EASTER IV April 17, 2005

The shepherd calls us each by name.

I remember when I was first toying with the idea of going to seminary back during college. I let myself get talked into leading the youth group at Trinity Church in Iowa City. (I don’t remember being part of a youth group myself, although I did go to one junior high church camp one summer, but all I remember is sitting on the couch next to a girl from Council Bluffs. I do remember getting kicked out of Sunday School class in the 5^th grade and never going back again.) So this was kind of an odd thing for me to do.

Anyway, in this youth group I was leading, there were a few popular kids who were active and engaging and smart and good looking, and about a half dozen others who went along but just blended into the background.

Over the first month or two, I proceeded pretty much to either bore or alienate the popular kids enough that they just stopped coming, and what was left were the others who then emerged and were able to be themselves and turned out to be much more interesting than the popular kids. And, in turn, I became more interesting as a leader. We had a great year. I guess I felt a little guilty chasing some of the kids away, but I figured they had options. And in my youthful arrogance I associated my choice with Jesus. Didn’t he go after the "lost sheep"? Didn’t he bless the meek and the poor and the grieving and the sinful. "Those who are not ill," he said have no need of the physician."

Of course, Stan and Diane Cook have gone way ahead of me on that with 108 or 109 foster children and 39 adopted. Sometimes it seems like they have gone way ahead of Jesus. So many children, all with special need of one kind or another? Ashlyn, who will be baptized today, is totally dependant.

The Cooks have served as a model for this parish I think, or else they fit in really well with a model that has been here for a while. We reach out and embrace those in real need. There are over a dozen 12 Step meetings that take place every week in McGowan House for people caught up in one kind of dependency or another. We have two classes, five days a week, for 18 to 22 year olds with developmental disabilities who are trying to find a place in our society where they can live out their abilities. Easter Seals has an office here. Out Thrift Shop is producing revenue that will help us reach out even further to touch the lives of the disabled, and the addicted, and those in confusion, the un-popular, the un-successful, whom Jesus calls his church to love.

This is one of the more impressive things about St. James Church.

I remember Mari Zeitzu, who (I’m sure against the will of God) has since moved to Oregon, telling me how much she was moved one Sunday, when she saw Ashlyn and Chai (when he was still living), and May I think, all lined up at the alter rail for a blessing. She said she was thinking how wonderful it was for there to be a church that was so open to what we used to call "all sorts and conditions", whose "quality of life" is so marginal as to be, for some, expendable. But then, on the way home, Mari said, she realized that she had really gotten it backwards. It was actually Saint James that was lucky to have these children. They present a physical mirror for much that is hidden within each of our souls. We all have special needs. We are all totally dependent on God.

I thought I was being Jesus to the unpopular kids of Trinity in Iowa City when really they were Jesus to me. And I would bet that Stan and Diane would say the same about all hundred and eight or hundred and nine angels who have been sent to them as well. The same is true is true for the people in AA. The same is true for the kids over there during the week. We are not here to show those with obvious needs the way to God. They are here to show us that way because apparently we wouldn’t get it otherwise.

There is no such thing as a gradual scale of "quality of life." Each life is unique. Each life speaks a new word, tells a new story, sings a new song, occupies a new place in the space/time of the universe that would fit no one else. And without each life that universe would fall apart. Ashlyn’s life is as important, as crucial to the wholeness of life as the life of the Pope, or your life, or mine. And there are no "alternate scenarios". There is no Ashlyn growing strong and active and asking questions in a pre-school. Such an Ashlyn would be a product of our fantasy. To prefer that fantasy to Ashlyn as she is would be to trade the false for the true, to trade our comfort for her life, and it would miss the gift of God, the miracle her real life represents.

Now none of that means that we cling desperately to physical life at all costs. As Christians we cherish life, but we also know its limits, and we believe that God is perhaps even more present to us in death than life.

That was my dilemma around the Terri Schiavo situation. Her life was her life and not "worth" any less because of her state of consciousness. But death is not a defeat for Christians. It is a letting go of a job well done. "Enter into the joy of your master." It is impossible for me to talk about all this outside of the context of the deaths of Malcolm Stratton and Evelyn Sharp this past two weeks. They had "long" lives, Ashlyn’s will likely, be short. But as a part of eternity, there’s no more difference in quantity of life than there is in quality. Three or four years, for eternity, is just as long as 93 or 95. Jesus offers us abundant life, not a long life, or a "full" life.

And when we baptize Ashlyn or anyone we are not rally "accomplishing" anything. We are bearing witness to an already existing accomplishment. Baptism, as a sacrament, is "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." It may be our sign, but it is God’s grace. And the most that we do is point it out, hold up a mirror, shine a light on that grace.

So today, in a way, light meets light. The light of God, the light of Christ, shining in that unique slice of the divine prism we call Ashlyn Sigala Cook, meets the light of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church shining with the particular shading and intensity reserved for Saint James Episcopal Church in Monterey. Even as Malcolm and Evelyn’s light has gone from view, Ashlyn’s light illuminates us and changes the light we all need to see where we’re going. Even as Malcolm and Evelyn’s voices are silenced, Ashlyn’s cry adds to the one voice of the Shepherd’s flock that particular sound that makes us whole again.

Thanks be to God.