A Different Kind of King, A Different Kind of Shepherd (Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on November 26, 2017, Christ the King Sunday)

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A King in the Making

Have you heard about the royal reshuffle in Saudi Arabia?  A young prince there, Mohammed bin Salman, is on track to become Saudi Arabia’s next king.  And he has big plans in store for his kingdom.  Whereas in the past Saudi Arabia has thrived off its oil trade and has promoted the conservative traditions of the region, the young prince envisions a kingdom booming with small businesses and a growing entertainment industry.  Mohammed has a personal taste for entertainment itself, it seems.  Reports are that he indulged himself recently with the purchase of a yacht for more than $500 million.  In addition to his economic overhaul, the prince also plans for significant social liberation.  Most notable among his plans is the increased participation of women in the workforce and in public society.  Already he has secured a momentous change: beginning next June, women will be able to drive.

As you can imagine, this young visionary has met with resistance from influential religious and social leaders.  Not to be deterred, the prince has responded with a heavy hand.  Already he has detained dozens of conservative clerics and intellectuals.  He has also arrested a number of the country’s wealthiest princes under the cover of an anti-corruption campaign.  Political experts suggest these arrests are strategic.  Not only is he eliminating future threats to his regime, he’s also sending a message.  As one pundit put it: “He’s in the driver’s seat.  And everybody else better get on with bending the knee.”[1]

A Different Kind of King

What is a king?

If Mohammed bin Salman is any indication, a king personifies power.  A king employs might and muscle to enforce his interests, whether good or bad.  For the record, I think Mohammed bin Salman has some good ideas.  But his conduct as a future king demonstrates how he intends to accomplish good: through the use of force and power against all who stand in his way.

But on this Sunday, when we celebrate Christ the King, we hear the prophet Ezekiel dream of a different kind of king.  Ezekiel talks about the king using an ancient metaphor, a metaphor that had long haunted the consciousness of the ancient Near East, a metaphor that whispered an alternative to the king of might and muscle.  The king, Ezekiel says, is a shepherd.

In the eyes of the world, the king is an imposing figure of power and self-interest.  In the eyes of God, however, the king is a caring figure of love and self-sacrifice.  Listen to the ways that God describes God’s own kingship: “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep….I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak” (34:15-16).

What King Do You Serve?

To which kind of king would you pledge your allegiance, your faithfulness?  A king of power, or a king of love?  Power promises to get its way.  It cares only for itself.  Love lays down its life for others.

A Different Kind of Shepherd

In the gospel of John, Jesus reveals that he is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:11). 

What makes Jesus the Good Shepherd, willing and able to lay down his life for others?  According to the gospel of John, long before Jesus proclaims that he is the Good Shepherd, John the Baptist declares of Jesus, “Here is the Lamb of God!” (John 1:29, 35).[2]

In other words, Jesus is a different kind of shepherd.  He gets lower than any other shepherd, actually becoming a lamb himself.  In today’s gospel text (Matt 25:31-46), Jesus identifies himself with the hungry, the stranger, the sick, and the imprisoned.  Jesus knows our every weakness and need.  He has shared it all, from the cradle to the grave.  As a homeless baby born in the feeding trough of animals.  As a convict flogged and hung high on a cross. 

It is often said that the best teachers are themselves students of life.  That the best counselors are wounded themselves.  In the same way, the Good Shepherd is a lamb who has walked where we have walked, who knows all of life and death.  The best kind of shepherd is a lamb.  So the book of Revelation declares: “The Lamb…will be their Shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life” (Rev 7:17).

A Kenotic King[3]

Paul once proclaimed that Christ emptied himself: he did not grasp onto God, but instead let go, so that he could take on flesh and blood, and not the pure flesh and blood of a leader but the bent and dirtied body of a servant.  We see the same progression in today’s metaphors, where our king keeps emptying himself.  First our king empties himself of royal power and becomes a shepherd.  Not content with that, our shepherd empties himself of pastoral control and wears the wool of his sheep. 

Perhaps it is best to stop there.  For we will very soon be entering the season of Advent, when we will be looking for the arrival of God in our world.  The good and surprising news of today is that God may be coming where we least expect, not to places of prominence and prestige but to the places in our heart and in our world that are the emptiest; coming there not with a sword of power but with a crook of care, coming there not with a pastoral fix but our pains and joys to share.

