Dave Is Not Your To-Do List

As usual, this is the most important: Matthew 25:31-46

 I have this ongoing to-do list. I keep a word document open on my computer all the time. On it is my laundry list of things I need to do. Currently, I have nineteen things listed. Among them, include things like “Write a letter to Grandma,” “Vacuum the stairs,” “clean out my email in-box” and “get my 11 year old niece a present for her birthday”, which, by the way, was over two weeks ago. I try to put things on the list that I will actually do as well, things like “write a sermon” and “walk the dog” and “go to Starbucks.” That way, I can have at least some satisfaction when I get to use the backspace key and delete a line or two from the list. Many things aren’t listed either - things like “brush my teeth,” “wash my hair,” and “stop at the gas station” and “clean out the cat box.” These are things I do with some regularity, and it’s actually more tedious - and overwhelming - to write down all the things I do on a regular basis, just so I can digitally “cross” them out, as satisfying as that can be. But there are some things that I’ve given up on listing. When I write them down, they just sit there, staring at me at the very top of the list, mocking me for not getting it done sooner. Things like - clean out the basement, do your daily quiet time, walk 10,000 steps, and unpack one box — uh, we moved into our new house over a year ago. So even though I do things that aren’t on the list, and I don’t do things that are on the list, making the list-making, essentially, pointless, I still make them. Sometimes it’s a good reminder of things I need to do, sometimes it helps me focus at the beginning of a potentially overwhelming day, and sometimes, I just use it to make me feel, sort of, important, like I’m indispensable or something - as if there’s no one else around to do the laundry, buy chickpeas and Oreos at the grocery store, or sweep the leaves off the front porch. And I like my lists, even though I render them perfectly useless, because I can feel as if I’ve accomplished something, as if I’ve made the most of my day, as if I’ve done what I was supposed to do. Lists, of course, have the opposite effect on me as well; if I get to the end of the day and the list looks the same, well, then I’ve obviously not done what I was supposed to do, and thus, I’ve wasted my day. I didn’t do what I should have done. I get a big ol’ black mark in the negative column of “Jenn’s moral character.” The list becomes a measurement of okayness for me. Did I do the things? Great! “Come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” But did I fail to do the things? Sorry. “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” 

And that’s what this passage has become for most of us. Another couple of things to write down on our to-do list. “Do the laundry,” “clean out from under the couch,” “reply to the email,” “feed the hungry, give a drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, take care of the sick, visit the imprisoned.” And when I’ve done all the things, I get to check them off of my list, sit back, put my feet up, and be absolutely sure that I’m a sheep, not a goat, and I’m going to end up with the righteous “into eternal life.” 

I’ve worked quite a bit with folks who are experiencing homelessness. I’ve tried to feed them, to listen to their stories, to help them get social services, driven them to emergency mental health clinics. But there was one guy, let’s call him “Dave,” who was all the things, all at once. He was the quintessential “least of these.” He was hungry, thirsty, a stranger, practically naked, definitely sick, and he’d seen the inside of a prison cell more times than he could count. When we offered to take him to Subway, he insisted that Bob’s Subs was better. He was physically addicted to alcohol, so he always carried a Lipton Iced Tea bottle around with him, filled with some dark brown liquid that was most definitely not iced tea. He wore the same tattered jeans that drooped dangerously below his waist, he was always coughing up something, and he’d slept more nights that year in the Allegheny County Jail than he had under his preferred bridge. He was all of the least of these - hungry, thirsty, a stranger, practically naked, sick and a sometimes ex con. 

I’d never met him before, but my coworkers had, and they’d warned me - when you meet him, get ready, he’s going to show you all his scars. And sure enough, he did. He pointed out the hole in the side of his head where he’d been shot. He lifted his shirt to show me the deep gash from his Vietnam War injury. He showed me the varicose veins in his swollen ankles. And when he started to undo his pants to show me the extent of his hernia, we stopped him right there, and said, “Whoa! Thanks, Dave, that’s enough for now.” 

