Giants and Seekers: Life in the Margins

Giants and Seekers: Life in the Margins (March 24, 2012 Sermon for Lent 5 @ St Stephen)
I have to admit up front that I am a lover of stories. So I am going to start by refreshing your memories of a story that you will have heard before. It is a story written by Oscar Wilde and intended to be read aloud to children: it is the story of the Selfish Giant. It begins with a description of a lovely garden, full of lush green grass, beautiful flowers like stars and 12 lovely peach trees that would at this time of year be covered with delicate blossoms of pink and pearl. The garden is the favourite playground of the local children until the giant to whom it belongs comes back and frightens them all away. He builds a high wall around the garden to keep them from coming back. The next year, when spring returned to the world, it missed the selfish giant’s garden. The garden remained in the frosty world of winter year after year until the children found a hole in the wall and slipped back in again, bringing the spring with them. It was a lovely scene full of flowers, and birdsong and the laughter of children except for the farthest corner of the garden where it was still Winter. In that corner stood a very little boy. He was so small that he could not reach up to the branches of the tree, and he was wandering all round it, crying bitterly. The poor tree was still quite covered with frost and snow, and the North Wind was blowing and roaring above it. 'Climb up! little boy,' said the Tree, and it bent its branches down as low as it could; but the little boy was too tiny.
And this is where we will stop the story for now.
That little boy represents marginalized people everywhere. He represents those who stand on the outside, unnoticed, trying to get in. He represents the people that don’t quite fit in for reasons that are sometimes very hard to pin down.
I’ve been working at St. Mary’s Hospital since the early fall and at St. Mark’s Wednesday suppers beginning a little later.
Of course we expect to see marginalized people at St. Mark’s suppers – these are generally folks who need a good hot meal for a variety of reasons. There are many people there whose incomes are insufficient to feed them properly. There is a fellow with an undefined muscle-wasting disease. When I worked at St. Mark’s before, about two years ago, he was managing reasonably well. He was already in an electric wheel chair and getting about quite well. But now he has become the kind of person many of us turn away from because he makes us uncomfortable. He eats his meal independently, but not all of it stays on the shaking spoon. Sometimes he remembers to bring a thick towel to protect his clothes, but sometimes he forgets and his friends wheel him into the street to meet his bus after the worship service with a pastiche of food stains across his t-shirt. There are a couple of people who play the piano before and after the meal, their fingers caressing keys they cannot touch anywhere else, some of them with incredible sweetness.
But these are also people that we pass by in the streets. They are marginalized because of illnesses of many different kinds.
I’ve been more surprised by the marginalized people that I meet at St. Mary’s. We are primarily heart and lung specialists. We see only a few of the extreme poor here, and when we do, it’s usually for breathing problems.
But there is another group of people I hadn’t realized were marginalized. I have learned a great deal about my past from them. They call themselves Auslandsdeutsche: alien Germans. The German government calls them Volksdeutsche: Ethnic Germans. They cling fiercely to their mother tongue and to their clothes and customs. They are the ones that bring us Oktoberfest every year, with each club that contributes claiming a slightly different heritage. They are the Germans who were born and raised in Poland, in Transylvania, in Yugoslavia and other countries. I met one sweet elderly person who told me with great pride that his family settled in Poland early in the eleventh century. So when the World Wars struck, they suddenly found themselves in danger in the countries of their birth and forced to migrate under the harshest of conditions only to be unwelcome in the country from which their ancestors had emigrated. We were blessed by the arrival of the few who survived. And the communities here made them welcome and quietly enfolded them. But they still cling to the language and customs which have sustained them through centuries of isolation.
We see marginalized people in our gospel reading today too. Among those who went up to Jerusalem to worship for the Passover festival, were some Greeks. Who were these Greeks? Scholars have come to the conclusion that the Greeks referred to here were diaspora Jews. That is, they were Jews who lived outside of Palestine, outside of the modern land of Israel. They were Jews who lived in the margins of their world – not quite belonging.
From the conclusion of the last sign, the raising of Lazarus, many Jews believed in him. This "crowd of Jews" who witnessed the raising of Lazarus from the dead continued to testify. This is the crowd that continues to follow him. The crowds of Jews who are followers of Jesus include the seeking Greeks. They were Jews who didn’t quite fit into the land in which they had been born nor the one to which they had returned. Their customs were slightly different, their accents had changed, but they were determinedly there seeking Jesus.
