Tuesday, August 22, 2023
Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Gideon, Mrs. Turpin and me
Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.
Perhaps as I get older I begin to read Jesus’ words more as he meant them. I know that must have been true for Flannery O’Connor. One of her last short stories, “Revelation,” chronicles a proud white woman’s path back to the end of the line. This is I guess the best short story I ever read, even transcending Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” and it ends like this, with Mrs. Turpin, the story’s protagonist, leaning on a pig pen as she waters the hogs:
At last she lifted her head. There was only a purple streak in the sky, cutting through a field of crimson and leading, like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk. She raised her hands from the side of the pen in a gesture hieratic and profound. A visionary light settled in her eyes.
She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right.
She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.
She lowered her hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed unblinkingly on what lay ahead. In a moment the vision faded but she remained where she was, immobile.
At length she got down and turned off the faucet and made her slow way on the darkening path to the house. In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah.
(from Complete Stories, p 508) You can read the whole story here.
Jesus said it over and over. The last shall be first. “Come back here with me,” Jesus said, “and I will give you rest.”
Jesus Christ became poor although he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich.
The poor might always be poor, but they also run a good chance of being “first” in heaven.
Often I feel grateful but also trapped by my first-world prosperity. How can I release my addictions to comfort and security to the only Source of true comfort and security?
Gideon seemed to be in the same boat, wanting to be sure he could trust that he would be a winner, rather than giving God permission to guide him in. (Trust the force, Gideon!) When the angel spoke triumphantly to Gideon, “The Lord is with you, O champion!” Gideon was skeptical to say the least. Unlike Mary’s, his questions were hard and unyielding.
Why has all this happened to us? Where are God’s wondrous deeds; he has abandoned us.”
How can I save Israel?
I shall be with you.
But like Moses, Gideon blanched and tried to refuse God’s call.
My family is the least in my tribe, and I am the least in my family!
The wonderful story of Gideon could not continue except God allowed Gideon to demand a sign. Not one sign, but three. Then after those signs, God reduced his fighting force from 32,000 to 300. Gideon had commited himself to God, and he no longer held back. God-inside-him carried his warriors to victory after victory. Although at the end of his life he edged toward idolatry, Gideon learned to heed God’s words. He would have understood from his own life what Jesus meant when he said to his disciples:
Everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
Remember those Gideon Bibles in your motel room nightstands? I sure do. In 1899, one of the three founders suggested they call themselves the Gideons, after “a man leading a band of untrained men to battlefield victory.” Billions of Bibles later, they are still going strong. My friend George’s friend Michael is soon headed to South America, where he hopes with his team to hand out 100,000 Bibles in ten days.
The Lord himself will give his benefits; our land shall yield its increase. The Lord speaks of peace to his people.
 (Judges 6, Psalm 85, 2 Corinthians 8, Matthew 19)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