We held “office hours” at Wood Street Commons, the dilapidated high-rise homeless shelter in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh. Every Friday, we’d sit in a storage room / office / doctor’s waiting room, and folks in varying degrees of distress would visit us. Some to see if they could scam an extra gift card out of us, some to check in on their benefit checks, some to just grab a cup of burnt coffee and sit and tell us a couple of stories from their week. Dave came every Friday. And every Friday, he’d tell us he’s hungry, he’d be carrying his bottle of iced tea, and he’d tell us once again how it happened that he was shot in the head and survived. He’d knock on his head with his knuckles and say, “See? Hear that? That’s the plate they put in there.” We’d check in to see how he was keeping up with his Suboxone appointments. And every week we’d have to remind him that no, we did not need to see the extent of his inguinal hernia. Eventually, we were able to get him a room at Wood Street, so at least he wasn’t sleeping out in the cold. We helped him turn his medical assistance back on, and he even qualified for about eighty bucks a month in food stamps, despite our local legislators doing their darnedest to cut away at that particular benefit. We gave him bus tickets every week so that he could get to his daily Suboxone appointments. He was a heroin addict, and Suboxone was a prescription given by his doctor to help him wean off of the opiates. His eyes were starting to clear. He stopped slurring so much. He was getting some sleep and getting some food and he had us to sit and listen to his same stories every week. He even started remembering our names. 

But one Friday, he didn’t show up. And then the next Friday came around, and he didn’t stop by then, either. We knocked on his door every week to check in, but he didn’t answer. So we started our detective work and we tracked him down. He was in the hospital, detoxing from his last bout of alcohol poisoning. And before that, he’d been in jail, once again, maybe for public drunkenness or indecent exposure or trespassing or some other kind of misdemeanor. When they’d admitted him into the hospital, they threw out his clothes, so when he was discharged, all he had was a papery disposable scrub suit, a teal v-neck with matching teal drawstring pants, with a tear right down his backside that grew with every move he made. He didn’t seem to really notice, or care, if he did notice. He was a mess. His pupils were so small. He’d be looking at us, telling us about his hospital stay, and then, simply nod off, only to lift his head a few seconds later and finish his thought. But he was alive. We’d been able to save his room at Wood Street, and we were working to plug him back in to all the services that he’d lost once he was incarcerated, all those services we’d already connected him to previously. His words were slurred. He told me the story of how his buddy shot him in the head in the seventies. He lifted his shirt to show us his scar. We gave him more bus tickets. We bought him Bob’s subs. Somehow he’d lost his iced tea. I shared my Skittles with him. We bought him some clothes. 

I never saw him again. A few weeks later, they found Dave in his bed at Wood Street. He’d overdosed. Alone. Injected so much heroin into his system that he just went to sleep, and never woke up.

We had done all the things. 

We checked all the boxes. 

We fed the hungry.

We gave him something to drink.

We welcomed him and listened to his stories. 

We gave him clothes to wear and made doctors appointments and we checked on him in jail.

And then, he died.

We had crossed it all off the list.

But one night he simply couldn’t take it anymore.

One night, he just gave up. 

Or maybe he thought he just needed a break. But his body wasn’t prepared for it.

I used to think that we were a little bit of both. I used to think that we were all a little bit goaty. And a little bit sheepy. We were “shoats” and “geeps.” And I still think that some times. Sometimes we see the face of Christ in the Hungry and the Thirsty and the Stranger and the Naked and the Imprisoned. Sometimes we even do it without us even realizing that we’re doing it. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we’re sheep. And sometimes we miss it. Sometimes we don’t hit the mark. We don’t cross anything off our lists and we lose the opportunity to see Jesus right there, right in front of us. Sometimes we’re goats. Somehow we are on both God’s right and left hands. 

But now, I often wonder, could we be the “least of these,” too? Could we all be a little bit broken? A little bit hungry? A little thirsty? A little lost and a little too vulnerable? Could we all be stuck in our own kinds of prisons? 

What is it, really, that separates me from Dave? 

I mean, I have some social capital. My brain isn’t wired towards that particular form of addiction. I haven’t had to suffer from domestic violence or The Draft or poverty. But all that comes from luck, not anything that I’ve earned and Dave didn’t earn. 

Jesus is telling us, right there in the text, that he is the least of these. Whatever we do to the least of these, we do to him, to Jesus. Dave was clearly a least of these. And Jesus says so is he. 

And maybe that means we are, too.

What if we’re all the least of these? 