Jesus himself was on the margins of his world. He brought a message that not everyone wanted to hear. What is worse, he socialized with the marginalized and even recruited them into his company. He ate with prostitutes and with tax collectors, the traitors of their people because they collected taxes on behalf of the occupiers. He included children, he even welcomed them! But children of the time belonged to the margins. Until they were productive, they were a drain on the family and a drain on society. Children who were too ill to contribute (or born at inconvenient times) were simply taken out to the edges of town and left on the trash heap. These are the people our saviour welcomed: the desperately poor, the sick, the prostitutes: the scum of his society.
The result of course, was that he would be mocked and executed, left to die on the outskirts, on the margins of the town.
He became the man of tatters, the man of sorrows, the man left on the outside to die in pain.
But the message he brought us has survived all the people who surrounded him. He asked us to share what we have with those who have not. When he asked us to provide food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, clothing for those whose clothing no longer covers them properly, care for those who are ill and comfort for those who are imprisoned.
The amazing thing about following through on this request is what I’ve been getting back. Before supper on Wednesdays, I join the little group that meets to share a little of what’s happened in their lives in the past week and then we study the Bible together. I have been gifted by some amazing insights from my study partners. The message they read has more power because they are the marginalized to whom Jesus was speaking. And then there is the gentleman from an oriental country who has slowly been letting me hear bits of his story. His level of English suggests that he must have had a good education before war came to his country. He is attending ESL classes now so that he can speak English like regular folks here instead of like the scholar I suspect he must have been. Last week I brought in my Inshallah music book and he graciously helped me with the pronunciation of the words we sign for the chorus.
These are gifts I’d never thought of getting back!
And then there are the good folks at the hospital. From them I have learned a little more patience, for starters! And then there are the gracious ladies who remind me so strongly of the mothers of my childhood Sunday school classmates. They can do things I’ve never been able to do: recite Bible verses that fit the situation. They bring grace and sunshine into my life.
There was one somewhat tattered gentleman in particular whom I will carry in my heart. Before I left his room, I asked him if he wanted a prayer. “Oh no,” he said. “I’m doing just fine! But I *will* pray for you”
These are the people we have marginalized. These are the people with whom Jesus spent his time. These are the people to whom he preached and with whom he shared his meals.
And then there are the seekers. The seekers wish to see Jesus. In fact, they never do see him. They make a request to Philip who tells Andrew, and together they tell Jesus. And Jesus answered them with a discourse on the meaning of his death (verses 23a-33). You see, he knew his time was almost up and that he would not be able to accommodate all who came to seek him on this earth.
In effect, the seekers are also us. When Jesus begins speaking, the narrative audience seems irrelevant. In a real sense, we are "them," that is, anyone who hears or reads Jesus' discourse according to John.
We are both the seekers and the ones who are invited to share the message of salvation. We are the ones whom the Gospel has freed to reach out to the marginalized in the same way Jesus did.
We started off with the beginning of a children’s story and I’d like to remind you of how it ended.
And the Giant's heart melted as he looked out and saw the little boy who could not climb onto the branches. 'How selfish I have been!' he said; 'now I know why the Spring would not come here. I will put that poor little boy on the top of the tree, and then I will knock down the wall, and my garden shall be the children's playground for ever and ever.' He was really very sorry for what he had done.
Then he took down the wall with a giant axe. When the children left, the little boy was not among them. Years went over, and the Giant grew very old and feeble. He could not play about any more, so he sat in a huge armchair, and watched the children at their games, and admired his garden. 'I have many beautiful flowers,' he said; 'but the children are the most beautiful flowers of all.'
One winter morning he looked out of his window as he was dressing and rubbed his eyes in wonder at a marvellous sight. In the farthest corner of the garden was a tree quite covered with lovely white blossoms. Its branches were all golden, and silver fruit hung down from them, and underneath it stood the little boy he had loved.
Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child. And when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, because on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet.
'Who hath dared to wound thee?' cried the Giant; 'tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.'
'Nay!' answered the child; 'but these are the wounds of Love.'
'Who art thou?' said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.
And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, 'You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.'
We are not only the seekers, we are also the Giant. When we see how fully the Gospel has freed us, then we too can take up an axe to destroy the wall between us and those who are on the outside looking in.