The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight”,
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’ -- Mark 1:1-8.
Where have we heard the following story before?
An angel of the Lord appears to an old man and declares, “O Zakariya! We give thee good news of a son: His name shall be John: on none by that name have we conferred distinction before.”
The old man replies, “O my Lord! How shall I have a son, when my wife is barren and I have grown decrepit from old age?”
The angel replies, “So thy Lord saith: ‘That is easy for Me: I did indeed create thee before, when thou hadst been nothing!”
The old man insists, “O my Lord! Give me a Sign.”
“Thy sign,” the angel answers, “Shall be that thou shalt speak to no man for three nights.”
The scenario rings a bell, but from which of the four canonical Gospels is it? Or perhaps it is from the historian Flavius Josephus who wrote Jewish Antiquities in the first century of the common era. Or could this be the dialogue of one of thousands of Christmas plays and gospel movies that have been produced since the invention of film?
Actually, the passage is from the Qur’an – sura 19 (Maryam), verse 7. The only thing I held back, to make it harder to guess, is the name John. The baptizer – the precursor – the forerunner – is named Yahya in the Qur’an, but he is the same figure who came to proclaim the coming of Jesus.
It’s surprising how John’s influence has so profoundly affected Muslims and Jews as well as Christians. More than any other figure of the gospels except Jesus himself, John the Baptist has permeated our culture. He is the subject of plays, movies, books and operas. Actors such as Charleton Heston and Michael York chewed up the scenery with their portrayals of John as an eccentric, wild-eyed and bellowing fanatic calling hoarsely on sinners to repent.
As the centuries passed, even the artists who portrayed John became legends on their own. Karl Perron, the German bass-baritone who sang the role of John in Richard Strauss’ Opera Salomé, was a life-long hypochondriac who believed harmful germs would enter his body through his ears. During rehearsals of Salomé, Perron would stuff balls of cotton in his ears and quickly retreat to his dressing room between acts. He would turn his head away from cast and crew members as if they were disease-carrying pariahs. This was an annoying habit to some of his colleagues, and it led to a disastrous denouement on opening night. In a climatic scene after Salomé’s dance, when the platter bearing the plaster head of John the Baptist was carried on stage, the head had cotton balls stuffed in its ears. The stunned singers and musicians dissolved into laughter, and it was several moments before the opera could proceed.
Art has not always provided a useful rendering of the story of John the Baptists. The 1953 movie Salomé, starring Rita Hayworth in the title role and Alan Badel as John, is best known for Hayworth’s dance of the seven veils (which, in the interest of research integrity, I watched several times in succession last week). Hayworth’s dance is breathtaking, as is evidenced by the possibly feigned but convincing heavy breathing of Charles Laughton in the role of Herod.
The scene may have created a fitting emotional illusion of what it was like in Herod’s palace when Salomé began dripping veils, but it is otherwise inaccurate. Director William Dieterle’s film version would have us believe Salomé is a Christian who thinks she’s dancing to save John’s life. That’s not only un-biblical, it takes all the fun out of it.
So what was John really like? If you grew up Baptist – or Babtist – you may have heard a Sunday school teacher try to convince you that we trace our roots back to John. But – as satisfying as it may be to tell our Presbyterian friends that our founder predates John Calvin by 1500 years – there’s no truth to the claim. Our 18th century origins had nothing to do with John.
Only in the Qur’an, it seems, is John Yahya known for his kindness:
“And piety (for all creatures) as from Us, and purity: He was devout,
And kind to his parents, and he was not overbearing or rebellious.
So Peace on him the day he was born, the day that he dies, and the day that he will be raised up to life (again)!” —Qur'an, sura 19 (Maryam), ayah 13-15.
Other ancient views of John raise questions about our stereotypical image of him as a raging prophet dressed in animal skins and eating locusts. According to Bart D. Ehrman in Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament, the records of the contemporary Ebionites portrayed John as a fellow vegetarian. He did not, the Ebionites insist, eat locusts, and he preferred his honey in the form of honey cakes, or manna. If John were a vegetarian, that would also raise doubts about his propensity to dress in the skins of dead animals. The image of John that emerges looks more like the dapper, purple-clad gentleman in the Tiffany stained glass window that illuminates North Baptist Church in Port Chester, N.Y. (above, right).