I’m definitely not saying that we should take advantage of social systems meant to help the most vulnerable. And I’m absolutely not saying that we should be stingy with our gifts because we’re in need too. And this isn’t an excuse for us to wallow in our miseries and hardships. But what if I saw a little bit of myself in Dave? Or a little bit of Dave in myself? What if I saw a thread of commonality that united us both, that connected us to each other? I have brokenness. He has brokenness. I’ve made mistakes. He’s made mistakes. I’ve had some really good joyful belly laughs in my time, and maybe, maybe even just once, maybe while he was smoking weed around the campfire with his buddies in the sixties, he did too. If I'd ever had Bob's Subs, I would probably prefer that to Subway, too. He can be the face of Christ for me. And maybe, just maybe, I can be some reflection of a hologram of a shadow of a mirror image of Christ for him. 

Christ would love him. Christ would walk with him. Christ would see himself in Dave.

I should absolutely keep feeding and finding and befriending and clothing and healing and visiting. But not because it’s what gets me in to heaven. Not because it’s on some sort of Christian piety to-do list. Not because it's going to fix Dave. But because Jesus is hungry and lonely and naked and sick and imprisoned. And mostly, I need to do it because I’m hungry, and lonely and naked and sick and imprisoned. 

And when the end of times comes and Jesus is up there on his throne with Dave at his side and it’s time to send me to the right or to the left, I hope that Dave elbows him in Jesus’s still bleeding side and says, “Hey, that’s the girl who listened to my stories. She told me some of hers. She tried to help me. But, meh, it didn’t work. I liked her though. She shared her Skittles with me.”

Because the truth is, Dave was not a to-do list. There’s no “fixing” him. There’s only loving him. 

Just as there’s no fixing Christ as he is broken and naked on the cross. There’s only loving him. 

Christ is king, but unlike any king we have ever imagined. Christ has dominion over all of us simply because he became one of us.

Jesus became the least of these, so that we could, too.

Let’s set aside the to-do lists. Let’s let go of the measuring stick. Let’s stop trying to fix and improve and better and self-help our way into righteousness. Let’s all realize how very “least of these” we are. 

Because Jesus became the least of these, so that we could, too.

Thanks be to God.

Dancing in the Dark

READ HERE! Matthew 25:1-13

If I had been one of those “bridezilla” brides, my wedding would have been considered a disaster. It rained the whole day. The chicken was dry. We ran out of White Zinfandel. My "mistress of ceremonies” got drunk on that White Zinfandel before we even entered the building, and one of the groomsmen accidentally drove over another groomsman’s foot with his car. One of my bridesmaids burnt her dress with a too-hot iron, and my siblings started a minor food fight with that same dried out chicken. The ceremony was way too long, complete with hymns and songs and poetry and reflections and communion. I didn’t have enough money to pay for the flowers, and my parents had brought up my dress from Indianapolis, only to unwrap it and find that it was missing some pretty important pieces. People got lost on dusty back roads trying to find the reception. The night ended with all of Dan’s friends skinny dipping in Lake Michigan, a clump of white wedding cake in my hair, and everyone taking home these tiny little pine seedlings that wouldn’t survive the weekend. Seriously, we handed out over a hundred of those things, and not one of them survived.

It was one of the happiest days of my life. 

Everything, it seemed, went wrong that day. We’d made all these intricate plans, and things still fell apart, but somehow, it was amazing. Somehow, we threw a great party.

 I was twenty-two, broke, and a poetry major. Dan was twenty-three, also broke, and a religious studies major. We had no idea what we were getting in to, we were stepping in to the great unknown, into the deep dark, and we wanted whatever that was with all our hearts.

Our plan after the wedding was to housesit for a family who was taking an extended trip to Kenya for three months, then camp out at Dan’s family’s cottage for the summer. And that was the extent of it. We had no savings. We had no master plan. We were just going to figure it out. And we did, I mean, sort of. We got a lot of help from Dan’s parents, but we figured it out. We made it work. For sixteen years we navigated moves and degrees, home ownership and births, mental health issues, unemployment and shelter dogs and backyard pet burials. 

And then things got hard. Things got pretty…dark. We separated for over a year. I lived in a crappy apartment that I couldn’t afford while Dan juggled his job and the house and primary responsibility for the boys. Finally, we met with a mediator. It was time. She was going to help us through the divorce process. We wanted to be fair. We wanted to do what was best for the boys under the circumstances. Dan wrote her a check for $300, just for that first fifteen minute meeting, and as he signed his name and slid it across the table to her, all I could think was ‘No.’ “No.” “No.” I don’t want this. What is going on here? Why am I here? How did we get here? What have I done to my life?

