A Sermon

As I pulled this together at the last minute, I didn't have a title.


“A Sermon” The Dover Church Church
March 27, 2010 – Third Sunday of Lent
Scripture: John 9: 1-41

After a week of sleeping on a church floor, preparing and serving meals to hundreds of people, sorting food in warehouses, helping out in shelters, sightseeing, and basking in the intensity of teenagers, it was time for this minister to go home. There was, however, one last thing in our YSOP week in Washington, DC. Fourteen youth groupers, myself and the other chaperone, and the YSOP coordinator were sitting around a big table in the Church of the Epiphany's Social Room, waiting for our final speaker. Someone was coming meet with the group and tell us his or her story about being homeless. We had met a lot of diverse people that week, so I did not know what to expect.
Into the midst of the joking and laughter, texting and e-mailing, walked our speaker. As he came into the room, I was struck by his dignity, a short man, clean shaven with a neat haircut, quite formal in simple yet spotless clothes which had been ironed with a lot starch. The creases in the sleeves of his shirt and in his trousers stood out in a room full of sweat-shirted and blue-jeaned teenagers from Connecticut. He smiled at us, sat down at the head of the long table, and introduced himself in a very soft spoken voice, “My name is James Davis and I thank you for inviting me here to tell you my story.”
Without further ado, he began. “I grew up in South Carolina in a large, loving family, nine brothers and sisters and a mother and father who loved us and each other. All of my brothers and sisters graduated from college and are successful, except one sister who did not go to college but is the successful owner of her own hair salon. I was a tracking engineer for NASA at Cape Kennedy, working on the space shuttle. I was married and had three kids. We owned our own home and had two cars.”
He sat there, quite straight with a hand resting on each knee, as I said, very dignified, and continued. “Then suddenly things started to change in 1986. Do you kids remember what happened with NASA's space shuttle program in 1986?” he asked. All of the youth groupers were born after 1990, so I took a shot at it: “The Challenger blew up.” “That's right,” said Mr. Davis, “the Challenger mission blew up and NASA halted the space shuttle program. A lot of us had to transfer to other divisions or find work elsewhere while the disaster was sorted out. I decided to leave NASA and find another good engineering job in the private sector, which I did. ”
“Then,” he continued, “within the space of a month, both of my parents died. It hit me really hard. It hit all of my sisters and brothers really hard, but they seemed to be able to work through it. I couldn't. I got depressed, even though I didn't know I was depressed at the time. That's the thing about depression: when you're really depressed, you're too depressed to be able to realize how depressed you are. I didn't want to leave my bedroom on the weekends. My work started to go downhill. I went to therapy, which was good and worked for a while, but it never pulled me all the way up. I started to drink to self-medicate myself, which was a big mistake.” Here he paused again and looked around the table at each of the young people and said with emphasis, “The very worst thing you can do if you are depressed is self-medicate. It makes thing much worse.” He paused for emphasis, a much stronger message than “Just say No,” because he was about to tell how worse much worse could be.
“My depression made me unable to function, which cost me my job. My self-medication cost me my security clearance, which meant that I couldn't go back to NASA. It got so bad that I felt like I was pulling my wife and kids down with my depression, so I decided I had to leave for their sakes. I called a friend in DC to ask if I could stay with him until I got sorted out and found work. I packed my suitcases, took the train up, only to find a moving truck in his driveway when I arrived. My friend said he was sorry, but the landlord had suddenly decided to sell the house and he had to move.”
“And so there I was, with all my bags, quite literally in the driveway, without a job or anyplace to stay. I had had a good job so I did have savings, so I moved into the cheapest hotel I could find, the Holiday Inn at $150 a night. My plan was to get sorted out and find work, but I went through my savings pretty quickly, more quickly than I was able to focus enough to find work due to my depression. In pretty short order, I was out of the hotel and walking around at night with all my luggage, sleeping in the train station, until the police moved us along. I was not alone. I remember one night when I found myself on a park bench in 20 degree weather, trying to both get some sleep and not freeze. There were a lot of people in the park with me that night.
I was too proud to tell anyone that I was homeless. I was too proud to even admit it to myself. I just thought that this was some temporary trick played on me. I know that God has a plan for everyone's life and I see it now, but at the time it just seemed like a big mistake. So I didn't even tell my brothers and sisters, who would have invited me to stay with them. I lied and said I was working and staying with friends. They found out later and were very angry with me for not letting them know, but as I said, I was proud and confused. And even though I didn't say the word, I was homeless, sleeping in shelters, eating in soup kitchens, still trying to find work, but it was almost impossible when you show up for an interview carrying all this luggage and looking exhausted after having only a few hours of interrupted sleep. Who's going to hire someone who shows up looking like that? I was applying for professional engineering jobs.”
