Thy Kingdom Came

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”  Matthew 5:4

In church one recent Sunday, we were asked to discuss the things that we know for sure about God.  Honestly, I couldn't come up with much.  Frank said he knows there is a God.  I couldn't in all sincerity claim even to know that for sure.  Things were looking pretty ungodly to me.  Since then, though, I've been taught a few things I'd like to add to my list. 

Jesus spends a lot of his red print time trying to convince us that the Kingdom of God is weird and unexpected.  It's not like a mighty tree; it's like a mustard weed.  The prodigal son gets a party after dividing the inheritance and wasting it away in profligate living.  Jesus hangs out with lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, fishermen, and partiers.  The enemy is the friend.  Death is not death.  If you're really thinking about any of it, and not just hearing the same stories you've heard hundreds of times, it's pretty clear that the Kingdom of God is crazy, scruffy, ugly, and somehow enchanting anyway.  But even if you are thinking about these things, reading thoughtfully and considering how they might look in your own life, it's shocking to come face to face with it.

We spent the following Tuesday getting ready for my uncle's funeral.  I've already written about him and some of the conflicting feelings we had about his death.  It only got worse as more and more of the mess was revealed.  I drove to his funeral with my parents, and we had one of those rare real conversations that for some reason doesn’t occur all that often in our family.  My mom cannot let go of the indescribable filth in which he was living, and since she had to sort through it for an entire weekend, I don’t blame her for that.  My dad had some theories about how some of it happened, but eventually all of them break down.  How can a person go so far past the line and not care, not even seem to notice?  Yeah, leaving tonight’s mess to clean up in the morning and then not getting to it in the rush to get somewhere else makes sense.  How often do I do that?  But eventually things calm down and you clean it up.  And I would never ever leave meat rotting on my floor, finish a can of Coke and drop it, or see the bugs infesting everything I owned and decide to buy a little roach motel.  Honestly, for as creepily brilliant as my uncle was, he was also a complete moron.  Or else he was the laziest most disgusting person any of us had ever come across.  It just didn’t make sense, or else it only made sense in a world without grace.

I had shown my family what I wrote about Rick, and they all said it was right-on.  So in conversation, from the advantage of being a generation removed, from the sheltered position of beloved niece, I tried to remind us, occasionally, of his good qualities.  I have seen them, although, truthfully, only a little, and not enough to wipe out for us all the far more powerful and tangible reality of his brokenness.  We arrived at the funeral home, my aunts, a cousin, my parents and I, still not sure how to feel, and really not sure how a funeral service for such a person would turn out.  We all commented on how bizarre and surreal the whole thing was.  We were all shocked and grieved and a little bit nervous and uneasy.  In our experience, Uncle Rick was frustrating and uncomfortable to be around as a rule, and we fully expected his funeral to reflect that.  We wondered if anyone but us would come.

And that, my gentle readers, is when the Kingdom of God arrived on the scene.

Right at the beginning of the visitation a few people arrived.  They were normal, friendly, kind people.  Some were from his church.  Some were from work.  Some were wearing suits.  Then more people showed up.  The people from his work were in shock.  He had gone to work on Wednesday night/Thursday morning, called in sick Thursday night, and when everyone arrived back at work on Tuesday morning after the holiday weekend, they were told he had died.  They said they had no idea he was so sick.  They said work was very somber that day.  They all dropped everything to come to his funeral.  "Nice people!" we said to each other.  Really, very nice of them to come (especially for someone like Rick, we added in our heads.)  Then more people came.  The room in which the service was held was one of those double-long rooms that could probably be divided for very intimate services, and by the time the service began, it was perhaps more than two-thirds full.  Huh.

The pastor's address was excellent.  He used a passage from Isaiah and Romans 8:18-30:

¹⁸ I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that^[h] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

 ²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³ Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴ For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

 ²⁶ In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷ And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

 ²⁸ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who^[i] have been called according to his purpose. ²⁹ For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. ³⁰ And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

I remember thinking at the time that he had taken our mixed emotions and started to unmix them.  I felt better.  I felt better about being baffled by Rick’s life and death.  I felt better about Rick, and I felt better knowing that he had been in relationship with such a man as that pastor.  I felt, even, hopeful.  Maybe God had a secret and bizarre plan; maybe it was OK, even though I would never see how.  I thought, at the time, that I would remember that sermon for quite a while.  But now I don't remember much of it, because after the minister spoke, he invited others to speak.  I had not prepared anything.  I had written something, but it was not material for a memorial service, so I didn’t even bring it just in case.  I am the writer in my family, so if I had failed to come up with a eulogy, I honestly wasn't expecting many other people to have one.  I was wrong. 