Prayer

Christ our King,

Attune our hearts

To the sound of your shepherd’s flute

And your lamb’s cry:

Sidetrack us from our quests for power,

Assuage our fear of danger,

And shepherd us to share life

With the sheep in need,

Where you wear your crown,

Where your kingdom is coming.  Amen.

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[1] “Saudi Arabia Arrests 11 Princes,” https://www.npr.org/2017/11/05/562191764/saudi-arabia-arrests-11-princes, accessed on November 21, 2017.

[2] Cf. Jean Vanier, Community and Growth (2^nd rev. ed.; New York: Paulist, 1989), 225.

[3] Kenotic refers to the Greek concept of emptying (kenosis) that Paul employs in his illustration of Jesus in Phil 2:5-11.

Betting on the Kingdom (Matthew 25:14-30)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on November 19, 2017, Proper 28)

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The Gamble of Parenthood

Many of my friends are young parents.  When they speak about their children, their speech, I’ve noticed, enters a special register.  It’s as though all of the sudden their words wear halos—even if they’re talking about dirty diapers or sleepless nights or walls now covered in a toddler’s graffiti art.  Everything about their children is sacred. 

There are few certainties about raising a child.  One thing that is certain, is the great cost.  Sleep and time and money and social life and energy and personal ambition—all are sacrificed for the sake of the child.  What is also certain is the great risk.  Will the child be born healthy?  How will she develop socially and emotionally?  Will she make friends? 

As far as I know, all my friends planned beforehand to have children.  And as far as I can tell, all of them wouldn’t change their decision for the world.  Even though the cost is inevitably greater than they expected.  Even though sometimes the risk has cut the wrong way and left them with unanticipated troubles.

It’s surprising enough to me that my friends are resolved in their decision.  But what surprises even more, is when I read the stories of parents of children with severe disabilities or children whose life was cut short.  I read recently about Peter and Barbara in Rhode Island.  Peter and Barbara had a daughter named Lauren.  Her first breath was meconium.  For a day, she lived on the respirator.  Peter still remembers that day.  How he reached clumsily toward Lauren and how she squeezed his little finger and looked into his eyes.  That day, Peter says, he saw beauty and love.  The next day, Lauren died.  Years later, Peter defiantly declares: “I miss Lauren, but I wouldn’t, if [we conceived again] and I knew this was going to happen [again], I wouldn’t wish Barbara not to be pregnant just because this was going to happen.”[1] 

I do not share Peter’s words to suggest that tragedy can be wiped away with defiant hope.  I share his words because I can hardly believe them.  Peter paid a cost far greater than any of my friends.  He risked and lost so much.  And yet he declares that he would do it all again.  Why?

That word “risk” keeps coming up.  It’s almost as though we’re talking about a gamble, a wager, as though every parent who plans for a child is nevertheless embarking on an unplannable adventure.  Every parent who plans for a child is rolling the dice. 

And with few exceptions, even when they lose, they win.  Even when they’re dealt a difficult hand, they declare it a gift.  They declare themselves grateful.

Another Kingdom Story

In today’s scripture, Jesus continues his storytelling.  Last week, remember, he told the story of a delayed wedding celebration.  He urged his disciples, “Stay awake!”  Faith is not about calculating the day or the hour when the kingdom will arrive.  Faith is about making the kingdom possible, about being ready for the kingdom whenever it arrives.  And the kingdom is near, already among us, Jesus proclaims; it could be here any minute!  It could come when we’re least expecting it: in a moment of conflict, where forgiveness could bring the kingdom; in an unwanted interruption, where hospitality could bear unexpected kingdom fruit; in the drudgery of routine, where love could help the kingdom to grow against all odds, like a flower in the cracks of the pavement. 

Today Jesus continues to talk about the kingdom.  His story is simple.  Three slaves are entrusted with their master’s money.  A lot of money.  A single talent is around twenty years’ wages: the earnings of half a lifetime.[2]  Two of the slaves are gutsy.  They make some high-risk trades and double their money.  The other slave is cautious and careful.  He keeps his talent hidden, so that there’s no danger of it being lost.

The message of the story is unquestionable.  Be like the two servants.  Not the one.

