November 10th, 2024
Well.
Here we are.
I mean that, of course, as you might expect, this morning… as a kind of weary acknowledgement of our national state of affairs.
But I also mean it, more specifically, for us, here.
Here we are… in a circle, in the Mildred Cutter Memorial Parish Hall, gathered in community.
If you know me, you are probably expecting me to take the provocation presented by the election as an opportunity to go into a lengthy oration about our moral plight… and indeed that is just what the half dozen false starts of this sermon were shaping up to be, before I threw them out.
I couldn’t go there.
I couldn’t because I’m weary and deflated, and I just need a moment to heal.
More importantly, I suspect that you could probably use that too.
You don’t need another harangue about profound dangers that stretch before us.
There will be plenty of time for that.
Instead, I think we could all use a little grace.
We need to lean into our faith.
So I’m going to do something a little different today. I’m going to share with you a moment of grace that happened to me this week – in hopes that it might also soothe your soul.
When I drive, it is my habit to listen to audiobooks. On my way up to Jaffrey on the day after the election, I was listening to one of my favorite works of American literature – The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. As I listened to chapter 17, I felt, again, the warmth of faith…
Faith in humanity.
So sit back, relax, and enjoy Steinbeck’s marvelous storytelling.
THE CARS OF THE migrant people crawled out of the side roads onto the great cross-country highway, and they took the migrant way to the West. In the daylight they scuttled like bugs to the westward; and as the dark caught them, they clustered like bugs near to shelter and to water. And because they were lonely and perplexed, because they had all come from a place of sadness and worry and defeat, and because they were all going to a new mysterious place, they huddled together; they talked together; they shared their lives, their food, and the things they hoped for in the new country. Thus it might be that one family camped near a spring, and another camped for the spring and for company, and a third because two families had pioneered the place and found it good. And when the sun went down, perhaps twenty families and twenty cars were there.
In the evening a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream. And it might be that a sick child threw despair into the hearts of twenty families, of a hundred people; that a birth there in a tent kept a hundred people quiet and awestruck through the night and filled a hundred people with the birth-joy in the morning. A family which the night before had been lost and fearful might search its goods to find a present for a new baby. In the evening, sitting about the fires, the twenty were one. They grew to be units of the camps, units of the evenings and the nights. A guitar unwrapped from a blanket and tuned—and the songs, which were all of the people, were sung in the nights. Men sang the words, and women hummed the tunes.
Every night a world created, complete with furniture—friends made and enemies established; a world complete with braggarts and with cowards, with quiet men, with humble men, with kindly men.
The families learned what rights must be observed—the right of privacy in the tent; the right to keep the past black hidden in the heart; the right to talk and to listen; the right to refuse help or to accept, to offer help or to decline it; the right of son to court and daughter to be courted; the right of the hungry to be fed; the rights of the pregnant and the sick to transcend all other rights. And the families learned, although no one told them, what rights are monstrous and must be destroyed: the right to intrude upon privacy, the right to be noisy while the camp slept, the right of seduction or rape, the right of adultery and theft and murder. These rights were crushed, because the little worlds could not exist for even a night with such rights alive.
And as the worlds moved westward, rules became laws, although no one told the families. It is unlawful to foul near the camp; it is unlawful in any way to foul the drinking water; it is unlawful to eat good rich food near one who is hungry, unless he is asked to share.
There grew up government in the worlds, with leaders, with elders. A man who was wise found that his wisdom was needed in every camp; a man who was a fool could not change his folly with his world. And a kind of insurance developed in these nights. A man with food fed a hungry man, and thus insured himself against hunger. And when a baby died a pile of silver coins grew at the door flap, for a baby must be well buried, since it has had nothing else of life. An old man may be left in a potter’s field, but not a baby.
In the long hot light, they were silent in the cars moving slowly westward; but at night they integrated with any group they found. Thus they changed their social life—changed as in the whole universe only man can change. They were not farm men any more, but migrant men. And the thought, the planning, the long staring silence that had gone out to the fields, went now to the roads, to the distance, to the West. That man whose mind had been bound with acres lived with narrow concrete miles. And his thought and his worry were not any more with rainfall, with wind and dust, with the thrust of the crops. Eyes watched the tires, ears listened to the clattering motors, and minds struggled with oil, with gasoline, with the thinning rubber between air and road.
And when the sun went down— Time to look out for a place to stop. And—there’s some tents ahead. The car pulled off the road and stopped, and because others were there first, certain courtesies were necessary. And the man, the leader of the family, leaned from the car.
Can we pull up here an’ sleep?
Why, sure, be proud to have you…
The car lumbered over the ground to the end tent, and stopped. Then down from the car the weary people climbed, and stretched stiff bodies. Then the new tent sprang up; the children went for water and the older boys cut brush or wood. The fires started and supper was put on to boil or to fry.
When people went to their beds, the camp was quiet. And the owls coasted overhead, and the coyotes gabbled in the distance, and into the camp skunks walked, looking for bits of food—waddling, arrogant skunks, afraid of nothing.
The night passed, and with the first streak of dawn the women came out of the tents, built up the fires, and put the coffee to boil. And the men came out and talked softly in the dawn… The families ate quickly, and the dishes were dipped and wiped. The tents came down. There was a rush to go.
And when the sun arose, the camping place was vacant, only a little litter left by the people. And the camping place was ready for a new world in a new night. But along the highway the cars of the migrant people crawled out like bugs, and the narrow concrete miles stretched ahead.
As I navigated the twists and turns of Route 119, past Richmond, and up through the hills to Fitzwilliam, Steinbeck soothed me on the theme of community wisdom. My spirit, ragged and bruised by the spectacle of national folly, found solace in Steinbeck’s desperate migrants, encamped on the roadside, coping with terrible uncertainty by following a kind of natural law – a sacred intuition that made only one demand of them – that, in all cases, respect must be given.
Dreams shared.
Pregnant women provided for.
Elders known for their wisdom.
Strangers met with courtesy.
The hungry fed.
Happy are those whose hope is in the LORD, proclaims Psalm 146, for
The LORD sets the prisoners free;
opens the eyes of the blind.
lifts up those who are bowed down;
watches over the strangers;
upholds the orphan and the widow.
Isn’t it amazing?
The roadside world that Steinbeck describes as a kind of spontaneous social structure flourishing among desperate migrants – this impoverished community expresses all of the same values that Psalm 146 uses to describe God!
It is almost as if poverty and desperation are the contexts that create the kingdom of God.
Christ too, seems to be making the same point when he points our attention to the widow who puts her last coins into the collection box.
Hers is the most meaningful gift because “she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
Like Steinbeck’s migrants… she knows what it means to be poor, and so she knows what it means to give.
And this knowledge is recognized by God.
God recognizes the purity of the human soul when all the “stuff” that we use to hide the soul is stripped away.
If you have come this morning, in need of the soaring rhetoric of indignation, that I have disappointed you. But rest assured, I have not given up preaching about social justice. I have not stopped trying to stimulate our moral imaginations. That’s who I am – that’s the minister you have
But… all in good time.
Today I offer you this grace…
That in the midst of all the dark folly, this can be a hope of the faithful – that when a mortal soul gives its last coins away… when that soul is nothing more than itself before God, then it may naturally flourish…
it may become, like Christ, one who
sets the prisoners free;
opens the eyes of the blind.
lifts up those who are bowed down;
watches over the strangers;
upholds the orphan and the widow.
Amen