Prop 21a.05     September 25, 2005

Years ago – it seems like another lifetime –
        I was a young lawyer out West in Idaho.
In those days, I was experimenting with a return to Christianity.
I couldn’t imagine how my life could ever follow
        the radical pattern prescribed in the Gospels,
        but I was looking for any small point of connection,
        anything I could do that even slightly resembled discipleship.

I was also saying the Jesus Prayer.
In that practice, one prays “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God,
        have mercy on me, a sinner.”
One prays it incessantly until it becomes white noise
        constantly there in the back of one’s consciousness.

One day I received a phone call from the Federal Court
        telling me I had been appointed
               to represent a man I’ll call Alejandro Garcia.

The clerk said he was charged with illegal re-entry.
I knew at once things were odd.
Illegal aliens were necessary to the economy
        and were generally good people.
It rarely seemed worth the effort or expense
        to imprison and prosecute them.
They were usually just sent home.
So I knew something was up.

When I saw my new client’s five-page rap sheet,
        it all became clear.
He had been convicted of multiple violent felonies,
        and had been charged with others ranging from child molesting
                to attempted murder.
He was apparently not a nice man.

As I drove into the jail parking lot,
        it occurred to me that here was a point of contact
                between my life and the Gospels.

Jesus had said we visited him in prison
        when we visited “the least of these.”
Mr. Garcia was certainly one of “the least” by any criteria,
        not just poor and powerless,
                but he was one of the least morally.
That thought lurked in the corners of my awareness
        as I waited in the visiting area
                for the initial client interview.

The visiting area was divided into little booths.
        I sat on a metal stool beneath a naked light bulb.
A cat food can served as an ash tray.

There I waited for my new client to appear
        on the other side of a window
        through which we would try to communicate.
Eventually he walked in and sat down opposite me.
He was a small man, slender, dark, with large eyes.
As I saw him, I thought of the rap sheet.
I spoke virtually no Spanish. He spoke virtually no English.
Every word we said was pulled up with difficulty,
         and there were long, silent gaps in the conversation.
It happened during one of those gaps.

I was waiting for him to say something,
         but there was silence.
I was attending closely to him as if staring
         might help me understand what he would say.
As I looked intently into his face,
         as one might meditate upon an icon,
         I noticed the words rolling through my mind,

         “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God,
                have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Those were my thoughts as I looked
         at this small, dark man with the five-page rap sheet.
I found myself praying to the Christ in him.

Since then I’ve made many retreats at holy places.
I have done the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola.
I have had moments of deep peace,
         and have even experienced what might pass for a vision.
But I have never sensed the presence of Christ
         more powerfully than at that moment in that Western jail.

In today’s Epistle lesson, Paul says,

         “Christ Jesus . . . though he was in the form of God
         did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited
         but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
         being born in human likeness.
         And being found in human form, he humbled himself
         and became obedient to the point of death

                         – even death on a cross.”

This passage is one of the most beautiful,
         the most elegantly mysterious texts
                  in all of Scripture.
It is the basis for Buddhist-Christian dialogue.
It is the foundation stone of a whole school of theology,
          and a key text for another.
Whole books have been written about this lesson.

Today, we must leave most of its wisdom unmined.
We look just at two simple points.
The first is this:
Jesus identified God with the suffering and the downtrodden.
So we don’t look for God
          only in the grandeur of mountains and starry skies,
          or in the vast power of nature to create and destroy,
          or in the sanctity of lives nobly lived.
We look for God in the vulnerability and need
          of the broken people around us.

The second point is this:
We worship God by ministering to him
          present “in the least of these.”
But we are not called to serve the lowly from a one-up position
          with condescension, pity, and hand-outs.
We are called to stand beside each other,
          acknowledging we are all broken one way or another,
          and supporting each other along the way.
Paul said,

          “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus

                  . . . who emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.”

Just so we are invited to empty ourselves
         of all the claims to pride we may have

         – and just be simple people
                  befriending other simple people.

If others are sometimes foolish, so are we.
If others are sometimes sinful, so are we.
If others are sometimes obstinate and wrong-headed,
         so are we.
Knowing that, we learn to smile at each others foibles.
We learn, as Paul advised the Romans, to:

         “Rejoice with those who rejoice.
         Weep with those who weep.”

That’s communion.
That’s what our common cup and common loaf signify.
It is communion with each other,
         communion with lives broken like bread
                and poured out like wine.

It is also communion with Christ.
For this is where we find him

         – not in dogmas but in each others

                 poignantly, preciously human lives.

                                                          Amen.