January 24, 2010         Edgewood United Church UCC        Rev. Karen E. Gale

 

All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir/Let the Words of My Mouth…

Psalm 19

1 Corinthians 12: 12-31

 

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O God, my rock and my redeemer.” (Psalm 19:14)

 

I told an inappropriate joke this week.  I had been researching jokes for Holy Hilarity. Some jokes I put in a Word file to be used when constructing the sermon. Some jokes are ones I won’t use but think are funny and I bring them to staff meetings. And then there are the jokes that are too rude, crude, or crass to use. Those I usually leave alone…Except for occasionally telling one to a friend…which I did this week. The look on her face told me all that I really already knew deep down. The joke was crude, disrespectful and offensive. I was ashamed of myself.

 

It’s been said, “don’t say anything that you wouldn’t want to see published in the paper.”

 

A few of you talked with me after worship last week about my comments about Harry Reid and his assessment of Barak Obama’s chance at winning the presidency. Reid commented that Obama would be ok because he was “light skinned” and didn’t speak in “a Negro accent.” You said to me, “but that was a private conversation.” And “but Reid was right, it is probably true that we wouldn’t have elected an African American with really dark skin.”

 

Yes, the words were in private. And yes, there may be some political truth in all this.

 

But, my joke was told in private, too, and somehow I still have the sense that damage was done.

 

In the psalm today, Psalm 19, the closing verse is very familiar to us: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer.

 

In many churches, this is said just before the pastor launches into the sermon. It is an appropriate time for that—because being a Word based church, a denomination that seeks to do our learning, growing, and discerning of  God’s ways in large part through exposition of the scriptures and the sermon, we do hope our words and our thoughts lead us in ways of truth, honesty, and life giving ministry.

 

But do we leave that hope, that striving for acceptable words and hearts, at the sanctuary door? What about at work, at school, at home with our partner or with our children, or when we are angry, or when we are looking for a quick laugh….where are our words and the meditations of our hearts then?

 

Does what we say or cogitate on in private make a difference?

 

Today’s text from 1 Corinthians has the apostle Paul writing to the Corinthian church which was in a real mess. There is serious conflict there and a real wrestling match in underway over who is the greatest, which gifts in the church have more value and what members are important. This was due in large part to the diversity of the church.

 

In Paul’s time you hung out with people who were like you, from your social strata, with the same sense of honor, those whom your family was connected to, with your same religious and political affiliations. Jews and Gentiles did not mix. Slaves and freedmen did not mix.

 

Yet, in the church, all were coming together to participate in Jesus’ ministry of compassion, welcome, generosity, and discipleship. And once everyone got together, the problems started. In the church the members were supposed to be one, one in Christ, one in the body. But, being human beings, it was hard for them to move beyond their differences into oneness. Hence, the squabbling.

 

In some ways this is true of the church today, too. Think about how you spend your time and where you go in a week. If you are like most people, you hang out with people who are like you—in your same age group, with your same profession, in your same social class, with the same racial identity, with the same religious and political affiliation.

 

And yet, when we gather here on a Sunday morning, here we all are—all ages, races, classes, political views, professions all mixed up together. We too have our share of squabbling. When we are in groups that contain people like us, the focus is on our issues, our problems, our interests, our desires. When we mix it all up with diverse groups of people, the focus in on the body, the whole range of needs, wants, desires, problems and issues.

 

Paul is trying to get the Corinth church, and those of us reading today, to understand that being a congregation is about oneness. That the sign of a healthy church, the sign of a mature Christian, is the focus on being one and valuing every person’s gifts, however different they are from ours.

 

Which brings me back to the line from the Psalm: may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O God.

 

Does what we say and what we think make a difference?

 

Five years ago I heard this story on This American Life, an NPR radio show that features ordinary people and their lives. This was the story of Beth who moved to a neighborhood on the border of Oakland, California with her husband and baby.  The baby did not sleep well (something I can relate to) and so they went out and bought a baby monitor. Beth turned the monitor on each night and all was going to plan until the sixth night.

 

She turned it on that night and all of the sudden there was a voice coming through on the monitor:  “Come by. We’ll fire one up. I have two or three for you.” The baby monitor was picking up the cell phone conversation of her neighbor Lil Mo, who also happened to be the neighborhood drug dealer. He said, “I’m outside the haters.” She thought to herself, ‘I really wish he wouldn’t call us that.’ A car pulled up and took Lil Mo around the block, the usual way of doing business.

 

Four years ago Beth had bought the house. The neighborhood was on the border, perfect for drug dealing and some low key prostitution. There was always trash on the sidewalks and drug paraphernalia lying around. None of that bothered her.

