Gospel for the day: John 1:1-18

If you read the announcements very often, you’ve probably noticed that I am connected to many of the activities we’re doing on behalf of the homeless men and women in the Uptown neighborhood. This is because I’m doing an internship as part of my formation to become a vocational deacon, an internship that’s designed to connect this parish to the Millionair Club, an 88-year-old agency in Belltown that provides day labor and daily meals to homeless and near-homeless Seattleites. I’m hoping that we can strengthen our ties with the Millionair Club as part—but only part—of our effort to improve and deepen our relationship with the homeless folks who live and walk alongside us in this neighborhood.

Why the Millionair Club? That’s a good question. St. Paul’s has—or has had—relationships with the Sacred Heart Shelter, the Bethany Presbyterian lunch program, St. Mary’s Food Bank, and Northwest Harvest. But the Millionair Club is distinguished from these because it provides day labor programs, computer classes, and other services that open up the possibilities for volunteering. Some of us want to move beyond the food-and-feeding portion of ministry to the homeless. Food programs are a great and good part of our outreach efforts, but some of us have talents that lie elsewhere—we’re better at a computer class than we are at cooking breakfast, for instance. So the Millionair Club helps St. Paul’s open up our ministry more broadly.

(And a quick note about their name: when you see the word ‘Millionair’ in the bulletin, it is not a typo. Their founder, Martin Johanson, named it the Millionair Club because helping people find work and restore their dignity made him feel like a millionaire, but he dropped the ‘e’ because, according to him, “you don’t have to be rich to help.”)

It’s a great agency. And because this is a ministry internship, my job is not only to hook us up to them and set up volunteering opportunities. My job is also to reflect theologically on my experiences, and share some of these reflections with you. Deacons are charged with the responsibility to “interpret to the Church the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world”—that sounds pretty haughty, but bear with me—and this is why I’ll share with you today my reflection on a particular experience I had at the Club, and how it all fits into what I think we mean when we say “Christmas,” and even what John’s Gospel might have been getting at in its mystifying, entrancing prologue, which is our Gospel for today.

The other week, I was working with a woman in a computer class at the Millionair Club. She is a little older than me, but not much. She has a history of professional training and career accomplishments, but she’s had some emotional problems that have led to many losses in her life. At this point, she has herself, her elderly cat, and whatever help she can solicit from others to find permanent housing and a job. She needed my help to open and examine her online statements for her debit card. As we worked the problem, she told her story…how she can’t get a full-time job because she’ll lose her Social Security disability benefit, so she has to find temp jobs under the table that pay in cash, and not only are they hard to find, they pay much less, and they’re not always safe. And she can’t find a good apartment that takes cats, but she can’t part with her cat because, as she said, “She’s all I have. She’s all I have.”

I have a thousand photos of my puppy dogs. I was not about to tell her to be practical.

We figured out that (mercifully) the motel she stayed at one night had not, in fact, defrauded her as she had feared. Her debit-card balance was low, but it was correct. But she kept telling me her story, and as she did so, I felt…what did I feel? A little anxious, a little depressed, a few positive feelings because she was a very likable person… But mostly I felt squeezed. Even a little trapped. I’m a couples therapist, not a trained social worker, and even if I were, that’s not my job in this situation. So I can’t provide a lot of practical help (though improved computer skills is a good start). It’s not primarily about me helping her. So it’s about…what, exactly?

Here’s an image that arose from my feelings, an image that might help me make sense of it all: being with this woman was like being trapped on an elevator. Can you imagine it? You and another person are riding along, and bang, the car lurches to a stop, and silence. You’re not sure there’s ventilation. You don’t know if anyone can hear the alarm. You’re trapped on an elevator with another person. In my conversation with her, I couldn’t just step off the elevator—I couldn’t just walk away—without losing a piece of my humanity.

To open up this image, I’ll now weave into it an image from our faith tradition, the image of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us. One translation says it this way: “And the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.” A tent—a small, earthbound enclosure that sleeps two and may (or may not) keep out the weather and the wild animals. That’s good. But—I’m not a camper. It’s a good image, but it’s not my image.

Here’s my translation: And the Word became flesh and got trapped on an elevator with us.

Trapped on an elevator: the Eternal Word, only-begotten from the Source of All Being, trapped on an elevator with us. What on earth can that mean?

I’ll offer two ideas. First, God became trapped on an elevator with us because this was God’s next creative act: to enter creation as a creature, and by doing so, to take on all the entrapments and dilemmas we creatures have. To be entangled, squeezed, trapped with us. To be on that stuffy elevator car, unable to make the buttons work, listening to the futile alarm echoing up and down the elevator shaft, soaking up our growing anxiety. Her debit card is fine but she’s just about homeless, and you can see the fear—and the wretched sadness—in her pretty eyes. The Eternal Word gets trapped here, with her, with me, with you, and here that Eternal Word continues God’s Creation, sings another stanza of the song of Genesis. And so we are given … an answer or two. And an extended hand—extended not just to her, but to me, too, with all my own neediness and fretting.

Second, God became trapped on an elevator with us so that God could open the whole thing up, make it larger, create a whole universe inside this tight space between me and you and our friend at the Millionair Club. Recall that wondrous medieval hymn to the Virgin: “There is no rose of such virtue as is the rose that bare Jesu, for in this rose containèd was heaven and earth in little space.” Heaven and earth in little space: our tight spot is now immense, full of God’s mercy, God’s wisdom, God’s hospitality, God’s humor, God’s creative force. Whole suns and planets orbit us now, as we check her debit-card balance. Whole galaxies brighten our sky, as we hold her—and her beloved cat—in prayer, and in friendship.

Opened up: to envision a universe of possibilities for our seemingly unsolvable problem of economic injustice. Opened up: to envision a homeless person as God’s Mother in a gown of stars, giving birth to a safe haven for her two-creature family. Opened up: to recognize Christ as the galaxy-sized elevator itself, positively huge yet holding us tight, and giving us grace upon grace.

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