God Must Look Like All of Us.

Pentecost 23, Proper 25B

Mark 10:46 – 52

October 28, 2018

St. Matthias

There is a man who comes to The Abbey.  He is different from me.  We are about the same height, weight, and age.  We both like coffee.  Sometimes I see him walking near our house.  He is homeless.  Sometimes he talks to himself.  He always smiles and says hello when he sees me at The Abbey.  I don’t know his name.

           I go to The Abbey a couple of days a week.  I am the volunteer bookkeeper and I sit and count the week’s receipts and make bank deposits.  When I walk in, the regulars all call me “The Money Man.”  It is a place where you meet a lot of different people.  Some are old, some are young.  They are black, white, Hispanic, and at least one person I met there is from Romania.  I have come to know Episcopalians, Baptists, Methodists, and a number of people from the small United Church of Christ congregation next door.  On any given day you will find several people who will tell you they are agnostics or atheists, but they like The Abbey because here all persons are treated with dignity and respect.   

           That’s the way it is supposed to be in the Kingdom of Heaven.  For example, let us consider Bartimaeus – a blind beggar sitting by the roadside.  For Bartimaeus – he is different because he could not see.  In Jesus’s day – if you were blind – you lived by begging.  You were forced to EXIST on the generosity of others.  Cruelty was an everyday reality.  People were often just plain mean.  It was an existence far beyond what we can probably imagine.

           I would bet the disciples probably did their best to ignore Bartimaeus that day as they passed him on the road leading out of Jericho.  He probably looked just like a beggar – dirty, ragged, scary.  We’ve all run into street people and they often make us nervous.  It would be hard to believe that anyone like Bartimaeus would have any future.  Just ignore him as if he wasn’t even there and that is very likely what the disciples tried to do – but then Bartimaeus surprises everyone.  As Jesus passes on the road, Bartimaeus calls out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  Jesus turns.  He calls for this dirty, scary blind beggar and asks, “What is it you want me to do for you?”  Without hesitation, Bartimaeus replies, “Let me see again!  And Jesus says, “Go your faith has made you well.” In Jesus, Bartimaeus had recognized that we are all the same in God’s eyes and we are all loved equally.

           Too often I think we don’t give ourselves enough credit as the Body of Christ.  We tend to think that you have to be really holy and do something big or be someone important to make any real difference.  One of my favorite authors, Douglas John Hall – no I am not related to him so far as I know – he’s Canadian – Dr. Hall calls this kind of thinking The Mother Teresa Syndrome.  It is the belief that in order to do any real Christian ministry that really counts – we have to sacrifice everything that means anything to us and go off somewhere else to work with “THE POOR”.  Nothing could be further from the truth and Mother Teresa would have been the first to tell us so.  We are called to love everyone in Christ’s name – to share with everyone equally the Grace of God.

           Some years ago, I was the Chaplain for an Episcopal Youth Event.  For a week, high school students from all over the Episcopal Church gathered at Indiana State University in Terre Haute to worship, sing, and share.  There were kids from Florida and California and Vermont.  Latino Episcopalians from New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago joined together and taught everyone how to sing in Spanish.  There was even a group from the Diocese of Alaska including 5 or 6 teenagers from parishes above the Arctic Circle.  They had never seen a 4 lane road or a building with more than 2 floors.  These kids from Alaska were cool.  They got to know the Episcopalians from Hawaii who showed them how to hula.  By the end of the week, all of these young people from Alaska and Hawaii and California and Maine and everywhere in between came together as one body in Christ.  Somebody made a big sign that said – We are all created in the image of God – So God must look like all of us.

           Today we celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.  It is a window to the Grace of knowing that all of us are loved as children of God.  Jackson will be marked as Christ’s own forever.  All of us will promise with God’s help to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ – to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor – and respecting the dignity of all human beings.  And we need to carry that same message in thought, word, and deed beyond these doors.  Out there on Monday through Saturday there is a world of people like Bartimaeus who may first look different from us.  But look again – we are all children of God.  They are created in the image of the same God we look like.  Together we are all loved.

           I will go to the Abbey tomorrow.  I will see the guys and I expect to be called The Money Man.  I am sure that my friend will tell me hello if he is there.  I think it is time I ask his name.  If he will let me, I’m going to take our picture together and post it on Facebook.  We will be two of the guys created in God’s image.   See if you can tell us apart.    AMEN.