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As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Matthew 9:7
It was a stunningly beautiful early October Saturday in 1978, when I pulled the Emanuel Lutheran Church van over to the side of the street at Third and Chestnut in Philadelphia to pick up a member of the Emanuel’s Women’s group. The van was full of women ranging in age from 16 to almost 80, along with a few children. We were heading out of the city for a day in the country as guests of the Women of Salem-St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Kresgeville where I’d spent the summer before Seminary as a Summer Chaplain in the Pocono Leisure Ministry.
She was waiting for us, so I got out, circled around the front of the van, opened the side door and helped her in. Just as I was closing the door, I heard a man shout, “Father, Father, wait a minute!” I look around. There were no priests nearby. Then I remembered as the Vicar – what the people of Emanuel called their Seminary Intern – I had my black clerical shirt on and wondered if he meant me. As he came closer, the shout changed to “Father, Mother, Father” and I realized he did. He asked for some money for food. I replied, “I don’t have any money to spare” and told him where to find a local soup kitchen. He thanked me and then asked, “What kind of Father are you anyway?” I’ve never forgotten his question and hope that I never do.
With the van now filled to capacity, we headed out of the city and by late morning arrived at the farm of Esther and John. She was the head of the Women’s Group at Salem-St. Paul’s and he, a member of church council. The air was crisp while the leaves on the trees were in the early stages of turning, red, yellow and gold. The women of Emanuel, a predominately African American Church located in Southwark Housing Projects were welcomed by the women of Salem-St. Paul’s, many of them Pennsylvania Dutch Farmers, some of whom had never been farther south than Allentown.
It was a grace-filled day. Have you ever experienced one of them? Greeting were exchanged. Names learned. Food shared – the Emanuel women put their fried chicken and sweet-potato pies on the picnic table. The Salem-St. Paul’s women set down turkey barbecue, potato salad, fresh corn, and shoe-fly pie. The children ran about. As the Vicar, I offered the prayer and later we ponder some scripture together. They shared what they did as Lutheran Church Women. The Emanuel women talked about supporting their parish school and summer program. The Salem-St. Paul’s ones told how they quilted together, sold food at country auctions and held an annual Strawberry festival to raise money for their church and to fund the Summer Chaplain. They laughed and told stories. Salem-St. Paul’s Pastor, Glenn, stopped by to greet everyone. All too soon it was time to pack up and head back to the city. As the Emanuel women were getting into the van, Sula, one of the Salem-St. Paul’s women whom I knew very well, for I lived with her and her husband Russell during my Pocono Leisure Ministry summer, gave me hug and said, “Cindy, I never saw a colored person before. I never met one. They are so nice.”
As we drove back to Philly, the Emanuel women said much the same about the Salem-St. Paul’s women – for other than a few vicars, including yours truly – they did not know any Pennsylvania Dutch people. Then they talk about the food, the hospitality, the farm, the conversation. Before long most everyone fell asleep while I thanked God for the great day and felt perhaps, I might actually be able to do this pastor thing. As we exited the Turnpike, one of the women woke up and remembered that they were responsible for coffee hour the next morning. (As an aside, have you noticed, that while we might have different liturgies, languages, structures, theologies, cultures, even religions, we all have coffee hours? And one day after the COVID-19 crisis has passed, we will again.) The older women took this responsibility in stride – they could easily make something. The young women weren’t quite so sure, so they decided to bring what they had to my house and we’d bake something together.
After I opened my front door and walked in to the living room, I noticed my black and white TV was gone. There was a note from Sister Jean, Emanuel’s deaconess, that my house had been broken into. The police had been there and asked for a list of what was missing. I went through the small house – beside the TV, my bicycle was gone, my jewelry box dumped on the bed with my Emmaus High School class ring missing, clothes strewn here and there. As I was making the list, the young women started to arrive with their baking supplies and seeing that the TV was missing asked, “Vicar Cindy, what happened?” I told them what was stolen and they told me stories about how they too, had been robbed. They especially mourned the lost of the TV for we would often end our meetings by watching M.A.S.H. together. Rosalie, the oldest member of the group, was the last to arrive. They told her what happened and she took charge. “Can I use your phone?” she asked. I said sure. She dialed – yes, in 1978 we still dialed – and said, “Leon, I want you to call up Leo, you know the guy who handles the hot goods, and see if he has my Vicar Cindy’s stuff!” Then she gave Leon the list of my stuff and hung up the phone. Something shifted. There was light. We made cookies. The women went home. The next day we were all in church and the coffee hour was just fine.
I didn’t sleep very well that night. If you’ve been robbed you know how hard it can be to close your eyes when your space has been invaded. But there was more to it than that, because when you don’t have much, you don’t miss much – although I still wish I had my class ring. What made me restless was the question, I was asked on Chestnut Street that morning, “Just what kind of Father are you anyway?”
You see that question was about far more than me, a woman pastor-in-training who was wearing a clerical shirt and collar. It was really THE question, “Just what kind of Christian are you anyway?” Surely, Jesus asked his disciples a version of that question when they returned from their mission trip – the one we heard him giving instructions for in today’s Gospel from Matthew. He sends them to proclaim the good news, cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers and cast out demons. And when they returned certainly asked: How did you do? What was it like? What kind of disciple are you anyway?
“What kind of Christian are you anyway?” is the question during these days of pandemic and protest, of confrontation and change, of challenge and sacrifice, of naming out-loud the sin of racism and recognizing how it perpetuates evil and despair, injustice and fear. What kind of Christians are we, are you, am I, anyway?
Remember Sula, who had no clue about politically correct language the first time she met an African American and caller her “colored.” She would have used the same word for Jesus, a Palestinian Jew, who in his brown skin was crucified, died and buried. He was a victim of the political and religious powers of his day and is a victim still. In his book, Trouble I’ve Seen, Drew Hart writes: “To follow Jesus every day demands that we also must dare to interpret vulnerable and outcast bodies through the lens of the crucified Christ, through whom God’s wisdom and power is revealed.” He goes on, “The real challenge in America is whether both white and black people are willing to subversively risk loving black people as though each life were created by God.”[i] What kind of Christians are we anyway? Amen.
[i] Drew Hart, Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism, Harrisonville, Virginia: Herald Press, 2016, 129-130