The State of the Church

Texts: Romans 12:9-21; John 15: 12-17

January 28, 2007

In case you missed it, there was a little speech given in town last Tuesday evening. It happened to coincide with the day of our January meeting of National Capital Presbytery. So, on the same day, I got updated on the state of the union and the state of the Presbytery.

I will resist all temptation to compare the two, other than to note that we were told that the state of the union is strong, while the state of the Presbytery is, on balance, somewhat in debt and somewhat conflicted.

I suppose it is always the temptation of any leader to report that the state of things under his or her purview is strong and solid, but having given considerable thought to this, I think it is more accurate, in describing life at Clarendon Presbyterian Church, to say that the state of the church is faithful.

To risk that in Latin: ecclesia fideles. We are the church faithful; and we are rightly so described because we are also ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda – the church reformed and always reforming according to the movement of the Spirit and the will of God.

So what does it mean to say that we are the church faithful here in 2007? What are the signs of our faithfulness these past 12 months? What signs of faithfulness should we look for in the months ahead?

Let me share some of the good news from the past 12 months, and some sense about where God is calling us in faithfulness in the year ahead.

First, let’s celebrate the good news.

Let’s celebrate the readily apparent fact that we are growing, and today have received into membership a gifted group of newcomers to our community.

Let’s celebrate the fact that we worshipped together on 53 Sundays last year and that total attendance was almost 3,000; or that, in a congregation of 70 members our attendance averaged more than ¾ of our membership – a figure that even megachurches would envy.

Let’s celebrate that Bud, Martin, Samantha and Sarah were confirmed into membership and that Lenka was baptized.

Let’s celebrate that these beautiful stained-glass windows were restored and should shine like a beacon in this neighborhood for decades to come.

Let’s celebrate that our playground has been transformed – by our mission partners in the child care center – into an Arlington jewel.

Let’s celebrate that dozens of you shared in worship leadership, thanks in no small part to the wonderful administrative ministry of Carl Layno.

Let’s celebrate that we filled more than 1,000 bags of groceries for our neighbors in need, thanks in no small part to the energy and enthusiasm of Bobbie and Melissa.

Let’s celebrate that our ministry of healing and wholeness has been greatly augmented by our new mission partner, the Center for Pastoral Care.

Let’s celebrate that our ministry of justice continues to let our light shine down in Richmond and all across Northern Virginia where we are widely recognized as a clear, strong and consistent voice for equity and justice.

Let’s celebrate that we’ve created an innovative on-line adult education program, and that the blog that hosts it has been visited more than 2,000 times during the past year.

Let’s celebrate because, by the grace of God, we are rejoicing in hope, being patient in suffering, persevering in prayer … we are rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep and living in harmony with one another … we are overcoming evil with good.

One year ago we set out on a new way of organizing life and leadership at CPC by creating a smaller, flatter session structure. With the fits and starts of any such change we are learning to live into this new structure. We have lodged the work of the church in four functional ministry teams, three of which are headed by current members of session. Those three are the Christian education and worship team, the mission and outreach team, and the facilities and personnel team. The fourth team is finance. You can pretty much tell by the names the broad areas these teams cover.

The work of these teams continues to be guided by our mission and arranged according to mission-driven areas of focus. What does that high-toned jargon mean?

Well, it means that in all we do here we are mindful that “all are welcome at Clarendon Presbyterian Church” – and we mean all and we mean in all aspects of the life of the community. “We are a community that tries to reflect the love and justice of the gospel of Jesus Christ” – and so we study the gospel and reflect on it, and we try to shape our common life according to Jesus’ call to love and to do justice. “We invite those with faith and with doubts to join us” – which means at least two things: 1) that we see doubt as part of the life of faith, that questions are important, that we seek to love God with our hearts and with our minds; and 2) that we understand that God delights in upsetting our orthodoxies, that our creeds are always provisional and our confessions preliminary. So, we invite everyone to “join us as seekers of God’s amazing and inclusive grace and truth.” In other words, the heart of the gospel – that God so loves the world – is meant for everyone.

That’s our mission, as written every Sunday on the front of the bulletin and as recited in our welcome each week.

