October 7, 2001
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr. & Rev. Tara Barber
The Community Church of Sebastopol
A Dialogue
Luke 14:15-33
Tara: Some of those inferior members of my body are crying out today – notice me, remember me! I helped
you lift those boxes, move those chairs, and carry all those things that they rest of you couldn’t live without. We moved again this weekend, I think that’s the fourth time and hopefully the last time, for a very long time, and I am very aware of the many parts of my body, and of the larger body of Christ – this community of faith. For we couldn’t have moved without you. This community of faith has sheltered us in your homes, has helped us find more permanent housing, and made it possible for us to be re-united with our precious stuff. It was hard for me to ask for help, I wanted to believe that we could somehow be independent in this process, but through it all I realized the power of community. The power of connections, of support, and the power of people with muscles! And I trust that at some point, I will be able to carry the loads of those who carried my loads and my furniture. This is what it means to be a member of the community, a part of the body of Christ.
Gene: Earlier this week, I got up and went out with my dog to walk as we have done everyday for a number of
years, and I had failed the night before, probably out of shear laziness, to put my truck in the garage. As I was going out the driveway and turning to go down the street to the park, I turned and looked and noticed that some child of God had taken a key or something and keyed my car - just a big scratch across the back. I was really upset. I just wanted to kick somebody - this jerk or whoever it was. Why would they do such a thing. It’s so hard for me to even wrap my brain around it. It’s so far from anything that would ever cross my mind, being righteous and pure as I am. But as I walked down the street, I noticed that there must have been five or six cars that had been affected. The person just must have decided to walk the entire neighborhood. I thought, what a mean spirited thing to do. Why do such a thing?
I was in a black mood as I got to the park. There are several people I have come to know while walking my dog over the years. I am probably the youngest of the group. When I got to the park, a group of the women were talking. A couple of men who have walked there, haven’t been there lately - Mori and Bob. The women were talking about them. Mori has been quite ill and has begun calling his friends and telling them that he is dying and telling them goodbye. Now I don’t know if Mori is dying, but Mori thinks he is and he has been telling people goodbye. Bob had a stroke, I learned, and had not been in the park. He had been walking with a walker and then graduated to a cane. They were talking about how they were trying to help him. They were taking him to the doctor.
Now, none of us really know each other all that well, but it’s interesting that just through walking in the park, this little community has formed and we are all trying to care for each other. I realized as we were talking there, that in a very real sense, Mori and Bob’s pain had become my pain, had become our pain. We were sort of sharing this journey with them. And as we talked, I was aware that suddenly my anger and my upset about my keyed car and those little children of God who had done that, had sort of drifted away. It was clear to me that what really mattered were these connections - this discussion - this reaching out that was going on in this little community of Ragle Park walkers. I thought that I can live with the keying of the car, but we’ve got to keep those connections. As I left the park that morning, feeling bad for Mori and Bob. I did later call Bob. I was aware that we are part of the body and one just doesn’t get along very well without the others.
Tara: It was a week of meetings, much like any other week, but it was this week. I met with teenagers and
with parents, with staff members, new members and potential members and community members. I even met on line to pray for children. In these meetings, I was made aware of how seeing the community as part of a whole changes what I do.
In meeting with a consultant to help develop an amazing full-time child care program to be housed here on these ground, I was reminded that how we care for the smallest members of our body affects each of us. It is easy to believe that our care of children will have an impact on our future, but even more so, how we care for these members of our body affects who we are today. Likewise, in talking with Debbie about our Sunday school program, I was reminded of the gifts of children in my faith life and how they now change who I am. They enhance my faith life, my spiritual development.
Worship does not happen just in this room on Sunday morning. This is only once place of worship. There are other places of worship on these ground where children are learning about God and God can be seen in these children’s faces. Our commitment to the youngest members of our body of Christ and the oldest members of our body of Christ affects who we are as the body.