We left the meeting in silence. A few days later, I asked Dan to go with me to some marriage counseling. He didn’t see the point of it. He didn’t have much hope about it. But he said yes. I’m not sure why. Maybe just curiosity. But he showed up to that first appointment. We sat in silence across from each other as we stared at our shoes and waited for the therapist to call us back to her office. And then we just kept coming back. We spent a gazillion dollars on therapy copays and babysitters and Starbucks drinks so that we’d have something to hold through all the hard awkwardness. I’d come over to the house to help put the kids to bed and then we’d sit together on the porch, in the dark, sometimes talking about hard things, but mostly just sitting, wringing our hands, staring at our feet and the cracks in the cement steps. We spent hours just sitting in the dark, not saying anything. One night I timed it. We spent forty-eight minutes straight in silence, not saying a word to each other. We sat in the dark. We didn’t know what to do or where to go or what to say. We just sat there, breathing together. Silent. And then I’d go back to my apartment and he’d go back into the house and I’d come back the next night and we’d do it all over again.

We didn’t have hope. We didn’t have light. We had no oil left in our lamps. So we just sat. We sat and we waited. 

I’ve always been the kind of person who runs on fumes. I am an expert procrastinator. I’ve pulled all the all-nighters in college and I wait until the last minute to finish my sermons. I don’t plan ahead. I’m not one of those moms on the playground who packs the extra snacks and the water bottles and those little bottles of hand sanitizer. I always wait until the gas light comes on, and stays on for awhile, before I fill up my tank. I let my house get filthy and I let the laundry pile up until it’s an emergency and it’s midnight and I’m waiting for the oh-so-important Spiderman socks and the Ninja Turtle t-shirt to be done in the dryer. I usually spend my paycheck in the first week and then we live off of rice and ketchup packets the next. Ok, I exaggerate a little. I do get the work done, eventually. My kids haven’t had rice and ketchup for dinner, at least, not in awhile. And anyway, it was their idea.

So we’ve got these ten bridesmaids. Ten young girls in their fanciest dresses, their hair perfectly set, their feet crammed in the daintiest of shoes. Ten girls waiting for the arrival of the bridegroom.  They’re waiting for the haggling over the gifts to be done. Waiting for the groom and the bride’s relatives to come to some sort of agreement. The night begins with anticipation and excitement. It’s a celebration!  A party! But then the waiting comes. And more waiting. Ten anxious and excited young girls get tired, and they fall asleep.  The bridegroom is delayed. And the excitement dwindles. And the doubt comes in. Will he ever come? Where is he? What has taken him so long? The lamps grow dim and the darkness descends. 

Imagine the deep darkness of a town before electricity and streetlights, before light pollution and headlights, before the glow of television and computer screens through living room windows. Imagine the heavy, deep darkness. The girls’ eyes are straining to decipher every shadow in the darkness, their ears aching over every crack of a limb underfoot, every shift in the wind that might indicate that their groom is coming. 

But their limbs grow heavy and their eyes grow weak. It’s too much to ask that a group of young girls stay awake any longer. 

And they all fall asleep.

And the bridegroom comes and they all startle awake, scrambling to smooth their dresses, tuck their hair back with their bobby pins, and grab their lamps, ready to escort the groom to the party. 

And five have enough light. And five do not. 

Five planned ahead. They were responsible. They double check their blindspots and they research all the car warrantees and they save for college. They have retirement plans and endowments and use day planners and get their taxes done on time. They have contingency plans. They hire wedding coordinators and serve better wine and would never, ever, offer their guests a dried out chicken breast.

But five don’t. Five are in the dark. Five don’t have enough. They’re contemplating divorce or they’re living on food stamps or they have these great jobs with great benefits but just can’t make themselves happy anymore. They’ve made mistakes. They’ve hurt each other. They’re sitting on cold porch steps in silence, waiting for the next hard thing to be said out loud. They don’t know what is going to happen next, they have no light with which to see what’s ahead, so they wait it out, or rush recklessly into the next thing, or scramble around in all the wrong places to find what they need.

I think there are lots of us, maybe even more than half of us, who have found themselves out of oil, who have found themselves in the dark. Sometimes it’s our fault. Sometimes it’s not. But we come to a point in our lives when we’ve got nothing left. We’re all out of whatever it is that we need to give us light at that moment.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that not all of us can be the wise bridesmaids.

Some of us just aren’t built that way. 

Some of us are just foolish. 

Some of us do our best to conserve our oil and we still run out.

Some of us just recklessly use it all up all at once.

Some of us had our oil taken from us.

Some of us never had any to begin with.