So who was John?
No doubt he was not a raging maniac, and Mark did not believe he was an esthetic vegetarian. “Now John,” Mark says, “was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.” Okay. Not my cup of tea, but there it is. One can only hope the locusts weren’t still buzzing when he bit into them. Probably not. He was surely a discrete eater, or he would have scared away more crowds than he attracted.
But his culinary habits don’t really matter. What we do know about John is clear enough.
It was John who was sent by God to give us an important message:
“Prepare the way of the Lord.”
It was John who “appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.”
And, most significant of all, it was John who came prepared to turn his back on fame and influence as soon as his cousin, Jesus, arrived on the scene. That’s not a common attitude. It’s like Steve Jobs telling everyone, “but even more important than me is Tim Cook, who must increase as I decrease.” Not bloody likely.
But John said, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Even two-thousand years later, John’s message is too important to be dismissed by speculation that he was a rustic eccentric who ate bugs. It is still John’s message that calls us away from the frenzied chaos of our Christmas preparations and says, stop. Take a deep breath. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Be patient.
Waiting, as Henri Nouwen wrote, is essential to the spiritual life.
“But waiting as a disciple of Jesus is not an empty waiting,” Nouwen said. “It is a waiting with a promise in our hearts that makes already present what we are waiting for. We wait during Advent for the birth of Jesus. We wait after Easter for the coming of the Spirit, and after the ascension of Jesus we wait for his coming again in glory. We are always waiting, but it is a waiting in the conviction that we have already seen God's footsteps.
“Waiting for God is an active, alert - yes, joyful - waiting. As we wait we remember him for whom we are waiting, and as we remember him we create a community ready to welcome him when he comes.”
It is John the Baptist who calls us to create that community of readiness.
It is our job to nurture one another and live in that community with patience and joy, so that when this hectic season culminates with the coming of the Christ child, it will be a happy celebration and not a blessed relief.
Stephen Schwartz’ mystical Godspell, now at the Circle in the Square Theater on Broadway, breathes new life into the Gospel stories most of us know by heart.
The musical has been doing that for forty years, and now the infusion of disco, hip hop, blues and funk brings the parables even closer to home. One of my favorite skits in the show is the separation of the sheep (“baaahhh”) from the goats (“maaahhh.”) As the goats realize to their horror that they are being shut out of the kingdom because of their lack of empathy for suffering people, they taunt the sheep: “But, Lord, if we knew it was you, we would have invited you over – for LAMB chops.” But Jesus – on stage as in the bible – is unyielding. “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. And (you) will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Is it possible that Jesus could be so mean? You can hear the pathos in the bleating of the goats: “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” But Jesus makes it plain: when we step gingerly over a sleeping homeless person at Grand Central Station, we step over Jesus. There is a story that when First Lady Rosalyn Carter did just that in 1978, her Baptist heart broke. She wept.
But life isn’t always simple for us goats. This week, my niece in Melbourne, Fla., posted this on Facebook: “Doorbell rings at midnight- creepy guy with a sketchy story trying to get in our house. This song is for my husband, who got up and went to the window with a baseball bat and while our daughter and I hid under the covers. He's so brave!” First the guy said there had been an accident. Then he said he had taken a cab but needed help to pay the driver. Finally, with the dog barking ferociously inside the house, the guy disappeared.
Was that guy Jesus? Not bloody likely. But how do we judge the divinity of every panhandler who greets us in the mall with a sob story? The truth is, sooner or later, we’re all goats. Maaahh.
But much of the time, we’re sheep, too. We care for those who are hungry, thirsty and ill clothed. We support the poor. We nurse the sick. We have our prison ministries. Baaahh.
It’s interesting to note, by way of a scientific affirmation of a metaphysical observation, there is such a thing as a goat-sheep hybrid – a geep. This doesn’t happen often in nature. Goat and sheep do cohabit on a thousand hills, and they have been known to cross species lines and do the nasty, although their offspring rarely survive. But sheep-goat chimeras were created by researchers at the Institute of Animal Physiology in England by combining sheep embryos with goat embryos. The offspring were a mosaic of goat and sheep tissue. The parts that grew from the sheep embryo were woolly. Those that grew from the goat embryo were hairy.