Based on that stated mission and our identity as a people called by God to be a progressive, inclusive and diverse community of Christians, recalling the work of the 2002 congregational revisioning process, and the work of session over the past three years, the present session outlined four areas of focus to guide our common life in the coming year. I recall that history to underscore that this vision comes from the life of this community dating back more than five years.

The focus areas are:

• Enhancing our life together as a community;
• Enriching how we worship and grow spiritually as a community;
• Answering our call to reach beyond our walls in “hands-on-relational” outreach; and
• Caring for and stewarding our facilities and space, aligned with our stated mission.

For those of you who pay excruciatingly close attention to such things, you will have noticed a few changes in this list from the previous two years. First, we have moved from exploring how we worship to enriching that aspect of our lives. We have convened several groups to study worship and spiritual practices, and we are already enhancing worship life by involving ever more of you in worship leadership.

Similarly, for the past several years we focused on discerning our call to outreach. We have done that remarkably well. Now it is time to answer the call that we have discerned.

Likewise, the final area of focus has moved in the past year from a planning and visioning phase to an action phase, and that will continue and be greatly enhanced by the creation of an endowment fund.

That process should begin very soon, as we anticipate closing this week on the property sale that was initially approved by you one year ago.

At this point, I feel like I might owe an apology to folks who came in this morning expecting a sermon and may now feel like they are instead listening to the “annual report” of the CEO. Well, let me assure you that I am not a CEO – and heaven help the corporation that hired me for that job!

While there is a sense in which we are, of course, an incorporated body, a non-profit organization, an institution, in a larger and deeper sense, if we are a body, it is the body of Christ in the world. The earliest Christians were called, simply, the people of the way, and to the extent that we can recapture that essential identification we are more of a movement than an institution.

At the Presbytery meeting last week, our General Presbyter Wilson Gunn shared a definition of the church that he picked up somewhere along the way: “The church is a group of people who agrees to overlook the same sinfulness in each other.”

In a profound sense, that observation reveals our deepest hope. For we are not a voluntary association of like-minded individuals, not an affiliation of folks who would most naturally hang out with one another, not, for certain, a group of perfect people. Instead, we are a body called into being by God, trusting in God’s grace and mercy and seeking to follow God’s call and claim on our lives, drawn together by the spirit working in our midst. We did not choose, but we were chosen for this place and this moment.

We say of ourselves that we are a progressive, inclusive and diverse body. But sometimes we question that identity, looking around at ourselves and seeing folks who mostly look like us, speak the same language, and share – in a global sense – a common affluence.

But let’s do a brief social science experiment.

By show of hands, how many of you trace your family roots in the United States back at least 150 years? How many of you can trace those roots in this country back 200 or more years? How many of you are first- or second-generation immigrants? How many of you can trace part of your family tree back to people who are actually native to this land, Native Americans?

Now, how many of you grew up in the Presbyterian Church? How many grew up Roman Catholic? How many grew up in non-Christian households? How many Lutherans? Methodists? Baptists? Others?

With just two categories of inquiry you can see that we are, in fact, fairly diverse. And we haven’t even begun to explore categories of taste or opinion about issues that press in on our common life. For example, I am willing to bet that if we did a survey of favorite hymns and least favorite hymns in our hymnal we could pretty much cancel out all music. Same with opinion samples of any given sermon or worship service.

Much of that has to do, in fact, with that first set of distinctions: where we come from and where our church roots developed. We are, in fact, quite diverse.

And, as with any community, that diversity is a source of richness always waiting to be tapped, but also a source of tension always residing somewhere near to the surface as our expectations of church – formed so strongly by early experience – are either met or not in the day to day living of this congregation.

Nevertheless – whether your expectations are consistently met or not – of this I am utterly convinced – indeed, I am a witness here: we are called together as the Clarendon Presbyterian Church precisely to be a distinct body, to witness to the world that God’s love knows no boundaries of sexuality, race, creed or confession; that God is not finished speaking to the world, nor finished loving it; that the narrow yet often loud voice of the so-called Christian Right is not a faithful witness to the love and justice, the compassion and peace that Christ calls us to.

We are not here because we always like each other; we are here because we are called to love each other. We did not choose this time and place; but we are called to this moment.

Think back on all those places to which we trace our various roots. Think back to all of the faith communities that nurtured us in many traditions more or less faithful to the gospel of love and justice. Consider that vast array of communities. And know this: we are an extraordinarily rare thing in this world.