An All-Too-Human Tale

Beyond that point, though, I have a lot of questions.  The master in the story resembles a ruthless tycoon who cares more for profit than people.  Thus he casts off the careful slave, calling him “wicked” and “lazy” and “worthless.”  Is this a picture of God, the same God who we have been told again and again is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love?[3]  Is this the same God who blesses the poor in spirit?  And the world of today’s story resembles a heartless meritocracy, where people are judged on their performance and receive rewards or punishment accordingly.  Is this a picture of the kingdom of God, the same kingdom of God that brings down the powerful and lifts up the lowly?

Like last week’s parable, this is another story that begs for careful attention.  If we take it too literally, then we end up with a God who looks more like a merciless Wall Street investor than a merciful father, and a kingdom that looks more like a competition of the fittest than a gathering of the broken.

My hunch is that this is another case of Jesus telling stories with relatable, all-too-human characters.  In other words, his audience would have been familiar with absentee landowners expecting big returns from their underpaid servants.  The story itself that Jesus tells is nothing new.  What is new, is what Jesus is suggesting about faith.

The Risk of Faith

When our back is up against the wall, as were the backs of Jesus and his Jewish audience, and as are the backs of many churches today, the impulse is self-preservation.  Faith becomes about survival: in our case, about sustaining the brick-and-mortar church or the programs that have traditionally run inside it or the people that fill its pews.  But Jesus seems to have a very different sort of faith in mind.

For me, the key to the story is the wild amount of money that the servants are entrusted with and their response.  If you were entrusted with half a million dollars belonging to someone else, would you then invest it in high-risk trades?  Or would you hide it, to ensure a full return?

To be sure, Jesus isn’t giving an economics lecture on investment.  Elsewhere he has very little good to say about the practices of saving up and seeking profit.[4]  He’s talking here about the kingdom.  He’s telling a story about faith.  And apparently faith is filled with risk.  It’s not something we hide and hang on to, something that we save in hopes that it will later save us.  Faith is a venture into abundant life now.  It’s always calling for more—more love, more forgiveness, more hospitality.  It’s a gamble, a wager, a bet.  Which means that it might not come off the way we hope.  Just looks at Jesus’ life.  Most of the world would consider the cross a great loss, a heavy cost, regardless of what comes after.

And Yet…

If Jesus’ story today is any indication, the kingdom of God will not result from safe, well-calculated investments.  Jesus certainly didn’t make a safe bet himself.  The kingdom of God, according to Christ, will come in the wild wagers that we make in love and forgiveness, generosity and hospitality.  We may lose these bets, as Jesus did.  And yet….

It strikes me that the risky faith Jesus proclaims, looks quite similar to the gamble of parenthood.  The point is not winning.  The point is the risk itself, that even when you lose, you win, because the risk itself exposes you to a life-giving love.  I think of Peter who had his daughter Lauren for only one day, whose grief is deeper than any I have ever known.  He paid a great cost.  He risked and lost.  And yet….

Prayer

Loving God,

In Jesus Christ

We see

The risk of life

And the hope of your kingdom:

Stir us to make daily

The holy bet of faith,

To take our chances

On love and forgiveness

As you have done.

Amen.

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[1] Christopher De Vinck, The Power of the Powerless (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 56.

[2] R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 703.

[3] Cf. Ex. 34:6; Num 14:18; Neh 9:17; Ps 86:5, 15; 103:8; 145:8; Jonah 4:2.

[4] E.g., Luke 12:13-21; 14:33; 18:18-24.

Practice Makes Possible (Matthew 25:1-13)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on November 12, 2017, Proper 27)

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The Practice of Introductions,

The Possibility of Friendship

Growing up, ice cream was a treat.  Normally my bedtime snack would be a simpler affair.  Toast and jam, maybe.  Or a cookie and milk.

I still remember the day that my mom made a deal with my brother and me.  Instructing us on the importance of making introductions, of looking people in the eye and offering our hand and saying, “It’s nice to meet you,” she agreed to reward us with ice cream every time we made an introduction.  Now, my brother’s the extrovert, so I feel like this deal favored him a bit more.  But that’s beside the point.  With ice cream on the other end, even I could find it in me to make a proper introduction.

I am grateful for all the practice that resulted from this delicious dairy experiment.  As it turns out, looking people in the eye or offering your hand or saying something nice is often what turns strangers into friends.  Sometimes I wonder if I would have the friends that I have today, if my mom had not first instructed me in this practice.