 

What really freaked Beth out was the possibility of having neighbors, real neighbors who would want to chit-chat and wave and talk about the weather and mowing the lawn. She had moved from the city where you didn’t know your neighbors and didn’t want long term relationships with the people living around her. Never mind the fact that she felt like the picture of gentrification, the first lower income white lady moving into a black neighborhood.

 

At first Beth was really nice to everyone; she went overboard with the niceness. Then she found out the neighbors were making fun of her: why was she talking so long to crazy Delphine, for instance.  She quickly changed strategies and decided to ignore everyone. No waving. Minded her own business.

 

There was an old lady living on the other side of her named Eunice. Once Beth got Eunice’s mail by mistake but instead of running it over she put it back in the mail slot for the postman to deliver.

 

Another reason she didn’t talk to Eunice was Lil Mo. You see Lil Mo was Eunice’s grandson and he didn’t really live there. He just dealt drugs out of her front yard. And Lil Mo did not like Beth and her family. The first time Beth said “hi”, Lil Mo looked at her and said, “hater.”  He would yell it when she walked to her car: “hater!”

 

And now it was Lil Mo’s voice on her baby monitor. Beth became convinced he was constantly talking crap about her so she started listening in every night to see if the monitor would pick up his conversations.

 

A few weeks later she heard it again, Lil Mo on the phone. “Antoine’s going to drive her. She can’t drive no more. She’ll be doing it every day or something like that….it’s in the liver. The liver and the bones.”

 

Beth realized that someone was sick, probably Eunice. A few days later there was a big commotion and Eunice slowly came out of her house and down to the waiting car. She looked in at the driver and said, “is this my chariot?”  They drive off.  Beth walked back inside and thought, “what a terrible neighbor I have been.”

 

Beth kept the monitor on all the time then. She heard several more drug deals. A few weeks later Eunice came back looking very frail. Beth made a batch of chicken soup and waited for the perfect time to bring it over, a time when Lil Mo isn’t around. ‘Maybe he’ll stop calling me ‘hater’’ she thought. She waited until he walked across the street and then hurried over to Eunice’s but he sees her and comes running up.

 

“What do you want?”

“I brought soup for your grandma.”

 

Lil Mo took her back into the house, back to Eunice’s bedroom. He stopped at the door and asked, “wait, what’s your name?” Then he walked in and said, “the lady from next door is here for you.”

 

Beth brought in the soup and visited with Eunice. They chit chat about the weather. Neighbor stuff.

 

Beth brought Eunice food four or five more times. One time she brought a whole lasagna because she said, “It looks like there are a lot of people in and out of the house. Plus Eunice looked worse and I hoped it might fatten her up.”

 

Lil Mo stopped her at the door.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Lasagna.”

“Meat lasagna?”

“Yes, meat lasagna.”

 

Lil Mo stopped calling Beth “hater” after that. 

 

One month later Eunice died. The day of her service the whole neighborhood came out for a party on the block. The street was crowded with kids and people. Beth pushed her daughter in the stroller down the block and talked with the neighbors. Talked about the weather and mowing lawns, neighbor stuff. And the neighbors asked about her baby and her husband. It turned out they had been watching her as closely as she had been watching them. It’s just that now, they were no longer the ‘haters.’ (This American Life, Spies Like Us, 2004)

 

 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O God.

 

Does it matter what we say? What we say in private? On our cell phone? Places where we don’t think we will be heard, at least not by everyone? Does it matter what we think about our neighbors, or if we think about them at all? Do our thoughts matter?

 

Wasn’t it Jimmy Carter who once said when asked if he had been faithful to his wife that he had “sinned in his heart”?

 

We are all together in this world, in this life, in this church. We have different needs, wants, hopes, wishes. And everyone, everyone has a part to play, whether drug dealer or hater neighbor. Do we allow room for that, room for all the different gifts and needs in our midst?

 

A few years ago I invited the congregation into a Lenten practice of prayer. The challenge was to pray for someone that you did not like, or even despised, for the six weeks of Lent: to include this person when you pray for your family or friends or the concerns of the world.  In that I asked the church to engage in this practice, I figured I better participate, too.

 

It is amazing what happens to one’s thoughts, the change within one’s self and outlook, the meditations of one’s heart, after six weeks of prayer.

 

What we say matters. And what we think matters. We are to be one body, the body of Christ. And in Christ’s body, just as in our own body, all the members matter.

 

May the words of our mouths and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in God’s sight, our rock and redeemer.

Amen.