When Episcopalians from Falls Church suddenly believe themselves to be East African Anglicans, it is time for our light to shine.

When lawmakers in Richmond cannot bring themselves to apologize for a history of racism, it is time for our light to shine.

When young people in our communities continue to hear disparaging words on account of their sexuality, it is time for our light to shine.

When young adults in our community cannot hear the call of God to lives of faithful service, it is time for our light to shine.

When our nation is torn asunder by unjust war and unequal economics, when work no longer works for so many of our families, when the commonwealth works only for the uncommonly wealthy, it is time for our light to shine.

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Within the global Christian church, a community of disciples that discerns a clear call to be a distinctive voice of progressive faith, a community that celebrates the gift and call of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people of faith, a community of the way of love and justice is a desperately needed light in a world of deep darkness.

Let us continue in the season ahead to be that people, for the state of the church is faithful. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Let Forgiveness Roll Down

Text: Matt. 18:15-22

Jan. 14, 2007

Most years this is my absolute favorite Sunday for preaching: the Sunday of the Martin Luther King holiday. Not only is King my theological hero, but also his work is an embarrassment of riches for preaching. From “the dream” to “the mountaintop,” the images he employed and cadences of his speech are the highest form of the homiletic art.

Frankly, there’s just not much more fun for a preacher than taking on the prophetic voice and calling for justice to roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream; to remind listeners that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere;” or to proclaim that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

But this year, I confess, I approached this Sunday with something less than enthusiasm. For one thing, following session’s wisdom, we’ve framed worship this month around the themes of forgiveness and reconciliation. On top of that, having reconciled myself to that theme, we gather to worship today a short four days after the president has announced an escalation of the occupation, a surge in the war in Iraq.

How to be faithful to each of these insistent yet seemingly disparate callings: the text at hand; King Day; a theme of reconciliation; the war in Iraq?

The text demands our first attention. In it, Jesus offers both a concrete plan for the practice of truth telling but also a standard of forgiveness that raises the bar past all reason and tradition. It is one thing to confront someone with the pain they have caused you, it is another to hold on to the practice of forgiveness “not seven times, but seventy times seven times.” In other words, do not surrender to the anger and hate that flow from pain and injustice, but practice forgiveness far beyond any cultural expectation of kindness or charity.

This is the heart of what it means to be a disciple – to be a follower of Jesus. Follow Jesus – the one who brings new life; follow Jesus – the one who forgives; follow Jesus – the one who says offer forgiveness seven times seventy times; follow Jesus – the one who says love one another just as I have loved you.

This is also the heart of Christian nonviolence. Following this way of transformative love was, it seems to me, all that Martin Luther King’s life was ever about; it is the heart of forgiveness and reconciliation; and it is the only ultimate way out of the mess of Iraq. So, upon these second thoughts, I recalled what King said in Strength to Love:

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of any enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.

You see, when love and justice come together, as they always did in King’s prophetic voice, repentance, redemption and reconciliation result. When love acts out the demands of justice, we are held accountable to our highest ideals and aspirations. When we fall short, the prophetic call to justice reminds us, and the voice of love enables us to repent and seek reconciliation.

Sadly, in our lives, most of us witness more of the destruction of hate than we do of the reconstruction of love. I think of a good friend, who, as a young adolescent, was the victim of clergy sexual abuse. The pain of that violence continues to ricochet through several families causing collateral damage from events that took place more than 30 years ago. I’m certain that each of you can think of similar circumstances of trust abused, relationships violated, human beings wounded and broken, and of the cycles of anger, pain and recrimination that ensue. Indeed, the present international crisis in the Middle East traces its roots back generations, and its cycles grow ever more violent.

Institutional amnesia and individual denial build barriers to love’s work. Where there is no accountability, no confrontation, no truth-telling, there is no repentance; without repentance there can be no forgiveness, no redemption, no restoration and no reconciliation. Without these, there is no justice; and where there is no justice, there is no peace.

Jesus’ teaching calls forth an echoing plea: stop! Repent! Turn from this circular path and step out into a new way of relationship. Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness points out the steps: “if a member of the community hurts you, confront that person with the truth of your suffering – one on one if possible, or with the support of the community.” Interpersonally in our individual lives; politically in our social lives. In both spheres, as he said elsewhere, “the truth will make you free.”