They say, “Practice makes perfect.”  In my experience, that’s not true.  I can still be quite clumsy in my introductions.  In my experience, practice makes possible.  All that practice—and ice cream!—from my childhood is what has made possible some amazing friendships.

The Practice of Faith,

The Possibility of the Kingdom

In today’s scripture, Jesus tells a parable about the kingdom of God.  “Keep awake,” he urges at the end of the parable, “for you know neither the day nor the hour” (25:13).  Throughout the centuries, Christians have speculated on the “when” of Christ’s return.  But here Jesus makes his point pretty clear.  Don’t worry about the day or the hour.  Stay awake!  The coming of God’s kingdom is “not a ‘when’ to be calculated, but a ‘how’ to be lived.”[1]

In other words, practice makes possible.  Just as the practice of eye contact and handshaking and introducing made me ready for the sudden arrival of a new friend, so the practice of faith makes us ready for the kingdom.  If we are practicing hospitality to strangers, forgiving our enemies, loving others for no good reason—if we are practicing all these things that make up the way of Christ—then when the kingdom comes, we will be ready for it. 

Traditionally we think of the kingdom coming as a once-and-for-all event, the endpoint of all time.  But I wonder if Jesus has something simpler in mind here.  Elsewhere, he says that the kingdom is near, that it is in fact already among us, within us (cf. Luke 17:21, 31).  It’s almost as though he’s saying that the kingdom is always a possibility, just as friendship is always a possibility.  What matters—what determines whether a stranger becomes a friend, or whether the world is transformed into the kingdom—is whether we are practicing or not.  Practice makes possible.  Welcoming strangers and forgiving old grudges and loving people who give us no good reason to: these are not things we only do once we’re in the kingdom.  They’re what we do in order to make the kingdom possible, in order to be ready for it when it arrives.

And I wonder if the kingdom isn’t arriving when we least expect it: in conflicts and interruptions and the daily drone of our lives.  For it’s precisely in these moments that forgiveness and hospitality and love make a difference.  Remember the parable of the prodigal son, where the wasteful and ungrateful son comes to ruin and then returns to his father?  Is it only the son who returns?  Is it not also the kingdom that arrives that day?  And the father is ready.  The father forgives his son, and for a brief moment, we catch a glimpse of the kingdom.  The father made it possible.

Readiness Cannot Be Shared

I’ll have to admit, though, that today’s parable does not wrap up neatly.  If the point is that we must practice our faith to make the kingdom possible, then why is today’s story full of characters who have such bad practice, whose behavior is the very opposite of the way of Christ?  Jesus said, “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you” (Matt 5:42; cf. Luke 6:35).  So why do the “wise” bridesmaids refuse to share their oil?  And Jesus preached forgiveness and urged his followers, “Don’t judge” and “Don’t condemn” (Luke 6:37).  So why does the groom in the story respond so resentfully toward the unprepared bridesmaids, refusing them entry to the wedding?  If people actually modeled their behavior on the wise bridesmaids and the groom, it’s hard to imagine how the kingdom of love and forgiveness that Jesus proclaims would ever arrive. 

To me, today’s parable illustrates the danger of reading too literally.  If you’ll recall, there are other parables with troubling characters too, kings who return violence with violence (e.g., Matt 22:1-14) and rulers who slaughter their citizens with little cause (e.g., Luke 19:11-27).  My guess is that Jesus is telling flesh-and-blood sorts of tales, perhaps stories of events that actually happened—certainly stories that people could relate to.  In today’s case, it would be all-too-human, all-too-understandable, for a handful of bridesmaids to secure their own ticket to the party at the exclusion of others.  Likewise, it would all-too-human for a resentful groom to exclude guests because they didn’t care enough to prepare for a change in plans.

The point, then, is not necessarily to model our behavior on the characters’.  We’ve already seen how much their conduct deviates from the way of Christ.  The point, I think, has to do with Jesus’ conclusion: “Stay awake therefore.”  If Jesus is proclaiming that practice makes us ready, makes a new world possible, then the bridesmaids’ refusal to share and the groom’s refusal to open the door makes a lot more sense.  These refusals are an illustration, a metaphor, for what it means to be out of practice.  If you are out of practice, there’s nothing that can be shared to help you, there’s no last-minute adjustment that can be made to make your ready.  Readiness cannot be shared.  It must be cultivated through patient practice.