Some of us wasted it. Poured it on the ground. Let it soak into the soil.

Some of us planned and planned and thought we’d have all we needed and then we suddenly find ourselves without.

Some of us are going to run out of oil.

I am no wise bridesmaid.

I’m wandering in the dark.

I’ve run out of oil and my dress is wrinkled and covered in dried leaves and moss and my hair is ratty and I have no idea where I’m going.

But you know what? 

The wise ones have it a little bit wrong, too.

Maybe they have it all together and they have planned for the future and they’re the patient ones who brought the steam iron and the extra bobby pins and their faith is just right and they can stand up and say the Nicene Creed without flinching over the virgin birth, but they, too, have forgotten where light comes from.

The wise are busy - busy making plans and lists and lists of plans, busy plugging every possible hole and making every possible contingency. They worry about filling the pews and printing the programs. They worry about having enough pot roast at the pot luck and enough bakers for the bake sales. And these are all really important things. Boy, do we need those wise bridesmaids. 

But that’s not where our light comes from. 

Most scholars claim that this is a simple “parousia” parable - a parable about the end times and the waiting for when Jesus comes back. Jesus is praising the wise ones and rebuking the foolish ones. Matthew wants to tell the Christians who are still waiting for Jesus to come back to wait a little bit longer, to be ready, to do good works and fill up their lamps with love and kindness and faith and justice. And that’s all good and well. It’s great even. It’s wise. We should do these things for as long as we can. 

But it's been 2000 years, and we’re still waiting. And it’s still dark. And now the parable means something else for us. It means that we’re all running out of oil. We’ve all started to forget where our light comes from, and we’re all running low, and we’re all rushing from one thing to the next trying to keep our lamps full, trying to do the right thing and say the right words and come up with the perfect program that will finally get people in these doors. 

But I don’t think it’s about all the stuff, or the plans or our perfection. It’s not about the oil anymore.

Maybe it’s not about having light at all. Maybe it simply about being able to dance in the dark. Being able to trust that the Bridegroom is there, leading you, instead of the other way around.

Jesus has been gone for 2000 years. And he’s coming. Someday. 

Or. 

Maybe he’s already here, dancing with us in the dark.

What if the bridesmaids’ - and our - biggest mistake is that we think we need oil to make light. Maybe we really just need to trust that the bridegroom is the light, and has been the light all along. 

Can we trust Jesus enough to dance with him - even in the dark?

I’m out of oil, but I’m not going back in to town. 

I'm not going to get stuck waiting in the checkout line at the 24 hour convenience store.

I’m not going to miss it when the groom comes by.

I’m going to sit here in the dark, and feel it deep into my bones.

I’m going to wander and feel lost and a little bit scared in this heavy darkness.

I’m going to breathe it in. I’m not leaving this place to find some artificial light to light my way.

I’m going to stumble over tree roots and uneven sidewalks and fear all that unknown all around me. 

I’m going to sit in the dark with the one I’ve hurt and I’m going to wait and listen and hold the space. I’m going to be present for when the light shows up.

Jesus said he was coming, and I guess he still is. 

Meanwhile, I’m going to try to dance in the dark.

Meanwhile, I’m going to keep searching for the bridegroom even though I have no idea where I’m going. I’m going to follow the glimmer of the ones ahead of me, the ones who did bring enough oil, and I’m going to make it to the party.

I’m going to sit on the porch in silence with Dan for hours and hours until we work this out. I’m going to wait in the dark. The light will come. It will. It may not look like a perfectly repaired marriage or a full sanctuary. It may not erase all of your mistakes and your lack of planning and the big iron mark burnt into the back of your bridesmaid’s dress. The chicken will still be dry and the wine will still be cheap. But it’ll be a party. A really great party. We’ll smile so much our cheeks will hurt. We’ll pose for pictures and plant dying saplings and we’ll go skinny dipping in the dark. We'll step into the unknown without a plan, but with hope. It’ll be the start of a long, hard, mistake-filled, joyful, life-giving relationship.

So for those of us who are a little bit foolish, for those of us who have run out of oil, can we learn to dance in the dark? And if we can’t dance, can we, at least, just sit and wait and watch? 

So that when the bridegroom comes, we’re not off on some wild goose chase for some fake light. We’re out there, wandering, searching for God, dancing in the dark because we know that we’re already in, we’re already at the party, and there’s been light all around us this whole time.

Thanks be to God.

And if that sermon didn't do it for ya, go here: