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| Remembering Our Names |
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(Please feel free to email a response or a question) May 17, 2009 Acts 10: 44-48; John 15: 9-17 May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, who sent your word to live among us. Amen. Way back in the 1920s, the American economy was on a roll. “The Roaring 20s,” we call it. And then came the not-so-roaring 30s, and the Great Depression. People who had been riding high, those who had been the toast of the town, might now be standing in a breadline, feeling dejected and pretty anonymous. If you’ve ever had a chance to visit the FRD Memorial in Washington, D.C, you can stand right next to a moving sculpture of one of those bread lines. There’s a song from that era that captures that feeling. And it’s a song that has lived through many eras, been sung by many artists because it captures the blues one feels when life gets turned upside. So look at these words from “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” Once I lived the life of a millionaire, Spent all my money, didn’t have any care, Took all my friends out for a mighty good time, We bought bootleg liquor, champagne and wine Then I began to fall so low Lost all my good friends, had no where to go If I get my hand on a dollar again I'm hangin’ on to it until that old eagle's green Nobody knows you when you’re down and out In your pocket not one penny And as to friends, you don’t have many But when you get back on your feet again Everybody wants to be your long lost friend I said it’s strange, without any doubt, Nobody knows you when you down and out When you lose your job, you can feel like nobody knows you anymore. You can feel that not only your paycheck is gone, but so is your identity. When your income gets cut, you can no longer do the things you once did with family or with friends. You can feel that the person you once were has disappeared along with your income. You’re not sure who you are anymore. You may not even want people to know you right about then. Your image of yourself has changed and you’re pretty sure the image others have of you has changed as well – and not for the better. You are just feeling down and out. Nobody knows you when you’re down and out In your pocket not one penny And as to friends, you don’t have many But when you get back on your feet again Everybody wants to be your long lost friend I said it’s strange, without any doubt, Nobody knows you when you down and out In the Gospel reading we heard this morning, Jesus is talking with his followers on that night before he would be killed. He knew the world was closing in around him, and surely his disciples had some sense of that as well. Everything they had built their lives around these last few years was about to crumble. Who would they be after this weekend? You are my friends, Jesus tells them. He had been their leader, their teacher. They were followers, students. It had not been an equal relationship. And now Jesus was changing the equation. You are my friends, Jesus tells them. They would still have to learn what that means. When Jesus was down and out as the Romans led him to the cross, his friends for the most part ran for cover. But even as he was dying, Jesus was reaching out to others – the women on the road, the criminal on the cross next to him, the few family and friends who stood by on the hill, even the soldiers who were executing him. You are my friends, Jesus told his followers around that table as they shared bread and wine one last time. He was not just their friend. His love for them was so deep that he would face death for their sake. He would show them what it means to love. It’s not something soft and squishy and romantic. It’s very tough stuff. It’s giving up your life for someone else. All around us these days, there are people who are discovering what it means to be down and out. They are not just people out there. They are people in here, in our families, in our neighborhoods. State employees have learned in the past week that their income is going to take a hit. Employees in private companies in this area have already take income hits like that. Some have lost their job. Car dealerships across the country are losing their franchises. Retail stores have closed. Health care facilities are freezing positions. More is being demanded of those who still have jobs. And those who still have jobs feel the emptiness where people used to work next to them. And this is just the impact on those who have had some economic security. Imagine the impact this is having on those already living on the economic margins, on those who have been working in sweatshop jobs or scorching fields or who have had no job at all. There are plenty of people feeling down and out. There are plenty of people wondering who will be their friends if they no longer can afford the good times of the past. When the Gospel of John was being written, perhaps some 60 to 80 years after Jesus’ was with his followers, the Christian community was a pretty threatened group of people. Their temptation surely would have been to turn inward, love God and each other and just concentrate on their own survival. What the author of this version of the Last Supper was reminding those early Christians is that Jesus’ message was about much more than their own survival. “So as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love,” he tells them. “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” Command sounds like a pretty harsh word, but remember what Jesus said was the essence of the law: love God and love your neighbor as yourself. These are not complicated commandments, even if they present a challenge to us every day of our lives. So Jesus talks about God’s love, about his own love for his friends and he pulls them into his way of living – a way defined by love, a love so great that it is willing to sacrifice life itself. He invites his friends to abide in his love, to be part of him and then to live the way he has modeled for them – and us. During Scripture and Scones this week, one of the participants talked about how she had gone to church for many years, but one Sunday, she realized she had been more of a churchgoer than a Christian – one who lives in the way of Jesus. What would it look like for us in this time of economic anxiety to live as if we were Christians? How would it affect the way we approach life if the economic supports under us were shaky or gone? How would it affect the way we look out for each other and the way we try to make a difference in the wider community? How would it affect the way we try to shape policies in business and government for the future? How much of our own security are we willing to lay down for our friends? One place to start is to remember that no matter how badly things may be going for us or for anyone else, our worth is not defined by our job or by our wealth. Those things may be important, but they are not what give us our ultimate value. We may fear that if we are down and out, nobody will know our name, but God always knows our name. We always have value in the sight of God. A second place is to look for ways those of us gathered here can support each other. Lots of folks are doing that already informally, but today, we are also starting something a little more organized. Cheryl Porier-Mayhew is starting a group called Job Seekers Together. Its first gathering will be in the library after the 10 a.m. service. It’s a chance for people who are either out of a job or seeking some other employment to share ideas and resources over the months ahead. And as we encounter others in our lives who are feeling down and out, who are pretty sure nobody knows their name any more, one of the most important things we can do is to make sure they know that they are not forgotten, that we do know their names, that we care about them. They may think that the folks who have gotten their applications have forgotten their names, that the people who handle their finances have put a lot of other names ahead of them on the call list, that the world thinks they have just moved into obscurity until they can get back on their feet again. But God knows them, without any doubt. And when we abide in God, and God’s love abides in us, then we can make sure those we encounter along the way have a sense that whatever happens to them in the world of work and income, God’s love and our love is there with them. That’s what it means to be a friend, after all. Jesus called us his friends … and called us to live out the life of love that defined who he was. That’s how we define ourselves as followers of Jesus this day and every day. |