Mr. Davis told us about the three years he spent homeless and how he managed to get himself off of the street, selling newspapers and with the help of various agencies like the ones we had been working at that week. He now works for Ritz camera on their digital electronics, advocates for the homeless, and has his own apartment. It was all so very matter-of fact in that soft spoken voice. No pauses for tears or to catch his breath. When he finished his story, the room was absolutely quiet and every eye was on him. “Do you have any questions?” he asked.
I looked around at the young people and could see that no one wanted to go first. “How about your wife and children? Are you in contact with them?” one kid asked. “Yes, I am. We're on good terms, but I'm up here and they're down there.” Another long moment of silence as everyone took that in. For people like us with families and homes, that was challenging.
“Does giving spare change to homeless people really help?” another kid asked. “Sometimes it does. Being able to buy your own cup of coffee rather than have it given to you can be pretty nice.” For people like us who can buy our own coffee and IPODs and clothes, or have them given to them by their parents, that was another new horizon. The dignity of being able to buy a cup of coffee for yourself. Imagine that.
“Did you have any friends while you were on the street?” “Most of the time I was on the move and suspicious of everyone around me. So no close friends.” For people like us who live in supportive and caring social networks, this was almost unthinkable.
“I never know what to do or say to a homeless person when I run into one. Anything I do or say seems so stupid. I get embarrassed.” Not a question, but a question nonetheless. “The best thing you can do is notice a homeless person. We live anonymous lives out there with people looking away, walking around us, and pretending we're not there. Just smiling and saying hello, wishing someone a good day, can make a homeless person's day, make him or her feel like a real human being.” Wow! That's it? Just noticing someone who you're trying to ignore?
There were other questions, about getting medicine and medical care, about what it's like sleeping in shelters, about having to stand in line for everything, food, social work, a bed to sleep in, but it seemed like all of a sudden the time was up. I think everyone had forgotten about that train we had to catch. We thanked Mr. Davis as he left. Liz, the YSOP coordinator, whose daytime job was the study of diseases for USAID, asked the group if we had any thoughts, any reflections to share.
Once again, a moment of silence. And then one boy said, “I always blame the homeless people for being homeless, that it's their fault somehow, that they were responsible for their situation. They must have made a mistake, or a series of bad choices, or were crazy, and homelessness was the consequence. But this guy sort of had it happen to him.” We all sat with that one in quiet for a while.
Another boy said, “I always thought that homeless people were stupid, crazy, dirty druggies. But this guy worked for NASA and was smart and clean.” Another few moments of silence.
Liz didn't affirm or expand on any of our thoughts. Truths like that just have to sit out there and be looked at. I didn't say anything either, but I could feel Jesus in the room with us. We were having on of those moments when our eyes were suddenly opened and we were seeing things the way God sees them.
Which brings me to the man born blind in our Gospel this morning...well, not really. Haven't we been talking about him all along? Let me rephrase: do you remember him? a miserable, blind beggar just sitting there by the side of the road? Did you notice that he doesn't even have a name? He's just the man who was born blind, even after his eyes were opened. His parents are just the parents of the man born blind. Everyone in the story is interested in blame and fault finding. Why is he blind? Whose fault is it? The Pharisees are intent on blame and fault finding with Jesus for breaking the laws of the sabbath. But the blind man cuts through it all: “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes...If this man were not from God, he could do nothing... One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
Everyone is looking for someone to blame, except Jesus, who is not interested in blame, on who sinned, but is only and completely intent on God's purpose of transforming the hard places of life into new and abundant life. This is clearly a story about compassion and healing. For folks like us with homes, jobs, money, family, friends, compassion usually means “pity” or “feeling sorry for someone,” someone like Mr. James Davis or the man born blind in our story, because they lack what we have. There is a lot to be said for pity and feeling sorry, but the word compassion is a Latin root, com-passio, that means, “suffering with,” and that is what God in Jesus Christ is all about and that is where healing is possible. How can we truly suffer with, have compassion for, someone like Mr. James Davis or the man born blind? We are just not in their shoes. Maybe not, but when we see those people and see ourselves in those people, how they are us and we are them, then the distance disappears and we realize we are all in this together.
As disciples of Christ our spirituality is one of letting go of fault and blame, of resisting all the finger pointing which keeps us too busy for having real com-passion with real people, and get down to the new and abundant life which God in Jesus Christ is bringing forth every day. Because while stories about Mr. James Davis are both moving and enlightening, the Good News is not just for him, or about him and people like him, but for each of us and for all of us. Where am I blind in my life? Where are you unable to love? Where is she unable to trust? Where does our hope fail us? What can he not forgive? What do I need to repent of but cannot? Like it or not, these are the places where Jesus will find us. It’s all about the grace and grace never blames or finds fault.