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Homely Homilies

A collection of sermons and such written for my Homiletics class at School for Deacons. No actual parishioners were harmed in the giving of these sermons.

Saturday, March 12

Smelly Mitch

Sermon #2. My assignment was a funeral sermon. The fictitious decedent is a homeless man whose name was probably 'Mitch' and who was frequently incoherent and filthy when he came to the fictional church's lunch program. The service is for the lunch program's volunteer staff and clients.

Isaiah 61:1-3
1 John 3:1-2
John 10:11-16

The Bible talks about heaven, but there aren't as many specifics as we'd like. Hollywood has filled in a lot of it...St. Peter at the gate, everyone in white angel suits.

I'm something of an anxious person, so I am most concerned with what happens right after a person gets there - it would be just like me to blow things completely on my first day in heaven!

Fortunately, in my version you spend the first few days in orientation. You get a nifty binder with a map that shows where everything is, and some basic instructions on matters such as the dessert buffet and how to get a tee time. You also get the words to the Sanctus, because it's right there in our eucharistic prayer - angels and archangels forever sing this hymn to proclaim the glory of the Lord's name:

Holy Holy Holy Lord
God of power and might
Heaven and earth are full of your glory
Hosanna in the highest.

I'm sure that somewhere on the internet is a forum for discussing which arrangement of the song they use in heaven.

Something else is happening while you're there getting fitted for your white suit...the world is peeling off of you, layer after layer.

Where you lived...gone
What kind of car you drove...gone
Your 2004 adjusted gross income...gone

Everything. Gone. Until all that is left is you, as a child of God, standing among the other children of God.

We don't know all that much about Mitch, but all we need to know is that he was a child of God. We don't even know for sure that Mitch was his real name. He died alone and will be buried without a name, except for the name that God knows. Only when God says it, it's always preceded by, "my beloved."

It's so easy to disappear, isn't it? Mitch sort of slipped into the shadows, between the cracks as we like to say. He was invisible to most people, because he couldn't participate in many aspects of society.

For one thing, Mitch wasn't anyone's target market. It's hard to exist in this culture without being part of some target market or another - there's always someone willing to sell you something. Desperate to sell you something, in fact. But when you can't buy anything, your value drops to zero and those cracks open up and you slip right between them.

There's another way to slip through the cracks - when your network of relationships withers away until finally there's no one to call, no one to share your ups and downs. Relationships are the way to stay connected. I'm glad that Mitch trusted us enough to let us get to know him, if only in small bursts.

For all we know, the people here at St. Ned of Flanders church may have been the only people Mitch talked to during his final weeks. Maybe only a few of us talked to him; it wasn't always easy to get through to Mitch, and some days all we could do was try to put a hand on his shoulder if he would let us touch him.

It's a cliché to say that every person has a story to tell, but ultimately the way we build a community is by sharing our stories. Telling a bit of your true story is a gift to the person you tell it to. I wish we knew more of Mitch's story, but it only overlapped our own stories in a few places and that's all we have.

We know the beginning of the story - a tiny baby entered the world. We know the end - Mitch died. In between he was our guest for a little while.

We can guess parts of Mitch's story from the way he was when we knew him. His appearance put up a barrier between him and most "decent" people. Perhaps some saw him as a warning of what can happen when you stop mattering to the market economy. Perhaps some saw him as a warning of failure, and hurried towards their snug homes a little faster. Some imagined what he must have done to deserve to be in that condition - things they themselves would not do. Some people saw Mitch and were thankful for their own safety nets, the ones that would catch them before they could slide through those cracks.

That's us, though. God does not see failure here. A friend of mine likes to say that God sees all of us through Jesus-tinted glasses. The grace and compassion Jesus showed during his brief time on earth were not an aberration, they are standard operating procedure for God.

The best thing we can do during our own brief time on earth is to try to be a conduit for that grace and compassion, to tell people the story of the God of power and might who loves us where we are right now. The God who knows what we can be and will pour out his grace to get us there.

In today's Gospel, Jesus tells a story about himself. He says, "I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep."

Jesus knew Mitch, and Jesus died for Mitch, and that's really all we need to know in order to celebrate Mitch's life. The rest of the story is just details.

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