“FLOTSAM AND JETSAM”

A post-homiletical discourse delivered by the Rev. Dr. James R. Beebe

Rector, St. Patrick’s Church, Incline Village, Nevada, September 20, 2009

Text:  Mark 9:30-37 – “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”

     I like Anne Lamott.  A lot.  She’s genuine and profane and funny.  And full of faith.  In her book, Traveling Mercies, she tells us about the struggle she’s had learning how to forgive.  It seems that one mother constantly compared her own golden child with Anne’s somewhat slower-learning Sam.  We pick up the narrative:

“My enemy’s child was reading proficiently, like a little John Kenneth Galbraith in a Spiderman T-shirt.  He is what is referred to as an ‘early reader.’  Sam is a ‘late reader.’  (Albert Einstein was a ‘late reader.’  Theodore Kaczinski was an ‘early reader.’  Not that I am defensive on the subject….).  One day…she sidled up to me at school and asked me if I had an extra copy of the book I wrote about being a mother.  [Later] she came up to me in the market.  ‘I read your book,’ she said….’Maybe it’s a good thing your son DOESN’T read.’”

     Anne’s writing is full of self-deprecating humor.  But she came about it honestly enough.  She was the child of a talented, but alcoholic father and mother.  She got into the drug scene as a teenager and lost years as a junkie and alcoholic.  Then, in the mid-80’s, she began a series of conversions which carried her through Judaism to Christianity. 

     She writes much about St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Marin County, California – the little refuge she found soon after her conversion.  She was amazed that they welcomed her, the white, middle-aged, wildly neurotic person with dreadlocks!

     The reason Anne comes to mind this morning is what’s happening in the Gospel reading.  On his way to Capernaum, Jesus had noticed that the disciples were engaged in a stealthy, but heated, argument.  They were too embarrassed to admit that they had been arguing about who would be the greatest in the coming kingdom.

     This should come as no surprise to us, members of what David Brooks, an op-ed writer for the New York Times, calls “The High-Five Nation.”  He recalled a command performance on the day World War II ended.  It featured the top entertainers of the day.  But the thing that amazed him was the striking self-effacement and humility displayed by the celebrities. 

  The allies had, on that very day, completed one of the noblest military victories in history.  Yet, there was no chest-beating.  “All anybody can do is thank God it’s over,” said Bing Crosby.  “Burgess Meredith added, “We won this war because our men are brave and because of many things — because of Russia, England and China and the passage of time and the gift of nature’s material. We did not win it because destiny created us better than all other peoples. I hope that in victory we are more grateful than we are proud.”

Compare that to the culture we’re used to in 2009.  Today, Brooks says that immodesty is as ubiquitous as advertising, and for the same reasons.  There’s Joe Wilson, using the House floor as his own private “Crossfire.”  There’s Kanye West, grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards to give us his opinion that the wrong person won.  Baseball and football games are now so routinely interrupted by self-celebration, you don’t even notice it anymore.  It’s laughable.  I mean, Jesus never had it so good.  At least the disciples had enough self-awareness to whisper about who was the greatest. 

We would perhaps whisper more if we had a more realistic view of ourselves.  Being a body of redeemed people isn’t exactly something to brag about.  I mean, we didn’t get selected for this job because of our intelligence, good looks or social refinement.  In fact, when Jesus told the parable of the net, he was using the metaphor of a drag net that indiscriminately gathers everything in its path – all manner of flotsam and jetsam.

     Accordingly, this “kingdom” – this “net” – collects all kinds of people.  In his book, Parables of the Kingdom, Robert Capon comments:  “If the kingdom works like a drag net, the church…should avoid the temptation to act like a sport fisherman who is interested only in speckled trout and hand-tied flies.  In particular, it shouldn’t get itself into the habit of rejecting as junk the flotsam and jetsam of the world – the human counterparts of the old boots, bottles and beer cans that a truly catholic fishing operation will inevitably dredge up.”

      So I guess what I’m saying is that we need to start thinking like redeemed people instead of God’s gift to the world.  Listen to Anne Lamott, ex-druggie, ex-drunk, ex-bulimic, ex-loose woman.  Listen to Anne Lamott listening to W.S. Merwin.  Listen to Anne Lamott talking about God:

            “Listen

            with the night falling we are saying thank you

            we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings

            we are running out of the glass rooms

            with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

            and say thank you

            we are standing by the water looking out

            in different directons

            back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

            after funerals we are saying thank you

            after the news of the dead

            whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

            in a culture up to its chin in shame

            living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

            over telephones we are saying thank you

            in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

            remembering wars and the police at the back door

            and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

            in the banks that use us we are saying thank you

            with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable

            unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

            with the animals dying around us

            our lost feelings we are saying thank you

            with the forests falling faster than the minutes

            of our lives we are saying thank you

            with the words going out like cells of a brain

            with the cities growing over us like the earth

            we are saying thank you faster and faster

            with nobody listening we are saying thank you

            we are saying thank you and waving

            dark though it is.”

Thank you, Anne Lamott, and thank you for little St. Andrew Presbyterian Church.  They could have thrown you you…and didn’t.