Without these stepping stones for redeemed life, no such life can be experienced. Without these foundations stones for restored relationships, no such relationships can be built. Without these keystones for the beloved community, no such community can be constructed.

The difficulty, of course, lies in taking the steps and laying the stones. Truth-telling, accountability, repentance, forgiveness, redemption, restoration, reconciliation: these are beautiful words and powerful ideas. But, at rock-bottom, they are often immensely difficult human choices and practices. They require often anguished decisions and difficult, uncomfortable actions.

King’s life and work were full of such moments, as was, of course, the entire Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20^th century. When I think back to that struggle, its moments of anguish and of transcendence often involved children, bringing to mind Isaiah’s words, “and a little child shall lead them.”

Last summer during General Assembly, I took a run through downtown Birmingham and wound my way to Kelly Ingram Park – scene of the children’s marches, the water canons and dogs seared into a nation’s conscience through black and white news photos. Across the street stands the 16^th Street Baptist Church, where Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carol Robertson and Addie Mae Collins – young girls attending worship – were killed by a Klansman’s bomb in September of 1963.

These were among the most difficult days for the Movement, for King and for the nation. King often said that unmerited suffering can be redemptive, but at that moment such redemption was almost unimaginable because the suffering was unbearable. Nevertheless, in preaching the joint funeral service for three of the girls, King said, “You can bomb our homes, bomb our churches, kill our little children, and we are still going to love you. … At times life is hard, as hard as crucible steel. In spite of the darkness of this hour, we must not lose faith in our white brother.”[1]

Birmingham seemed condemned to remain a city so consumed by hatred that it was known as “Bombingham.” Who, then, could imagine that one day, on the same block as the church, would stand the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute? Who could imagine keeping faith? Who could imagine anything like forgiveness or redemption?

But then I also think of Ruby Bridges, the little girl who braved the screaming, rock-throwing, spitting crowds to integrate the public schools in New Orleans in 1960 – when I was a one-year-old just up the road a piece in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Years later, Bridges recalled those days:

The people I passed every morning as I walked up the schools steps were full of hate. They were white, but so was my teacher, who couldn't have been more different from them. She was one of the most loving people I had ever known. The greatest lesson I learned that year in Mrs. Henry's class was the lesson Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., tried to teach us all. Never judge people by the color of their skin. God makes each of us unique in ways that go much deeper. From her window, Mrs. Henry always watched me walk into school. One morning when I got to our classroom, she said she'd been surprised to see me talk to the mob. "I saw your lips moving," she said, "but I couldn't make out what you were saying to those people."

“I wasn't talking to them," I told her. "I was praying for them." Usually I prayed in the car on the way to school, but that day I'd forgotten until I was in the crowd. Please be with me, I'd asked God, and be with those people too. Forgive them because they don't know what they're doing.[2]

Forgive them. Seems like I’ve heard those words somewhere before. Forgive them, because they don’t know what they’re doing. Words spoken from the cross; words spoken when life is as hard as crucible steel. Forgive them. Hold onto faith. Love beyond all reason and measure. Imagine, always, a future otherwise.

Today Ruby Bridges runs a foundation dedicated to teaching and promoting tolerance and respect. Her work of forgiveness continues in the reconciling work of the Ruby Bridges Foundation.

Obviously, most of us live a good bit less public lives and the conflicts that trouble us don’t get played out across the front pages and nightly news; most of them don’t involve church bombings or hate-filled crowds screaming threats and curses at us, either. But our broken relationships are no less real, nor any less painful for their private and personal nature.

King often said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Part of that bending comes through the practice of forgiveness. For if justice involves the restoration of right relationships between and among peoples – individuals, communities, nations – then the path toward justice is marked by forgiveness and reconciliation.

In our lives, there come times to choose: the path of forgiveness or the broken road of hostility.

Forty years ago, who could have imagined a Civil Rights Institute in Alabama, a Ruby Bridges Foundation in New Orleans, a national holiday to mark the birth and celebrate the life of Martin Luther King? Today, who can imagine a true peace in the Middle East? True marriage equality? A church as generous and just as the God we worship? This morning, can you imagine restoration of the relationships in your own life that are troubled today?

