Lutheran pastor and great author Heidi Neumark writes in her book Breathing Space about the first months of her call as pastor to a dying rough-neighborhood church in the South Bronx, NY:
She tells about how the first day on the job she noticed that the church doors had been painted bright red as a symbol of welcome and excitement to her as their pastor. Then when she walked into her new office, she discovered a can of red paint on her desk. Interesting.
Neumark soon learned that that can...
Pastor Heidi never gave up on them.
Merry Christmas, sisters and brothers in Christ, and welcome to a church where God never gives up on us!
I actually heard Pastor Heidi tell that story in person about 10 years ago, and I don’t know about you, but when I first heard about those kids “trashing up” the front doors of the church and making this poor new, young pastor repaint them daily, I was pretty upset -- just hearing about it.
Who would do that?...
And yet her reaction...
Friends in Christ--and new friends who are suspicious of Christ and got dragged to church by your slightly more faithful family members tonight--we have a God who loves us right through our destructive actions.
This has been a rough year in many ways. I’m guessing most of us haven’t done to much church door graffitiing lately, but if we’re honest, we have been destructive in other ways. We’ve hurt others. We’ve hurt ourselves. We’ve hurt God’s planet. We’ve hurt our neighbors. We’ve hurt our friends.
If we’re honest about this past year, there have been times when we’ve defaced God’s property too.
But there’s a can of paint on God’s desk. And day after day, night after night, God takes that paint can of forgiveness and erases our sin, our selfishness, our brokenness, our mistakes. God deals graciously with us and then invites us in, where there is safety, where there is teaching and learning, where there is creativity and peace...amid a violent world.
Did you know I’m talking about the Christmas Story? The angels appearing to those shepherds -- that was God repainting the dark, foreboding sky with joy and peace and light, and inviting those destructive shepherds into something new. We have a God who never gives up on us. The children said it in the pageant earlier:
“In those days, remember, people used to laugh at shepherds and say they were smelly and call them other rude names (which I can’t possible mention here). You see, people thought shepherds were no-bodies, just scruffy old riff-raff. But God must have thought shepherds were very important indeed, because they’re the ones God chose to tell the good news to first.”
Sounds like the way Pastor Heidi saw those young, African American kids tagging the front doors of the church. She saw something in them that many of us, myself included, would have been too angry at them to see.
I wrote Pastor Heidi yesterday and asked her where she found the strength and the creativity to love those kids and to invite them in. And she wrote back right away! Here’s what she said:
“I never thought of it as requiring any strength from me. I believed that the church needed the strength of those children and youth to survive. I have always invited children into the sanctuary. I seems like a natural thing to do. And to share Bible stories and art...that also has just felt like a no-brainer.
...But we are all created in the image of an amazingly creative God, so it seems natural to tap into that.
Wishing you Christmas blessings and grace, Heidi”
A no brainer. To love the trouble makers. Now that’s God-talk. That’s where grace surprises us.
This has been a highly charged and violent year in the United States. With the tragedies of Fergusen, MO and beyond, we find all too much hatred between black people and white people. Racism that’s just beneath the surface on all sides has raised its ugly head again in 2014.
This has been a politically charged year. Republicans and Democrats continue to battle, continue to tear each other down, murdering each others’ characters and playing the games that “must be played” in order to survive and win votes.
This has been a year of holy wars. Christians, Jews, and Muslims have all held their ground, lost members of their clan to terrorism and retaliation.
And perhaps this has been a year highly charged and violent year in your own life and in your own heart. Loss, divorce, addiciton, separation, depression, anger, unemployment and sickness -- these are just a few of the marks of our humanity that bring us sorrow in our daily lives.
And yet through it all I wonder if Pastor Heidi’s words might be similar to God’s very words.
“I’ve always invited children into the sanctuary. It seems like a natural thing to do.” What does the church say in the face of all this violence and bitter conflict? God surprises us with grace -- inviting children into the sanctuary, inviting shepherds into the stable, inviting you into a life of forgiveness, peace and joy. God doesn’t give up on us. God remains faithful, even if we might fall away (or perhaps never even had a chance to fall forward into God’s grace).
God meets you in the dead of your night, in the pain and darkness of your life, and announces that a child has been born, that salvation has arrived at last.
God doesn’t give up. God paints away every tear and gives us hope.
And the story doesn’t end there.
God calls you in. And hands you a brush, and invites you paint a new story on the doors of the world.
Having forgiven our sins, having covered up blemishes, having our repainted our lives, having cleaned the slate, God gives you a brush now and says, “Go and tell everyone about this love. Go and tell everyone that I have not given up and never will.” Christ Jesus is born, thanks be to God. AMEN.
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