It’s puzzling and perhaps a little disturbing to wonder why physiologists would want to do this, but it does make an unusual sermon illustration. When Jesus separates the sheep from the goats, how will he deal with the fact that most of us are geeps?
Actually, I think this is a bigger problem for us than it will be for Jesus. He knows very well that all of us sin and fall short of the glory of God, and there must be some kind of divine formula to protect us from eternal punishment when we miss a deposit at the food pantry. But how much slack is Jesus willing to cut us?
Last week I watched an interesting 2004 European film called, “The Downfall,” directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, which depicts the final ten days of Adolf Hitler's life in his Berlin bunker in 1945. In an unlikely but apparently documented scene, Eva Braun – soon to become Frau Hitler – and Hitler’s young secretary, Traudl Junge, take a cigarette break in the bunker and talk about der fuehrer. “I’ve known him for ten years, and yet I don’t really know him at all,” confesses Eva. The lithesome Traudl takes a deep drag and shrugs. “In private moments he can be so kind and gentle,” she says. “At other times, he is so brutal.”
Hitler is one of those malevolent figures who cannot be rationalized, so monstrous that partisan comparisons of George W. Bush and Barack Obama to Hitler fall ludicrously short. No one in history, with the possible exception of Caligula or Stalin, was as bad as Hitler. He is evil incarnate.
But I remember reading an essay by entertainer Steve Allen that speculated no one can be malicious all the time, and he used Hitler as an example. “Probably much of the time he was a very nice fellow,” Allen wrote. The speculation seems to hold true in many scenes from “The Downfall,” which are based on eyewitness accounts. At one point Hitler rages at his generals, saying the German people deserve to starve and die because they hadn’t done enough to defend the Reich. In other scenes, he tweaks the youthful cheek of a pre-teen soldier, or pats his secretary on the shoulder, saying, “You need to get some rest, dear.”
I tend to agree that no one is a monster 24-7. Many of the murderers I knew as a newspaper reporter were perfectly nice people. There is as telling scene in HBO’s Treme in which a felon in prison warns a visiting lawyer that a New Orleans councilman she admires is on the take. The lawyer, who believed in the councilman’s integrity, expresses shock, but the prisoner finds her attitude to be naïve. “We’re all nice guys,” he says. “We all love our mothers. We all root for the Saints.”
Even so, it’s not easy to think of ourselves as both good and evil, simultaneously goats and sheep. Our hymnology assures us that faith in Jesus will wash our all our sins away, leaving our souls – in that irksome Victorian metaphor – white as snow. We fervently want to believe that people can be good, that there are those who do not have “an evil bone in their bodies.” We’d like to think this was true of our sainted mothers, our favorite pastors, our idolized teachers. We’d like to believe that, someday, it will be true of us.
We’d like to think that, perhaps, but it’s not good theology or, for that matter, good psychology. The great psychoanalyst C. G. Jung insisted that evil and good do and must exist together in every human heart. In a Southern Cross review of an unpublished essay by Jung, Frank Thomas Smith quoted the great man:
“Evil is the necessary opposite of good, without which there would be no good either. It is impossible to even think good out of existence.” Jung, Smith writes, believed in the “titanic magnitude of evil,” and he believed Christian theologians “consistently and disastrously dwarfed the picture of evil as arising from the unconscious of humanity.” In Civilization in Transition, Jung wrote that evil “is of gigantic proportions, so that for the Church to talk of original sin and to trace it back to Adam’s relatively innocent slip-up with Eve is almost a euphemism. The case is far graver and is grossly underestimated.”
Jung wrote these words before Hitler came to power, so history’s ultimate expression of “grossly underestimated” evil was as yet unavailable. But there is always ample evidence that evil impacts our lives with “titanic magnitude.”
Perhaps one of the messages in the parable of the sheep and the goats is that humans must strive to overcome the resident evil in our hearts by conscientiously living out God’s commandments to support the poor, “the least of these,” as Jesus called them. But out best efforts to be Christlike are not always successful. There are times when we will be moved to help "the least of these," but also times when we will step over their sleeping bodies on subway vents. As in many animated features, the angel of our good nature orbits around our heads with the angel of our evil nature, one reminding us we are sheep, the other dismissing us as goats.
