague, Time, Inc., Book Division, Time Magazine, 1948, pp 83-84.
4. Op cit. p 105.
5. Op. Cit.