No surge in animosity will lead to such restoration. No surge in violence will produce lasting peace. Nor surge in hatred will give birth to love.

But let forgiveness join hands with love and justice, and together roll down like a mighty water that we might live to see a rising tide of redemption and reconciliation. Let righteousness run on in an ever-flowing stream to a river of peace. I still believe in the promise and the power of nonviolence.

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[1] John Lewis, Walking With the Wind (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1998), 234.

[2] From the web site of the Ruby Bridges Foundation: http://www.rubybridges.org/home.htm.

New Year's Reconciliations

Texts: 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

On the Monday before Christmas – another day when temperatures climbed into the mid-70s – I took a long bike ride. I was pondering this month and the series of sermons and after-worship gatherings circling around the theme of reconciliation.

I had Paul’s words to the Corinthians running around my brain. You know the words; I use a few of them often in the assurance of God’s grace and mercy:

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

I was tempted on that unusually warm afternoon – just like yesterday – to focus on humanity’s urgent need to reconcile with creation itself lest “White Christmas” became a reference completely lost to future generations living with the inconvenient truth of global climate change. But that global reconciliation is not unrelated to Paul’s message nor to the idea of New Year’s reconciliations, let’s begin small and local.

How many of you made a resolution for the new year? I know I did. In fact, on that same bike ride last month I developed quite a list of things I’d like to do better, or, at least differently than last year – including not spending Mondays – my day off – thinking about sermons! I’ve already blown that one – did it on New Year’s Day, in fact: a Monday and a holiday, to boot.

Ah well, perhaps the others will go better. Among those things I’ve promised myself: to waste less time; to get more exercise; to read more; write more; and be more careful about what I consume – both in terms of calories and media consumption – watching bites and bytes, you might say. A more or less typical list, I reckon.

You may be wondering, at this point, if I’ve forgotten the sermon title or lost track of theme of reconciliation in this recitation of resolutions. I don’t think so because, you see, most of the resolutions that we make – whether at the beginning of a new year or in the middle of the thing – most of them are signs that point to places and circumstances and relationships in our lives that need reconciliation.

This is nothing new under the sun, although it is also always particular and unique to our own lives and circumstances. This was true in Jesus’ time as the people streamed out of the city to the river on the edge of the wilderness seeking renewal in the baptisms performed by that ultimate outsider, John the Baptist.

“Repent!” John cried. “For the kingdom is near.” Repent – turn your life from its old ways and be reconciled to God’s ways. Repent – turn from fearful striving and be reconciled to God’s way of love. Repent – turn from broken relationships and be reconciled by God’s way of mercy and compassion. Repent, and be reconciled.

That is the core message that John proclaimed in offering the cleansing and renewal of baptism. Jesus takes that core message and deepens it: from a baptism of water to one of fire and spirit that remains still a call to repent and be reconciled.

We celebrate this core message each week in worship when we offer a prayer of confession and follow it with an assurance of forgiveness. “This is the good news of the gospel,” we proclaim, “that in Jesus Christ we are forgiven. Thanks be to God.”

Now it would be easy to walk away from that feeling a simple absolution. We’ve been forgiven, there’s nothing more to be done. It would be an easy grace or, to borrow
Bonhoeffer’s phrase, a cheap grace.

The ministry of reconciliation is about so much more than that. It is, indeed, about what it means to live in Christian community. As Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, puts it, “to live a ‘forgiven’ life is not simply to live in a happy consciousness of having been absolved. Forgiveness is precisely the deep and abiding sense of what relation – with God or with other human beings – can and should be; and so it is itself a stimulus, an irritant, necessarily provoking protest at impoverished versions of social and personal relations.”[1]

The ministry of reconciliation is not merely something that we do, as Christians, it is who we are. It is not an adjunct activity of those particularly gifted at mercy, it is how we are called to live our lives. It is not merely something that we ritually reenact each Sunday in worship, it is what we are sent in the world to act out again and again and again in each and every relationship of our lives.

In a society of broken marriages and families, in a culture of fractured communities, in a world of deep and violent brokenness, the ministry of reconciliation is crucial. In such a world, there is no more important witness that we can make than figuring out how to be a community of true and deep forgiveness and reconciliation.

So I invite you, in this season of resolutions and renewals, to join in a journey of reconciliation.