It’s not pleasant knowing good and evil are competing for our attention, but the knowledge does keep us realistically balanced. Some people go through their lives assuming they are good and godly, even while they ignore “the least of these” who cross their paths.
A couple months ago, as the nation celebrated Labor Day, many Christians were disturbed that other Christians felt justified in removing government support for “the least of these” in order to move toward balancing the federal budget. As so-called bible believing Christians in Congress were calling for budget cuts in programs that support the poor, others were saddened by the reality that one in five children are raised in poverty and 40 million Americans are living below the federal poverty level.
“Be that as it may,” the National Council of Churches said in its Labor Day message, “it is clear that many politicians, even those who name the name of Christ, will not mention the poor in their holiday rhetoric. If that's due to forgetfulness on their part, let us offer this reminder: poverty exists at unacceptable levels in this bountiful land. While politicians can certainly differ on strategies for helping the poor, no politician who claims the bible as authoritative can ignore the poor. And no politicians who ignore the poor can claim the bible to be their guide – not at any time, and certainly not in this time of great need.”
The National Council of Churches offered to send a free bible to any politician who needed clarity on that point.
The biblical message is stated with particular clarity in the parable of the sheep and the goats. The one in five children and the 40 million Americans living in poverty should make us all think of the face of Jesus, and his declaration that whatever we do to help them, “you have done it unto me.”
That probably won’t remove from us the stigma of being geeps, or temper the issue of good and evil in human hearts.
But it will remind us that when we walk among those who are hungry, those who are thirsty, those who can’t afford a decent set of clothes, those who are persecuted by injustice, we aren’t walking among strangers. We are walking beside Jesus.
We won’t be able to help everyone, perhaps. But knowing who we are walking with should be wonderfully clarifying – and motivating.
‘For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, “Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.” His master said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master. ”And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, “Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.” His master said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master. ”Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours. ”But his master replied, “You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 25:14-30
The Divine M, who is preaching on this parable this morning, notes that the message could be construed to offer clues where Jesus might stand on the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. Any Keynesian economist would assume that the rich man in this story got rich at the expense of the many who are poor. Yet Jesus appears to approve not only the rich man’s praise of servants whose shrewd investments paid off, but he especially relishes the man’s condemnation of the “wicked and lazy slave” who buried his capital in the ground.
On the surface, this could be the biblical foundation for a Christian MBA program. But let’s not get carried away. It could also be interpreted as a program for keeping your slaves productive and happy. We all know that our Southern Baptist antecedents were skilled at this kind of isogesis when they claimed biblical justification for fact that they and their missionaries owned slaves. (Parenthetically, not all Baptists felt that way; it was on this very issue that Northern and Southern Baptists split in 1845.)
So we are forewarned that it is wise to read the bible carefully to avoid reading into it messages that are not there. In the parable of the talents, is Jesus praising rich slave owners? Or – as we have been taught in our Sunday schools from time immemorial – is he praising people who make the most of the gifts God has given them?
It’s convenient, at least in English, that the biblical word “talent” is the same word we use to describe those human qualities that make us who we are.
A talent (in Latin, a talentum) is an ancient unit of mass. It corresponded generally to the mass of water in the volume of an amphora, a one foot cube. When used as a measure of money, it refers to a talent-weight of gold or of silver. In Jesus’ parable, no one knows exactly how much money is involved, but it’s clear we’re talking big bucks.
Human talent is far more difficult to measure.
When I was in college I took a film course at Shorty Yeaworth’s Cinema Institute (see http://thelittlescroll.blogspot.com/2011/09/god-dont-call-me-at-office.html) and we went to the Philadelphia studio where Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” originated. We went there to learn how a television program was done, and I was deeply impressed by the skills and knowledge of my fellow students: the three camera operators who kept the picture centered and steady, the sound technicians who sat at huge control boards to maintain the intricate balance and treble and bass, the director who watched the show on three screens and sent instructions where the cameras should point and which view should be selected for the main screen. The gifts of many people behind the scenes of a television show are a hidden but essential part of any broadcast, and that day – as key grip – I wrapped a coil of heavy cable around my shoulder and felt privileged to be a part of this electronic miracle.
As the show prepared to go live, a student who said he was from Christian Television, which no one else had heard of, sat in the anchor chair as the technician focused the light on his powdered face and blow-dried hair. The young man, who up to this point had not exhibited any skills beyond a well-modulated voice, squinted into the camera and waited for a signal to do something.