An Alternate Ending

Jesus was always playing with old stories, giving them new twists.  So I trust he’ll understand if I do the same.  I wonder what today’s story would look like if its characters were not all-too-human, if they actually practiced the way of Christ.

Imagine with me for a moment that the wise bridesmaids share their oil with the foolish bridesmaids.  And then, no one has enough oil.  But the bridegroom welcomes them all anyway because in the kingdom of God, that’s what you do.[2]  That’s the practice.  In the kingdom of God, grudges are dropped, the needful are lifted up, and outsiders are welcomed.

The kingdom of God turns no one away.  The question is not, Will we have enough of this or that, or, Will we look presentable enough to the host?  The question is simpler: Will we see the kingdom?  Will we appreciate it?  My mom taught me how to see a friend in a stranger, how to practice eye contact and offering my hand in order to open up that possibility.  In the same way, the kingdom is always coming, but we’ll never see it and appreciate it if we’re not already practicing its ways.  “Keep awake therefore”—keep giving and forgiving, welcoming and loving, for in this way we make the kingdom and its abundant life possible.  In this way we are ready when it arrives.

Prayer

Loving Lord,

Friend of sinners—

May the holy chance

Of your kingdom

Captivate our hearts

And inspire our bodies

To practice the ways

That make it possible.

Amen.

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[1] John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 140.

[2] I am indebted to Lauren F. Winner for this imagined alternative ending.  See Winner, “The Parable of Five Catty, Hard-Hearted, Virgins,” http://thq.wearesparkhouse.org/yeara/ordinary32gospel/, accessed November 7, 2017.

The Blessing of the Least: Or, Who Is Saving Whom? (Matthew 5:1-12)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on November 5, 2017, All Saints' Sunday)

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“Help Yourself First”

D. L. Mayfield grew up wanting to be a missionary.  She wanted to travel overseas to strange and wonderful lands, to save all the innocent souls who had never heard the name of Jesus.

She tells the story of a mission trip she took to India when she was seventeen.  Her group visited a tiny village to perform a play.  It was a drama, she says, “about the temptations of money and women and alcohol, and how Jesus has the power to overcome them.”  Never mind that this village was dirt poor.

She remembers eating dinner in the village before the play.  Sitting on a swept dirt floor, she and her traveling companions ate the rice and curry that had been carefully prepared by a scrawny old woman with only a few teeth left intact. The curry was “hot-as-hell,” she recalls, and seemed to be composed of little more than okra.  Having heard that spice is often used to disguise rotting vegetables, she was thankful for the fire in her mouth.  She cooled it as best she could with the tall metal cup of water, which must have been drawn from a well outside the village.

Later in the evening, after she and the team had performed their play and no one had come forward at the altar call, they climbed into their SUV and rolled out of the dusty village back to their flat in the city.  On the way home, their guide and interpreter remarked in his singsong voice: “That was their one meal of the day, and they shared it with you.”  Mayfield recalls how bitter those words tasted: “This was normal for [our guide],” she says, “this display of generosity. But for me, it was my first meal given to me by someone who would then do without; it was the first time I ate rice that was destined for another stomach….I remembered the children milling around while we ate, the way their eyes watched our faces. It was their dinner we ate, pretending to be missionaries. The shame I felt tasted like bile.”[1]

Mayfield doesn’t explain why she felt shame, but she doesn’t need to.  We all can identify with her feeling.  If she had known what this family was doing, she would have protested.  She would have refused their one meal of the day.  And if she and her team had been in the little village longer, perhaps they would have gone a step further and taught the families how to save what they had, perhaps even how to invest it and multiply it, so that instead of living from day to day they could secure their future. 

After all, that is the way of our world.  All of us who are privileged enough to have flown on an airplane have heard it put this way: “In the case of emergency, secure your own oxygen mask first before helping others.”  If you don’t help yourself first, you may not be there to help someone else.

Who Really Needs Saving?