We will explore the practices of forgiveness and reconciliation this month in several ways – in sermons and in the small group experiential learning that Rusty Lynn is going to lead us through this morning and in two weeks, and we will seek ways together of living more fully and deeply into this call that was sealed in us at baptism and that we remember and celebrate when we gather at table.

So, let us come to the table: a community of reconciliation called the church, the body of Christ in the world given a ministry of reconciliation for the world. Come to the table knowing that, in Christ, you are a new creation. Come, from whatever background and situation or orientation, knowing that in Christ, none of that matters. Come from north or south or east or west. Come without fear. For, as Isaiah said, “Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; ⁶I will say to the north, "Give them up," and to the south, "Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth—⁷everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made."

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[1] Quoted in Dorothy C. Bass, ed., Practicing Our Faith (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), 135.

The Innkeeper's Tale

Dec. 24, 2006

I’ve been thinking about the innkeeper this week. He gets short-shrift in the story we tell on Christmas Eve. We’ll read it again tonight, and our focus then will, and rightly so, be on the birth. Then we’ll light the Christ candle in the center of the Advent ring and celebrate the coming into our world of God’s light in Jesus Christ.

But this morning, we’re not quite there. We’re still in Advent. We’ve lit four candles. We are still preparing.

Oh, sure, you’d better be just about ready at this point.

But we’re not quite there. There’s still time to consider other parts of the story. There’s still time to consider “The Innkeeper’s Tale.”

Now scripture doesn’t tell us much. In fact, there’s just a hint that we find in Luke’s account in that famous phrase, “She wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them at the inn.”

Setting aside for now all of the historical questions about this text – the “did it really happen like that?” questions – let’s consider this from the innkeeper’s perspective. For, whether or not there was an actual Bethlehem innkeeper with an overflowing guest registry, surely there have been lots of us with no room for Mary, Joseph and the Christ child. His story is our story; mine, in fact. Let me tell you, then, “The Innkeeper’s Tale.”

Once upon a time, not that long ago really, I had myself a little inn, a bed and breakfast, right near the center of town. It was really a charming place: big front porch with rocking chairs and a porch swing, a bright, airy breakfast room that always drew the morning sun through windows that pulled in the freshest air to mix with the smells of fresh-baked bread or muffins. Despite my outward appearances, I endeavored to keep a respectable establishment.

About those outward appearances, well, I had to be a jack-of-all-trades, for we barely made ends meet. If there was a busted pipe or leaky sink, I was a plumber. When the weeds took over the vegetable plot, I was a gardener. When we needed more flour or sugar, I was the delivery boy. When the place needed tidying, I was the cleaning crew. If our equipment needed repair, it was out to the shed to be Mr. Fixit. And, in the evenings, when things quieted down, I would pull out my guitar and be the entertainment, as well.

We kept the place spotless, my wife and I did. She was in it just as much as I – cooking, keeping the books, welcoming guests. Fresh linens on the beds, fresh towels by the bath, freshest food in the kitchen. Over the years we gained a reputation for hospitality that was unrivaled in the town, and we almost always had a waiting list – especially when there were big events in the area.

I remember one time, way back it was and my memory’s a bit faded with the years. There’s was a festival – a seasonal celebration of some kind near the beginning of winter. People came from all over. Lots of our regular guests. The place was full and just brimming with excitement that comes with a change of seasons, crisp cold air and a fine big party.

Oh, not that everything was a celebration in those days. Times were tough. It seemed like everyone was worried about jobs, and the international situation was particularly tense, I recall. There were lots of folks really struggling to get by, or just hang on. The government was worthless and business was ruthless, and it seemed like we were always in some war that most of us didn’t understand. I suppose it was a bit like now. But those worries were set aside for the festival.

Then one evening, a bit past supper time, there was a knock at the front door. We were in the living room, taking a break after a long day of cleaning, cooking, and playing tourist information agent for the guests. I remember this part just like it was yesterday. I was strumming my guitar, playing “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” when someone rapped on the door in perfect time to the music. I laughed at the coincidence as I got up to see who was there.

It was a young couple. She was obviously pregnant, and they both looked tired and disheveled. Their clothes were not fashionable, and they looked well worn. Looking beyond them, I saw a battered old vehicle that looked to be older than the couple standing at our door.