In the control room we could hear the director count backwards. “… three … two … one …”
Then: “Cue talent.”
Suddenly the show was live, and the young man at the anchor desk began reading from a prepared script about the purpose of the program, which was mostly to give film students a chance to learn how to do it.
But the director’s final order stuck in my head. “Cue talent”? This was the first time I had heard the term that is used to describe the person in front of the camera – the anchor, the reporter, the weather guy, the sports woman, anyone whose picture appears on screen. Back in Shorty Yeaworth’s film course, my first reaction was that the phrase was replete with irony, because it referred to the least talented person in the room. In later years when I was a newspaper reporter, I often pondered this irony at the scene of a plane crash or tornado devastation when I was interviewed by late-arriving “talent” from local television stations who begged the print media reporters to fill them in. But that was merely a reminder that “talent” is a relative term, so let me go on record that there are thousands of truly talented television reporters, and I cite two of my favorites: Ann Curry of the Today Show, and my nephew Andy Jenks in Richmond (be his tweep @AndyJenksNBC12.)
Talent is something we regard highly in other people, and those who have a lot of it are objects of sometimes eccentric adulation, as when women scream ecstatically and throw their panties at rock bands. I’ve demonstrated a bit of that kind of fanaticism myself, as those who remember my high school idolatry of JFK will know. My years as a newspaper reporter in Pottstown introduced me to several idols of a different nature, including the late "Smokin' Joe" Frazier, a gentle Christian man with iron fists.
Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one, because I tell the story all the time, but in 1992 I was in National Airport in Washington waiting for a flight. I went to an empty gate so I could read without being jostled and opened the paper. Before long a ground agent escorted a tall, slightly stoop-shouldered man to the same gate. The man obviously had the same aim as mine – to sit quietly alone and read the paper before his flight was called. I looked up and recognized him immediately: it was Joe DiMaggio, the Yankee Clipper, one of the most talented players in the history of baseball, who had been in Washington as a part of the 500th anniversary celebration of Columbus’ discovery of America.
The reason we admired Joe, even in his retirement, is his extravagant talent that set him apart from nearly every other player in the game. As Joe sank into his seat, I lowered my paper and stared at the back of his head. Occasionally a passerby my age or older would do a double take as they realized who was sitting at the gate. But we all respected Joe’s privacy, and he sat alone and unbothered for several minutes. Soon, his flight was called and the same ground agent – a woman so young I wondered if she had any idea who he was – came over and to escort to the entryway. He stood and flashed his Mr. Coffee smile and disappeared into the crowd.
I dropped my paper and walked over to Joe’s empty seat. Hesitating slightly as if I was approaching the burning bush, I sat down. I sat down in Joe DiMaggio’s warmth and gurgled with happiness.
My spouse, the Divine M, thinks that was more than a little weird. It wasn’t like I could absorb Joe’s talent or essence by sitting in his ninety-eight point six for a few seconds. But, I insist, it wasn’t like I was throwing my panties at him, either. It was an expression of manly obeisance to a genuine idol. And I’m glad I did it.
Talent is also the bread and butter of the theater. There are scores of supremely talented people on stage, but, sadly, there are millions of supremely talented people who never get a starring role or even a recall to audition.
One of the barriers to talent in the theater, I think, is that the key to success is often one’s physical appearance. Beauty is often more important than talent, and actors who would be perfect for the role of Evita or Reno Sweeney or Liza Doolittle will never be cast because someone doesn’t consider them pretty enough.
Thank God for high school and local theater, where there is much more leeway. In “Once on This Island,” the character of Ti Moune is a petite girl, a girl of color portrayed by one actor as a child and by another as a teenager. On the Broadway stage, the role was played by the beautiful and petite LaChanze, who fits the image perfectly, and in most big stage productions the same strict casting call is pursued.
In one high school production we saw, the child Ti Moune was portrayed by a lovely African American child, but between scenes she morphed into a tall, 200 pound white woman. This may have been confusing to the audience, but it was a creative way of using the most talented person in a pivotal role. And the equally talented cast was able to sing with a straight face the beguiling lyric, “Don’t you remember your little Ti Moune from the tree?”
