2 Timothy 1:1-14
preached for Milwaukee Mennonite Church
preached for Milwaukee Mennonite Church
September 24, 2017
© 2017
I have noticed that a number of
you open your worship messages with the prayer from Psalm 19:14, “May the words
of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you our rock and
our redeemer.” I feel the need to do a little more today. With the instability
of our situation since leaving Dallas, I have not felt I had the spiritual
equilibrium to speak in worship yet. A few of you have asked me when I would
take a turn at preaching, and when I saw the plan of the worship team for this
fall, I told myself I wasn’t ready to handle any of these. But in my morning
meditation and prayer later that week, I was drawn to today’s concern for
disabled people. With our experience in the L’Arche Daybreak community for
mentally disabled adults 25 years ago, I began to feel I do have something to
share with you. As I have been praying about and assembling today’s message, I
have had a personal encounter that has tested my ability to live out what I am
going to say today. I have no great triumph to report, but my praying for what
I say and what you hear has been intense.
Michael Arnet was one of the
“disabled” core members at Daybreak who lived at Stevenson House, which was our
home base in the community, though we lived off campus.
In our first week or two there, a
group of a dozen or more went for an outing at the lakefront in Toronto.
Michael had already gravitated to me and wanted to hold hands as we walked by
the lake. I’m not sure I would have used the word ashamed, but I felt some
embarrassment holding hands with a grown man with an obvious disability in
public. Not wanting to let on to Michael, I worked this through in my mind and
grew more comfortable.
My relationship with Michael
developed over our four months at Daybreak. Thursday nights I accompanied him
on his bedtime routine. Make lunch and lay out clothes for his next day’s work
in a sheltered workshop. Change into pajamas and put dirty clothes in the
laundry. Wash up and brush teeth. Pray with Michael before tucking him into
bed. He knelt by his bed and stared at a Latin American cross as he prayed
usually for 15-20 minutes, sometimes a half hour. This man who could not read
or write, whose speech was halting and slurred, whose movement were awkward,
prayed for people and crises all over the world. He knew where all of the
Daybreak members were from and who was travelling. I never heard him pray for
himself but for people he knew were hurting.
At one afternoon worship, the
community was commissioning one of the assistant members to move to the L’Arche
community in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. About 30-40 of us gathered around her to
lay on hands and pray. I was standing next to Michael as he seemed to
restlessly lift his hand as though trying to find a place to make contact with
someone. When the rhythm of the prayers subsided, with his hand raised over his
head, Michael said with a firm, confident voice, “Go with God to Antigonish!”
With that the prayers ended and hugs were shared all around. Michael could not
have told you what an apostle was, yet he fulfilled the apostolic calling, and
the whole community recognized it.
I learned from Michael Arnet how
my contemplative aspiration to see God is available in the people with
disabilities God brings across my path.
Just a few weeks ago my
meditation on the Hebrew Scriptures brought me to Moses at the burning bush.
Exodus 3:6 says that Moses was afraid to look at God. I never want to lose the
awe, even terror, of seeing God.
In Matthew 5:8 Jesus said that
the pure in heart would see God. So my contemplative ambition is not achieved
by trying to become a spiritual elitist but through disabled people whom God
brings to me.
In his book Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, Søren Kierkegaard explains
that Jesus was not speaking so much of moral purity, though that is important,
as having a single, pure desire uncontaminated by even good distractions. If
the only thing you want is to see God, you will see God.
The 19th century
Russian mystic Theophan the Recluse wrote that “The principal thing is to stand
with the mind in the heart before God, and to go on standing before Him
unceasingly day and night until the end of life.” That does not mean dropping
out of life to gaze at God, but to intentionally live all of life aware of
standing before God.
If you have ever looked at
Eastern Orthodox icons, you know they are different than the religious art we
are used to. They are not intended to be pictures to look at but windows to
look through to see a deeper spiritual reality. Michael Arnet was just such a
window, an icon, through which I learned to look for Christ for all the hurting
people of the world when I encounter disabled people.
You may recall that in Matthew
25:37-40 Jesus said of those who reach out to people who are hungry, thirsty,
strangers, naked, and sick, “as you did it to one of the least of these who are
members of my family, you did it to me.” Leo Tolstoy wrote a short story about
Martin the Cobbler to illuminate this passage. Martin believed Christ had
promised to visit him on Christmas Eve, and he cared for several needy, hurting
people who passed by his shop, but didn’t think he had seen Christ until when
reading the passage he heard Christ say he had come in all those folk.
As early as the 4th
Century John Chrysostom wrote, “If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the
Church door, you will not find Him in the Chalice.”
In Les Miserables, Victor Hugo wrote that “to love another person is
to see the face of God.”
In our time Mother Teresa looked
for Christ in the faces of the people dying in the gutters of Calcutta.
So when you feel ashamed,
embarrassed, or awkward with someone’s disability, even if it is your own,
Jesus invites you to look through that person as an icon, a window to see him.
Disabilities come in many forms
and should not be ranked against each other. Some folk don’t recognize in
themselves what others consider a disability. Others plead for sympathy with
their disability that people around them don’t acknowledge. Some disabilities
are physiological, psychological, sociological, and still others spiritual.
Looking for Christ in our own
disabilities may be most challenging of all. Candy and I have experienced this
in the past year and a half since her Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Loss of autonomy
and control looms large, as does anxiety about the pace of progression. In the
current Christianity Today, Matthew
Loftus reviewed John Dunlop’s book Finding
Grace in the Face of Dementia, which affirms the image of God even as our
minds fail.
So the next time you feel
ashamed, awkward, embarrassed about someone with a disability, whether you
yourself, someone close to you, or someone you observe at a distance, pay
attention and you may just catch a glimpse of Jesus.
I invite you to respond today by
praying together the L’Arche Prayer that we prayed together after supper every
evening at Daybreak.
O Father, we ask You to
bless us, and keep us in Your love. May L’Arche be a true home, where the poor
in Spirit may find life; A place where those who are suffering, may find
comfort and peace. Lord, give us hearts that are open, hearts that are humble
and gentle, so that we may welcome those You send, With tenderness and
compassion.
Give us hearts full of
mercy , that we may love and serve; And where discord is found, may we be able to
heal and bring peace; And see in the one who is suffering, the living presence
of Your son. Lord, through the hands of Your little ones, we ask You to bless
us. Through the eyes of those who are rejected, we ask You to smile on us.
Lord, grant freedom and
fellowship, and unity to all the world; And on the day of Your coming, Welcome
all people into Your Kingdom.
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