Gene: In thinking about September 11th, it occurs to me that it was really a uniquely American tragedy. The
people who were killed and who are mourning - black, white, Hispanic, Asian - who knows how many other racial or ethnic groups. Christians were killed, Jews, I’m sure a number of Muslims and people with no faith background whatsoever. I saw all different pictures of people’s faces as they were lining up to get death certificates for loved ones and I realized that none of that mattered. In this one moment, these differences didn't matter. All of those people who have suffered, all of those who are lost or who have lost loved ones, those people are our people. That’s why we grieve. Those people are our people. In ways I may have never completely grasped, we are a part of the same body and I just hope that as we come out of this we don’t lose that sense again, that those people are us. They are our people.
Tara: In the book, The Giving Heart, there is a quote by Marcus Aurelius who encourages us to “constantly
remind ourselves, that we are a member of the whole body of conscious things.” Then the author tells a story about spending some time in a third grade classroom. He was talking with the children about why we should do nice things for one another. Hands popped up: and one person said, “Because it’s the right thing to do.” “Because it makes the other person feel good.” “Because then they’ll be nice to you.” Then a girl in the corner said, “Because when you share with people it makes you bigger, and when you don’t share it makes you smaller.” The author went on to say, “This child articulated something that many of us never get. Giving makes us bigger. What I think she meant by bigger is that the very act of giving makes real the truth that mystics, sages, and even certain scientists are trying to get us to understand – we are completely interconnected. We are not really separate, even though it seems as though we are.” And sure, on one level, we are separate individuals, unique. And what we do as individuals affects others. “At some other level, the non-material level, there is no separation between me and the hungry person, me and the office worker in the World Trade Center, or me and creation. “We are all”, as Marcus Aurelius puts it, “aspects of the vast body of consciousness that is life itself. On this level, we are huge…(And) the more we live out of our generosity, the more we experience this large self.”
Gene : I like that. This large self. I don’t know if you heard, but beginning today, the United States and allies
have begun bombing Afghanistan. Attacks have begun. The word was they are going for military targets. It’s kind of ironic, but part of it is to bomb gun inplacements so then the food can be dropped. It’s kind of a new twist on guns and butter. None of you have said to me and neither have I heard it suggested in Washington, that we bomb Afghanistan into the Stone Age. How do you bomb a people into the Stone Age, who are already there. As we think about that country it is important to remember that it is one of the poorest countries in the world. It has the second highest child mortality rate in the world. The average Afghan family has a food supply of maybe two days. Tens of thousands of Afghan citizens are now refugees - displaced. Thousands of others are facing starvation. Through our own giving through OCWM, UCC, at least in the refugee camps in Pakistan, we are providing tents and blankets and water and I’m sure if the opportunity presents itself, the church will be in Afghanistan itself, trying to help. The Taliban have oppressed their own people. They have not only been brutal to the United States but brutal to their own people. I’m sure that now part of the idea is to get the Taliban out of there. But, I hope that we will remember the people of Afghanistan and that the need will go on. That is part of the commitment we have been talking about. Are we there for the long haul. Not only to fight terrorism, but to help. Maybe you’ve seen the email about how maybe the time has come to bomb Afghanistan with bread and butter. These incredibly, impoverished refugee camps are indeed the breeding ground for terrorism. Are we going to be there for the long haul? I hope we are. Because those suffering people, just like the suffering people of New York and Washington, the suffering people of Afghanistan are also part of the Body. We need them. And we cannot say no to them.
Tara: Tuesdays With Mori is one of my favorite books. In it, Mori is dying of Lou Gherig’s Disease, and he
is having a conversation with a former student. Toward the end of his life he shares this story: “This story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He’s enjoying the wind and the fresh air until he notices the little waves in front of him crashing against the shore. ‘My God! This is terrible,’ the wave said. ‘Look what is going to happen to me!’ Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave looking grim and it says to him. ‘Why do you look so sad?’ The little wave says, ‘You don’t understand, we are going to crash. All us waves are going to be nothing. Isn’t it terrible?’ And the second wave says, ‘No you don’t understand. You’re not a wave. You are a part of the ocean. A part of the ocean,’ he says. And he closes his eyes and breathes in slowly. A part of the ocean. We are members of the Body of Christ, a part of God’s family of faith, one part of God’s creation. In echoing the words from Thomas Merton, our task is not to become one, it is instead to remember that we are already one. We are already one. And our prayer today is that we live as one. We join our prayer with that of Jesus, who prayed that they may all be one, and we pray today that all may know that we are one. Amen.