The Trajectory from the Kitchen

The Trajectory from the Kitchen--February 22, 2017

"For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore as your heavenly Father is perfect." [Matthew 5:46-48]

I was driving home last night from the church, when the saints helped me through a sticky situation.

I don't mean any "saints" in the sense of little collectible figurines of long-dead medieval men and women in brown robes (although, in fairness, we Christians should be honest and admit that for a good chunk of the last two thousand years, we have used the word "saint" to means something like a Pokémon-style set of characters with individual special powers and abilities, whom you might unleash for different sets of problems).  I mean it was the faces of other sisters and brothers in Christ, whose lives and stories and compassion and struggles and examples I know, that helped me to see my course on a dark back road last night.

Again, I realize that might sound far more mystical or spooky than I intend it to sound.  Let be back up.  I was driving down the back roads from the church last night, just after a gathering of about two dozen folks who had shared a meal and Bible study and conversation together up there.  And after the meal and the ending prayer holding hands in a circle, I was struck by how many of those gathered had helped out.  Some had brought food.  Some had stayed late to help clean up dishes or gather up the extra papers.  Some were catching up on the needs of others as they talked.  But in all of these little moments, these little actions were not like customers leaving a movie theater or diners leaving a restaurant.  These were the actions of people who were taking little steps out of their way, beyond their own comfort or convenience, and taking time out of what little remained in their day.  There was no parade or trumpet fanfare announcing their additional help--it was just part of their own care for one another and for the group gathered.  It's just "what you do" in a church family, they would have all said, if someone had interviewed them, and they would have all thought it strange to even ask.  It becomes natural, you could say, the way setting the table at your house before dinner becomes the natural routine at your house.

In any case, there I was, headed home after all that clean-up was done, down the same back road that some of those other saints might have themselves taken ten or fifteen minutes before when they left the building that night.  And the unspoken gestures, the willingness to be led beyond what was comfortable or convenient, that was still all simmering in the back of my head as I turned down a bend in the road and saw a vehicle, a minivan, slowed to a stop in the road, and then pulling over to the edge.

Well, I'll be honest with you.  My very VERY first thought as I saw brake lights up ahead was, "Am I going to be able to get through? What is going on up there--this is usually a deserted stretch of road by a quarter of nine at night."  As I got a bit closer and saw that it was not a car accident or a deer, and it wasn't near anybody's house that someone might have been pulling into their home for the night, a second thought entered my head: "Could that be anybody from the church?" And my brain scanned through my mental recollection of who had been there at our gathering that night, and what kinds of cars I had seen in the lot, and I realized that, no, this was not going to be any of the people I had just seen up at the church. 

You know how trains of thought get going--it starts out slow and builds momentum as one thought leads to another.  But as my brain shifted from thinking, "Oh, I wonder if one of the church folks is stuck and needs a ride or a call to a tow truck or something..." to a different line of thinking: "This is going to be a stranger here... pulling over by the side of the road... relatively late in the evening... on a back gravel road... who might be doing something unsavory or illegal..." it occurred to me that it didn't exactly matter whether I knew if this was going to be someone I knew or not.  If my thought a second ago was that I should roll down my window and see if a church member needed assistance by the road, well, it seemed like I should make the same inquiry even if it wasn't someone from the church.  The critical issue was not whether the person at the roadside was a card-carrying member of my church, or whether I knew them, or whether they might one day be in a position to pay me back by helping me when my car was stranded at the roadside--the question was whether or not they had a need.  I knew that because I had just seen that lived by so many faces of the saints who helped clean up a meal, wash dishes, or put things away.  I had just lived through seeing people go practically on automatic pilot, like it was second nature, going out of their way, going to extra trouble, taking extra time, being inconvenienced by helping without being asked.  And that lived example I had just seen from a handful of ordinary saints started a trajectory for me.

