Lay Homily

October 21, 2007
Alissa Newton

I want to tell you a story.

This is the story of how I came to be at St. Paul’s about two and a half years ago. It all started with a rather colossal mistake, and the first ever fight between my husband and me. We weren’t quite married yet – but before I go on, let me give you some background.

I have always been a church person. I grew up in an Evangelical Church in California – my mother was the Minister of Music there and my dad ran sound. I was involved in youth group, sang in the youth choir musicals, played in the worship band, and went off to a nice Christian University at the appropriate age. Like many young people do, I experienced a crisis of faith while at said college and the long and the short of it is that I ended up an Episcopalian. I fell in love with liturgy; the connection to both the historical past and mystical future of God’s people that I experience in Episcopal life and worship. I was confirmed at St. Mark’s in the year 2000, and attended there regularly after I graduated from University. About this time in my life I joined a rock n roll band – after all this is Seattle – and eventually met Andrew, who is a musician himself. We fell in love and decided to get married.

Andrew was not so big on church. (I should tell you, by the way, that I have his permission to tell this story.) His childhood experiences with organized religion were not as positive as my own, and while he respected and appreciated my faith he politely declined my invitation to come along to church on Sunday mornings. That was okay with me. I had never really invested myself at St. Mark’s, and soon I found that I was going less and less. I was really involved in my music, my day job, and Andrew. I didn’t so much think I needed religious community. There were other places for me to invest my time.

So that’s where I was when I made a Mistake, and this story really begins with that mistake. This was a mistake with a capital “M,” the sort of mistake that you are supposed to make long before you’re a grown woman about to be married. The kind of thing you do to make your parents mad, maybe? I really wouldn’t know, because I had always been a good kid. Now I was no longer a kid, but regardless I did something rebellious and irresponsible, something that deep down I knew was not a wise choice

I knew this – I did it anyways. And it really backfired on me. I ended up in an embarrassing situation, and Andrew was rightfully upset. So upset that he came back from touring with his band to talk to me about it. It was our first fight – and for those of you in relationships you know that the first fight is key. It sets the tone for other fights, for the whole relationship, in a way. I was terrified.

Andrew got home at 2 in the morning. I was up, scared, possibly hiding under the covers. I really didn’t know what he would say to me, what he was going to do. Andrew is one of those laid back people who are almost impossible to provoke to anger – but once he is mad, watch out.

He came into the room, walked over and sat down on the bed. He put his arms around me. And the first thing he said, the very first words out of his mouth were “I think I’ve been letting you down. I can do a better job. I think I should take you to church, and I will go with you.”

It was probably the most shocking thing he could have said. I had been imagining – almost hoping, expecting! – that he would tear me apart. But my husband, when confronted with a partner who had failed to live into who we wanted to be together, examined himself instead of lashing out at me. He knew me well enough to realize something about me that I hadn’t – that I needed to go to church, that I am a better person when I am part of a community of faith. And he realized that meant that he was going have to go, too.

I expected to be punished. Instead, I was met with an abundance of love. Andrew responded to me not as if I were an irresponsible person who had been careless with his feelings, but as his beloved partner, someone worthy of very special and abundant care and sacrifice. Someone worth coming home from tour for, even worth going to church for. His response was true to who I was, even though my actions had failed to live up to that truth.

 The next Sunday I took him, not to the cathedral, but to a little church on Queen Anne that a friend of mine from college had been going to. I knew we needed to be someplace different. Now that Andrew would be with me at church, I wanted us to be somewhere very special, somewhere we could both be comfortable and accepted for who we are, individually and together. Now here I am, your junior warden. We made the right choice.

In our gospel this morning Jesus tells a story about a widow who needs something desperately. She is one of the lowest in her society’s hierarchy, with nothing to offer the one who can dispense the justice she needs. She can only refuse to go away until she gets what she wants. She does win out in the end – despite having no fear for God or respect for people, the judge without justice manages to find some for her. Jesus then contrasts this unjust judge with God. Unlike the judge in the story, God hears God’s people. Unlike that judge, God will not just grant justice, but grant it quickly. In fact, if a severely flawed human judge who cares nothing for the widow can be worn down enough to give her what she needs, how much more will God – God who loves us, who cares for the widow, who sent Jesus to turn justice on its end for us – how much more abundant will God be?

I think that it is easy to identify with the widow in this story. Many of us are familiar with the feelings of scarcity that the she must have experienced as she asked over and over for what she needed and was sent away again and again. Not all of us have her tenacity. Jesus’ original listeners would have known that to be a widow meant being alone in the world. No husband, no standing in society, no means for living abundantly. I, for one, behave very differently when I perceive myself to be alone, when I perceive justice as something that is scarce for me, when it is evident that I must fight for what I need. I am not as brave as the widow in this story.

Yet – Jesus tells us - we are not the widow. We are God’s beloved people. We have a place, and we have a provider. Our judge is not one who scarcely gives us what we need. Instead our God moves quickly, with abundance. Our God hears us when we cry out, and answers when we ask for what we need.

What does this mean for us? Especially, what does this mean for us now, as we begin to talk about stewardship here at St. Paul’s? I know that we as a community are familiar with the feeling that resources are scarce, we know what it is like to be as desperate as that widow. How can we start to live as the abundantly blessed community of God’s Beloved that this gospel tells us we are? That our experience of life together tells us we are?

I have told you a story today about how I discovered something about my identity as the recipient of an abundant love in a moment of grace which absolutely changed the choices I made about my life, my relationships, and the community of faith where I invest my time, energy, and money. Our gospel today tells all of us a story about who we are, and our identity as God’s people who live in a place of God’s abundance and justice. We won’t have to ask over and over to get what we need. We can afford to behave in a way that is true to who we are – to live, and to love, and to give with full faith in our own identity God’s beloved.