Saturday, August 29, 2020Â Â Â Â Memorial of the Passion of Saint John the Baptist
Desert peace on city streets
As campus ministers at UIUC in the early 90’s Margaret and I accompanied students, many from the suburbs of Chicago and nearly all white, to Danville Correctional Center, where the residents were mostly from the south and west sides of Chicago and nearly all black. We sang together and prayed together and rubbed off on each other. Often the guys in the prison dedicated themselves to Bible reading and to prayer, and we learned a lot from them.
During my two spring breaks with these students we went to Saltillo, Mexico in the mountains near Monterey, and the next year to Highland Ranch, an upper middle-class suburb of Denver, handing out Bibles, inviting people who opened their doors to a church service we would lead, praying with anyone anytime anywhere.
And between spring breaks, we knocked on doors in the neighborhoods around the campus house (Oregon and Lincoln Ave in Urbana), talking mostly with other students who were more or less interested in what we had to say.
Of course, listening was what we tried to do, rather than talk, hoping to err on the side of listening too much rather than the opposite. Strangely, in school we’re taught to write, then to speak, and finally to listen. In life, it’s far better if we learn to listen, then to speak, and finally, if necessary, to write.
Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters.
You don’t need to be wise or powerful or upper class.
God chooses you, the “foolish of the world,” to shame the wise.
At last year’s AACC World Conference in Nashville, Margaret saw a marvelous four-sided Venn diagram which guides you toward your purpose.
What do you love?
What are your strengths?
What does the world need?
What do I get paid for?
Your passion and mission, your potential and cause should guide you toward your career and calling, your profession and vocation. (Take a look at the link.)
But our calling as Christian boys and girls (children of God) rarely matches up with the vocations chosen for us by parents, circumstances, or ambition.
God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong.
No human being has any place boasting before God.
Whoever boasts should boast in the Lord, who became for us wisdom and strength.
Not many of the UIUC students liked going door to door, especially in their own neighborhood. But I loved it. In the Moonies a decade earlier when I spent a summer in London, I found a family who would freely feed and house me in the neighborhood of East Finchley, then knocked on every door of the neighborhood. I didn’t evangelize with words, but I offered to do whatever the person behind the door needed.
I raked leaves at an Anglican church and made friends with a retired RAF pilot who was now the local priest. A sherry addict asked me to come back every afternoon, but she wanted too much from me. A beautiful Iranian girl shared stories from her country. A wealthy Jewish couple eventually let me wash some windows, but they resented my refusal to accept payment.
And there were several people interested in Christianity, even the Unification Church version. An older man (he actually smelled old) had spent much of his life in India and he shared his thoughts about Hinduism with me.
From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind.
Preserve us, Lord, even in spite of famine.
Before my summer in London I spent a year on MFT (a Mobile Fundraising Team), riding from town to town in Iowa, then Minnesota and Wisconsin with ten other Moonies and our leader Doug. Doug was from Ohio, and I was from Illinois, and we avoided those states. He had blond hair and wild bright eyes, he was about 6 foot 3 with a gravelly voice and huge smile.
Our soul waits for the Lord who is our help and shield
And in him our hearts rejoice
In his holy name we trust.
After intense morning prayers and acapella praise, Doug dropped us off in small towns where we spent our days alone, knocking on doors and asking for money, offering cookies or mounted butterflies or carnations in exchange. Always, we were raising money for “young people.” I loved finding out who lived behind those doors.
Sometimes we went to factories. Doug dropped me off at a sawmill in the middle of the northern Wisconsin forest. I went in through the railroad entrance at the back, and began selling carnations. I had maybe an hour before security found me and escorted me out, but oh! The challenge, the prayers, the smiles of the people who gave me money even as they looked at me like I was crazy … so great.
On weekend evenings we took off from corners in Milwaukee or Minneapolis or Des Moines. We took our buckets of flowers into bars and worked past midnight. You can imagine the people we met, usually smiling up from where we were kneeling because we needed to stay down out of the bartender’s sight. “Want to buy a flower or two?”
How did those experiences guide me toward vocation and toward calling?
And as I think about my life, I also think about John’s, who lived in the desert of Galilee, ate locusts and wild honey, and dressed in sackcloth. There was nothing normal about his life, either, at least not in the short time he was allowed to live. Before Anthony of the Desert, before St. Benedict or Francis or Dominic, John the Baptist lived the life of a solitary monk and mendicant. Then God called him out of his cave and he began to shout, began to raise his arms up to the sky, began to preach, and the people came. He baptized them, railed against the corrupted king and was arrested.
The king’s wife wanted him dead, and used her daughter to entice the king into granting him that deadly request. Jesus had been baptized by John himself, and in fact John was his cousin. Of course he was heartbroken. And he knew the strains of purity in John’s heart.
Blessed are those who are persecuted (like John) for the sake of righteousness,
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
However inconvenient, it is good and right for each of us to seek the path that God has chosen, and then, as best we can, follow it into eternity.
           (1 Corinthians 1, Psalm 33, Matthew 5, Mark 6)
#