Talent is much admired by all of us, but for some of us it is a vicarious admiration. We notice the talents in others but not in ourselves. This is a truth known to every pastor who has tried to recruit people for programs and ministries in the church – greeter, choir, evangelism, Christian education, newsletter, building maintenance – because a dismaying number of people are likely to respond, “Oh, I can’t. I have no gifts. I’m not talented that way.”
Here’s where the parable of the talents slaps many of us in the face. It seems safe enough to demurely turn away from a task on the grounds we’re not skilled enough to do it, and no doubt the pastor will express polite understanding and look elsewhere. But the still, small voice inside us may remind us of another response: “Throw this worthless slave into utter darkness, where there will weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Oops.
One point of this parable may be to remind us that the gracious modesty our mothers raised us to express may not always be the answer God is seeking when he calls us to do something. And another point seems to be that God has given each of us talents in abundance, no matter who we are. And when God calls us to use those talents and make them grow, God does not want to hear humble excuses.
All of us know people who talents are underestimated, either by themselves or others.
Lately I’ve been thinking of a cousin I haven’t seen for a half century or more. She was the daughter of my maternal grandmother’s brother and his wife, Uncle Everett and Aunt Wilma Close. Grace was a little older than my mother and her brother, and the cousins used to play together in Andes when they were children.
Grace still lived with her parents when I was a child and we visited the Closes whenever we were in Andes.
Grace used a wheelchair and she had a severe disability that was never identified. It could have been cerebral palsy She could not control the movements of her hands, which seemed to be constantly wrestling with one another, and she had difficulty forming words.
Aunt Wilma always dressed Grace in a black dress or flower print dress, possibly because it easier to get off and on, but the dress and the wheelchair created the illusion that Grace was an elderly lady. But she must have been in her thirties when I knew her. My mother said one of the games she and her brother would play with Grace when they were kids would be to hold her by the shoulders so she could pretend to walk like normal people. Grace’s hands would push gleefully against each other and she would laugh delightedly until her exhausted cousins had to put her down.
Grace lived quietly in her room in a farm house on the edge of the village of Andes. I don’t know if she could hold a book or read, and there was no television in the house. She may have listened to the radio, but I have no idea how she spent her days.
I do know that when we stopped by for visits, Aunt Wilma would greet us at the door and Uncle Everett go to his chair and the family would sit in silent Yankee taciturnity, which was regarded as polite interaction. But when Grace wheeled into the room, laughing and squealing with delight that visitors had come, the mood changed. Whatever our spirits were, Grace would raise them – by laughter and smiles and undecipherable noises. She didn’t engage in conversations, but when we asked how she was she would nod and smile, making it clear that everything was perfectly fine as far as she was concerned. Given that she spent her life trapped inside a dysfunctional body, her happiness was both uncanny and infectious.
I’m sure no one would have considered Grace to be a gifted or talented person, but this woman to whom nature had given so little invariably gave much to all who met her. She had been given the tiniest of talents, but somehow she reinvested what she had in an attitude that multiplied her gift ten fold.
In my youth I was in awe of supremely talented performers, politicians, and athletes. Heroes like President Kennedy and Joe DiMaggio and Joe Frazier were given substantial gifts by their creator, and they invested them with vigor, multiplying them in ways that would make Jesus proud. That’s why the rest of us, not having received the kinds of gifts they had, enshrine them in halls of champions.
At the same time, most of us were given greater gifts than Cousin Grace. If we’re not investing them as vigorously as she did, we should be ashamed of ourselves. For me, she will always be a reminder that we need not make excuses about our weaknesses, or seek to convince ourselves that, given the overwhelming challenges facing us in life, there is little we can do to make a difference in the church, in our households, in our communities, or in our world.
Maybe we don’t have the skills or the gifts to change the church or the world. But God has given us sufficient gifts to make a difference, just as Grace made a difference in the lives of so many people in Andes.
God didn’t judge Grace for not changing the world. But God does judge her as a good and trustworthy servant because she multiplied her gifts many fold. As her earthly life came to an end, I have no doubt of the Lord’s greeting to her: “Well done, good and trustworthy servant; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.”
May we all be inspired by heroes like Joe DiMaggio and John Kennedy. But may we base our lives on the faithfulness of people like Grace, who were given so little but turned what they had into manifold blessings.