But something strange happened to Mayfield.  At first, she had thought she was the one doing the saving.  So she felt shame.  What kind of missionary would steal a meal from a dirt-poor family?  But the more she reflected on her time in India, the more she realized that she wasn’t the one saving.  She was the one being saved.  “Everyone,” she reflects, “[was] poor as far as my eyes could see. And yet, the generosity in which seemingly everyone moved changed me: how they adored bright colors and dramatic movies and soaring operatic songs and spicy food. Although it was deemed little by the world I had grown up in, it seemed to me that all of India was willing to share what they had.”[2]

In other words, her dirt-poor hosts already seemed to be living in the kingdom.  Faith, hope, love—these were not just things they read about or practiced in their free time, or on Sundays, after they had secured their own lives.  These were the very things their lives depended on.  How else do you give away your only meal for the day, if not in faith that your own needs will be met, if not in hopeful joy for the life your gift will bring, if not in love for the other.

A Conversion Story:

From Saviors to Saved

“The least of these” can sound patronizing and condescending.  The least don’t have as much we do.  They don’t know as much.  They don’t achieve as much. 

When Jesus promised last week that he dwelled among “the least of these,” and that whatever we did unto them, we did unto him—we may have left thinking: “Easy enough.  Jesus is calling us to charity.  Jesus is calling us to help the least of these.”  In other words, we may have left feeling big-hearted and better off, thinking it was our duty to pull up those below us.

But is this way of thinking anything special?  Is it even Christian?  Many people advocate for charity and helping others.  And many of them are the same people “obsessed with staying safe and securing a good life for themselves, protecting their borders and procuring a retirement account.”[3]  I count myself among this crowd, and I’m not proud of it.  Because I’m not so sure it’s Christian simply to take care of ourselves first and then help others.  I’m not so sure it’s Christian simply to help the least of these—when helping them means making them more like us.  Making sure that they don’t give away their only meal for the day, that they know how to save or invest.

What Jesus says today points in the opposite direction.  The least don’t need our saving so much as we need theirs.  Blessed are they, Jesus says.  They might not have as much, “know” as much, or accomplish as much.  But in their life is a faith and hope and love that the secure and self-satisfied will never know.  Who can appreciate the promise of a feast more than the hungry?  Who knows what it is to trust, to have faith, better than someone unable to provide for himself?  Who can truly love another person for who they are, other than the meek who surrender their own interests to others?

To be clear, I don’t think Jesus is saying that the least don’t need help—food when they’re hungry or care when they’re sick.  I think what he’s saying today is that the least are calling for more than our help: they’re calling for our hearts, for us to be converted to their life of blessing, for us to walk alongside them and discover their salvation. 

Saved by the Saints, Saved by the Least

On All Saints’ Sunday, we remember and celebrate the Christ-followers who have gone before us.  Their lives shine like candles, like stars in the night guiding us on the way (cf. Phil 2:15).  The powers and principalities of our world—the media, business executives, government leaders—proclaim a rational way of living: fill yourself first, then others.  Save and save and save, until you’ve got some extra to give.

But the saints we celebrate—parents and grandparents, teachers and mentors, friends and strangers—remind us of a different way.  What we remember today is their Christ-likeness: how they lived selflessly, perhaps giving us their only meal one day, or perhaps simply putting down the paper to look full in our eyes.  What we remember, oddly enough, are not their great accomplishments but their “leastness.”  Maybe we remember the poverty of spirit with which they laid their own interests aside.[4]  Maybe we remember their mercy and meekness, by which they loved others lavishly and for no good reason.  Or maybe we remember how they hungered and thirsted to see others living well, how they would not rest until others did.

Whatever exactly we remember, we give thanks for having shared in their blessing.  And we give thanks for our salvation, which comes not from on high but from on low, from the least of these, who lead us in the way of faith.

Prayer

Little Christ,

Who lives in the least

Not so much to be saved

As to save:

May the memory

Of our saints

And their poverty

Convert us

From selfishness

To the way of faith.  Amen.

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[1] D. L. Mayfield, Assimilate or Go Home: Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering Faith (New York: HarperOne, 2016), 173.

[2] Mayfield, Assimilate, 174

[3] Mayfield, Assimilate, 185-186.

[4] Oscar Romero, a saint of El Salvador whom I remember today, once remarked that “dialogue is characterized by poverty”; it is “becoming poor to seek with another the truth.”  Perhaps what we remember of our saints is simply their words, which did not dethrone us but treated us as equals, as companions.