Well, the thing about trajectories is that they start at one spot and keep moving in that same direction, following the same curve.  And it occurred to me that the example I had seen lived out in the church social hall a few minutes before was not simply an example of "We take care of our own... period." but rather, "We are people who are willing, without thought for what's-in-it-for-me, to be inconvenienced or take time for someone else who has the need... because that is what the followers of Jesus do."  I realized that the right lesson to learn from what I had seen in the church kitchen was decidedly not, "Christians help out other Christians" or "Church members stay after to clean up because they have a vested interest in keeping their own church kitchen clean." But rather those faces of the saints were setting me on a course now in this next situation for the next person who might or might not need help.  (Again, this is all flashing through my brain before I have even made it up to the side of the van at the edge of the road, so I hadn't made it up to the vehicle yet to roll down my window to ask.)  But the trajectory was set--love that starts within the in-group members doesn't stay put there--it follows an arc up and outward like a rocket... even sometimes when it is headed down the hill and around the bend in the road.

So I get to the van, decide that the small acts of graciousness I have just witnessed back the church are pushing me to hit the window-down button in the car door, and I call out to the van's occupants (who also have their windows down on this eerily warm February evening), and I ask, "Is everything all right?"  Granted, Shakespeare or Wordsworth, it was not.  Just the simplest, most straightforward question I could ask.  But the example I had just seen in the church kitchen wasn't about "flair" or "drama" or poetry--it was just simple, straightforward love-in-action.  Drying dishes requires nothing flowery, and asking if the van by the roadside needs help is the same, I think.

Well, the driver, charming fella that he was, just grinned and shouted back something profane that I will not repeat here.  (Let this put to rest once and for all the lie that "country folk" are statistically nicer or that "country living" is unequivocally a gentler, kinder way of life. It appears to me that honesty requires us to say that there are jerks in the city, in the suburbs, and on the back road in the woods, and that there are plenty of heartbreaking stories of drug abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse, and heartbreaking poverty in rural America as there are in urban America.  Jesus has not come to save us by moving us all to a big farm, it turns out.)  Anyhow, of course, I can only guess at what unpleasant reason I was greeted with such open hostility--they may well have been doing, or about to do, something questionable, but I had no evidence other than rudeness.  And of course, as our public life is making me increasingly aware, it is not a crime to be rude or a jerk... and that was all I had on these guys in the van.  So I had no evidence of anything untoward or illicit that would warrant calling the state police to check out a back road based on an anonymous tip of a case of "first degree rudeness."  At that point, all I could do was roll my window back up and drive on.  Well, I could have yelled back or said something equally profane back (people think preachers don't know the words that get bleeped on television, but I assure you, we know them--we just try to be judicious about when they are, or are not, called for).  But the faces of those saints from up in the church kitchen kept me from escalating things.  It wasn't because I feared for my safety if I stayed to argue with these classy gents in their van--if safety were the concern, I had already crossed that bridge by stopping in the first place.  But rather, it was the love I had seen up the hill around the kitchen cabinets and sinks--it was in having seen people think a thing was worth doing regardless of the inconvenience, regardless of whether they got noticed for it, and regardless of whether they had been asked or told to help in the first place.  It was that example that showed me, quite clearly, that this exercise on the back road was worth it regardless of how it ended--the real question was not whether the people in the van "deserved" someone stopping to ask if they needed help, or whether any help was needed in the first place.  The crucial thing was the way love leads you to set aside your own person Plan A to be temporarily inconvenienced, or slowed down, or pulled out of your comfort zone.  I had just seen that happen with saints drying dishes and wrapping up food containers--I could, in the words of another old saint, "do no other" when I was the one on the way down the road seeing a situation that might need a small act of mercy.  Whether my help was needed or not, whether I was able to help or shooed away was not the issue.  It was about following the trajectory of love that had already begun.

This is what Jesus has been pulls us into all along.  The Reign of God is made of such small moments, such small actions.  Sometimes it is about the willingness and the offer is not needed--but it is there.  Sometimes it is in acts that go unnoticed by most of the people most of the time.  Sometimes it is for people we know and care about--but just as much the Reign of God leads us outward along the same trajectory of love to be present for people we will never see again, or people who meet our offer only with rudeness.  Love leads me outward from myself, from what was my Plan A, my will, and my own comfort... into something wider.  The point is not to get to be the hero or the savior--it is only to follow the trajectory of love, always outward, always forward, including more and more.

The faces of the saints taught me that... but their love did not stay pent up inside the church building.  That was the whole point. 

Lord Jesus, let your love, bounced around among the lives of your people, lead us always outward, always beyond, always further out.