I stood in the doorway, holding the door open against a cold wind, and asked, “may I help you?”

The man answered, “yes, I hope so. Do you have a room tonight?”

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry but we’re completely full.”

“Oh,” he said, his eyes downcast. Then he looked at the woman and said, simply, “I’m sorry.”

I was about to close the door on them, when something in her eyes caught me. They were so full of sadness, but also, somehow, of hope. I could not simply close the door on those eyes. So I said, “why don’t you come in for a few minutes and let me get you a drink, perhaps some tea?”

“Thank you,” she said. “That would be nice.”

I held the door for them and nodded toward the chairs close to the fire place.

“You can warm up there while we fix some tea. This is Sophia, my wife. My name is Daniel.”

“Thank you,” said the man. “I am Jose and this is Maria.”

They sat, and Sophia and I went through the doors into the kitchen.

“Oh my lord,” she said when we were safely out of earshot. “She looks like she might drop any minute. What do you suppose their story is?”

“Don’t know, but I’d guess their car broke down. It looks like an ancient piece of junk out there.”

“Well, they don’t look in the best of shape either,” Sophia said. “I wonder if they’re run-aways. They look so young. I bet she’s not more than 16, and he doesn’t look much older.”

“Do you suppose we ought to call the police?” I wondered out loud.

“No. Let’s give them something warm to drink. And, here, we’ve got still got some soup from dinner and a bit of bread. We’ve got no space for them, but we can give them something to keep warm.”

We carried a couple of trays with tea, soup and bread back to the living room. It did not look like our unexpected guests had so much as moved a muscle between them. They just sat, looking into the fire, weary to the bone.

They accepted the food with thanks and ate with the quiet of the tired and hungry.

As he finished the last swallow of tea, Jose asked of me, “do you know of any other inns? We have tried every place we have come across between here and the edge of town.”

“No. I’m afraid you have picked the worst possible time to come to town without reservations for a room. With the festival, every inn in town has been booked up for months in advance.”

“Yes. We had not planned to travel at this point,” said Maria, patting her very round belly. “But Jose just got called to a new job working on a construction site about another day’s drive from here, and we were on our way when the car started acting up.”

Then Jose spoke up, again. “You have been very kind, and we thank you. Look, I know that you don’t have a room, but do you even have a garage or shed where we could park our car out of the wind a bit and sleep in it there?”

I glanced at Sophia, who shrugged a “well, why not” look back at me.

“You know,” I said, “we would give you our room tonight, but the law requires that we be in this house while there are guests overnight. We do have a small barn out back where I keep my workshop; it’s attached to an animal shed where we keep chickens and goats. We’ve got a couple of old cots in the loft where Sophia’s sister’s kids like to have sleepouts. We could put them down in the shed with some blankets.”

The whole time I was saying it I was thinking, “Lord I hope no one ever hears about this. We could get in so much trouble. And, oh my gosh, what would the neighbors think if they knew we were putting up such kids? I wonder if they’ve got drugs in that car? Well, they don’t look dangerous, at least.”

Jose and Maria did not have any such reservations; they accepted the offer immediately.

Sophia, on the other hand, must have been having the exact same thoughts, because as we went to pull out some extra blankets she just looked at me and said, “are we sure this is a good idea?” Neither of us answered the question, we just carried the blankets out to the shed.

As we sorted out cots and blankets, I warned Jose and Maria that one of us – who was I kidding: it would be Sophia – would be out collecting eggs at 5:30 the following morning. We’d have a hot breakfast available a couple of hours later. Hoping that they would be both warm and unnoticed, we left them and headed off to bed ourselves.

I remember sleeping soundly that night – tired and untroubled. Sophia later told me that she’d tossed and turned and worried about the young couple sleeping in our shed.

Her sleeplessness did not keep her from climbing out of bed first thing in the morning. She pulled on a robe while I snuggled deeper under the blankets, catching a few minutes more snoozing while Sophia fetched eggs. I was dozing when she came breathlessly back into the room.

“Get up, quick!” she hissed. “The baby came last night.”

“Huh. What baby? Came where? What are you talking about?”

“The baby. You know, Maria’s baby. The girl in the barn. She had her baby last night. Come help me. Right now.”

It all came back in a rush.

