Our diocesan convention was this past Friday and Saturday. It was a good one. We celebrated the transformation that has occurred in our diocese over the last few years, we honored five people whose ministries have been such gifts to the people of the diocese and to the larger community, we ate good food, we sang good songs—mostly, we told stories of our journeys, we heard words of wisdom, and, from our Bishop Mary, we heard both thanksgiving for all that has happened among us and a challenge to grow in citizenship in the reign of God. The bishop began her message with this poem, written by our own Karl Kadie.
MATRYOSHKA
Deep in a forest of fog
sixty miles from San Francisco,
a lifetime away from Manhattan,
at a place that seems
distant, pure, and impenetrable,
the congregation waits patiently
for coffee hour at St. Mary’s Church.
The priest picks up the matryoshka,
a set of nested Russian dolls,
raising the first and largest doll,
a smiling woman with open hands,
“See this” the priest says.
“There is no matryoshka with this alone.”
“It needs the father, the daughter,
the son, the baby,” the priest continues,
sliding each doll within the other
until the matryoshka is complete.
“Jesus asked his disciples,
Who do you say that I am,
and now I ask you the same:
Who do you say that I am?”
For a moment the congregration is still.
I close my eyes briefly and recall
a word from South Africa: Owombtu -
a person is a person through other persons.
I think of how none of us
is ever freely independent,
that the truly self sufficient person
can only be subhuman.
As Desmond Tutu once said:
“God created us for interdependence.”
Yet at a bakery in nearby Pt. Reyes
a teenage girl with an iPod and ear buds
hears nothing around her.
Further away in Bohemian Grove
a dozen international leaders
share coffee and currency values
but only with each other.
And at the Port of Oakland
a worker is midway through his shift
before he wonders how
he will pay his bills if they vote in the strike?
How can everyone be so separate,
so disconnected
from the global bus they rode in on?
The priest gently sets down the matryoshka
and addresses his breathren:
“How will the human island next to us respond,
when we ask: Who do you say that I am?
Who do you say that I am?
Who do you say that I am?”
After she read Karl’s poem, the bishop spoke of our journey together during this past year. She spoke of our companion diocese relationship with the Dioceses of Gloucester and Western Tanganyika. She spoke of the child Sadiki and the way her encounter with this wounded child in Tanzania transformed her understanding of the world. She spoke of the listening that has happened between the three dioceses during this last year and of the ways we have learned to love each other, even when we are in disagreement about the ways we live out our faith. She challenged us to look at strangers and recognize them gracefully as members of the household of God, then she asked how citizens of the same household might work together to improve the world God has made. She proclaimed 2010 as the Year of Citizenship—a year in which we are called to encounter the stranger with welcome and purposeful invitation to share in our community.
I listened to Bishop Mary—to her reading of Karl’s poem and her words that followed—against the background of our gospel for today and of a story the Rev. Michael Battle had told us during his sermon on Friday. He told us about a man rushing to make his flight for a business trip. The airport was chaotic, the lines were long, and the man and his companions were literally running to get to their plane in time. As he ran, he bumped against a vendor’s cart filled with fruit of various kinds. The fruit spilled over the sidewalk, he glanced back and continued his race to the plane. He got on the plane, but the picture of all that fruit scattered all over the pavement wouldn’t leave his mind. He told his companions there was something he needed to take care of and that he would take the next flight. He got off the plane and headed back to the fruit cart. When he got there, the vendor was still on her knees, picking up the fruit. He told her he was there to help take care of the damage he had done. That’s when he realized she was blind. He began helping her, and, as they completed the task of putting the cart back to rights, she asked him, “Sir, are you Jesus?” Our preacher reminded us that in our baptism we put on the likeness of Christ, the identity of Christ—and that’s certainly true—but for me, the story took a different direction. The story for me was a reminder that we are not Jesus. We are simply called to follow Jesus and to live as he taught us to live—with love for our God and for our neighbor. And that’s where this all comes together for me.
Seven distinct things happen in the gospel story we hear today. A blind man calls out to Jesus for mercy. Jesus stands still and tells his disciples to call the man to him. They obey, telling the man to take heart, get up, he is calling you. Bartimaeus springs up and comes to Jesus. Jesus asks him what he wants Jesus to do for him, and Bartimaeus asks that Jesus let him see again. Jesus responds that Bartimaeus’s faith has made him well.
I see the citizenship Bishop Mary speaks of laid out in this brief story. Sometimes we are the blind person waiting for Jesus. Sometimes we are the disciples whom Jesus instructs to call out to the blind. Sometimes we are the blind ones being brought to the healing Jesus offers; sometimes we are the obedient followers who call the one seeking healing into Jesus’ presence. Frequently we aren’t completely clear about just what our role is in the story.
One thing is always clear. We are not in this alone. Jesus who loved us enough to die for us—Jesus who still gives himself to us—is still saying, “Call him here. Call her here.” All of us are bound together in this—just like the figures of the Matryoska join together in wholeness, so we are bound together with those whom we meet here each week, those whom we see in our community, and those whose lives are lived so far from us that we will never see their faces. We are bound together by God who creates each of us and loves each of us.
May the love of Christ heal all of us of our blindness. May we all be messengers of the healing Christ offers to us all.
Thanks be to God.