“Oh my gosh. You mean we’ve got a newborn baby in the barn?”

“Yup. In fact, they’ve got him bundled up in the goat’s trough right next to Maria’s cot. They all seem just fine, but we need to get them some breakfast, and we probably need to call a doctor or something.”

I was pulling on clothes as quickly as I could, and we were stumbling down the stairs and out the back door. It was cold and dark, and the sharp air hit me in the face.

I remember, the most disconcerting thing of the entire experience, from some house back beyond ours someone had left a radio on in an outbuilding, and music was drifting across the yard. It was choral music – the Sanctus from Rutter’s Requiem – the most beautiful music. It was like a dream.

So was the scene in the barn. Mother and child; father and newborn son. Chickens waking up in their perches. Goats rustling just a bit at our arrival. The smells of engine grease mixing with the smells of animals.

Remarkably, everyone was, just as Sophia had reported, fine.

We offered to call a doctor, but they declined.

“We’re going to go home. We’ve got family who will care for us. It’s only a couple of hours back the way we’ve come and I’m pretty sure the car will get us there,” Jose was saying, but I was just watching the baby sleep.

“What his name?”

“Hm?”

“The baby. What are you naming him?”

Jose and Maria looked at each other for a moment, and then laughed quietly.

“We’re not sure, yet,” she said. “We’ve been arguing about that for weeks now. He wants to name him Jose, Jr., but I was to call him Jesus.”

“They’re both beautiful names,” Sophia offered.

It’s funny, but we never did find out what name they chose. In fact, they were as good as their word that morning. Soon after eating breakfast, that packed into their old car – in the light of day I could see that it was a Ford Pinto; that should tell you all you need to know about their means. They left mid morning.

A couple of months later we received a nice card from them, with a picture of the baby – but, again, no name mentioned. They also enclosed cash; the precise amount for spending one night in our inn’s finest, most expensive room. There was no return address. We never heard from them again, but, for some reason, we kept the picture.

That was, oh, forty some years ago.

I’d not thought much about that night until about ten years ago.

About that time, a young man around here began organizing in communities where poor folks live. He was on TV all the time and in the papers, always talking about “lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry with good things to eat.” Everywhere he went, the papers reported, he’d begin his talks saying the same thing: “I bring you good news! You’re going to get new eyes to see, new ears to hear, a new mind for a new time, because God is near!” He apparently rapped it. Something I never quite got, but the crowds loved it.

His name was Jesus.

People said that those who met him were changed forever. Others said he had healed them. Folks came from all over just to hear him speak, and many of them joined his movement.

We received an invitation to one of his rallies, but we were overloaded at the inn and couldn’t get away. Another time there was a big celebration – a kind of community meal that his people put on down by the riverside. But we had a full house again that time.

There were pictures in the paper, and it was amazing to look at. He let all kinds of people into his movement: folks from around here and foreigners, too. There were lots of poor people, street people, really. He had white folks, and black folks and Latinos – why he even had gay and lesbian people working right out in the open – all working together.

He worked in these parts for just a short time, but more and more people followed him. Not everybody, though. Some people hated him. For one thing, he kept getting himself arrested; for another, he was insisting on changing things that some people didn’t want changed; things we always like to call around here, “our way of life.” In our way of life, people stick with their own kind, and some things we just don’t talk about. It’s not hateful, or anything. It’s just the way it’s always been, and it’s comfortable.

Me? I’ve never been much interested in those things. I’m an innkeeper. I keep out of politics.

Then, when he started talking about how people spend their money, well, let’s just say things were getting a bit out of control. In the end, one of his own followers turned against him; set him up.

He was finally arrested on some pretty serious charge – I think it was sedition. And they sent him away. He hasn’t been heard from since, but people still talk about him.

I remember soon after he was convicted, there was a picture of him in the paper. For some reason, I cut it out and saved it. It was a close up shot; in color. And I noticed his eyes; they were so full of sadness yet, somehow, full of hope at the same time. They reminded me of that night. They looked just like hers.

Was it him? I don’t know, but I’ve always wondered. And I’ve also wondered, what would have happened if I’d accepted his invitation? Would I have been changed? Would I have followed him? I don’t know.

And that’s my story. I wonder … I wonder if anybody else has ever had such an experience.