The first person to speak was the leader of the "study club" at my uncle's church.  She was a retired teacher and had started a program to provide at-risk kids in grades 2-5 from a local school with a mentor.  She said she beat the bushes looking for volunteers, and Rick was one of the people who agreed to help.  The bubbly study club lady didn’t make a face at this point, but I have to wonder if she thought, “Oh great!” at the time.  I promise you, my uncle was unkempt looking, had no teeth and smelled funny.  There are reasons for that that no one at his church knew, but there was no way to avoid seeing and smelling him.  I have to wonder if the study club lady thought his participation was going to be interesting at best.  She never made any indication, though, that she was anything but grateful to him.  She was without doubt a woman with great compassion and grace in that regard, and thank God for her.  The first year, she gave Uncle Rick a little girl with an attraction to breaking the rules.  The little girl would not sit still and would not stay focused.  When my Uncle Rick found her exploring the sanctuary one day, he offered to give her a tour of the church.  My uncle, as we in his family know, didn’t like to play by anyone else’s rules.  When the study club lady told that story, we got it.  Brilliant.  Student #1 breakthrough.  My family and I looked at each other.  One of the frustrating things about Rick used to reach out to a child in need.  Perfect, but we had never thought of it.

My uncle’s student the second year was a boy with a behavior disorder.  He would get dropped off after school and be angry at the world.  The cheerful study club lady only pissed him off.  He was surly and uncooperative.  And then my uncle stepped in, said, “I got this,” and took over.  Ten minutes later, my broken uncle and his b.d. student were talking and laughing, leaning back in their chairs.  By the end of the session, the books were open and they were talking academics.  I physically felt my jaw dropping open a bit.

The third year in the program my uncle was given the toughest case, a girl who had been referred to the program repeatedly, a girl with whom no one had made any headway.  My uncle’s summary of her was that she was “working hard at becoming functionally illiterate.”  And yet, when he died, he had school materials for her in his car.  The study club lady looked at his picture and said, “I’m not letting you off the hook with this one.  You’ve got some big guns on your side now, and I expect to see evidence that you’re using them.”

I won’t attempt to write down everything everyone said.  The Disciple Bible Study teacher talked about Rick’s encyclopedic knowledge, surprising close reading skills, and photographic memory.  Of course, these things would not be apparent except for my Uncle’s willingness to share his opinions and to talk at length.  Yes, we knew that.  But the teacher said it was wonderful and added to discussion and that Rick never argued or corrected anyone without kindness.  His entire Disciple class was at the funeral.  They wouldn’t have missed it. 

A man stood up and said that he and Rick often stood around and shot the breeze while the man’s wife cleaned up.  We chuckled because of course Rick wasn’t involved in the cleaning up.  Although my uncle did not look the least bit athletic, his exceptional intelligence and memory, not to mention the amount of time he spent watching TV, gave him the ability to discuss all sports at length and with detail and depth.  So that’s what they usually talked about.  Then one day, the man told us, Rick said, “Well that’s enough of that.  What do you think of these new Broadway revivals?”  He then started to summarize and critique The Pajama Game.  The man raised his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders and said, “And that’s all I’ve got….”  He was shaking his head as he returned to his seat while the rest of us laughed.  Yep.  Rick talked as if he knew everything about everything.  And maybe that wasn’t too far off the mark.  The hundreds of books in his apartment were too bug infested to consider saving, but his co-workers cleaned out his office and sent the personal items to my parents.  Among the three books he had at work were two political thrillers, and Dante’s Divine Comedy, with a number of bookmarks and dog-ears.  Seriously.        

Uncle Rick’s boss stood up and said that Rick was at work just as we had heard from everyone else.  He had worked at the same job for 28 years.  He was, by all accounts, very good at what he did and remembered every little thing that ever happened at work.  My dad told me Rick was once offered a promotion, but it meant moving to Indiana, and he couldn’t be bothered with that and so stayed in his same night job for the rest of his life.  When his current boss first arrived, he asked her how she could be his boss when she didn’t know anything.  Sometimes he would just mumble something incoherent as he walked past her.  But eventually she won his respect, and he would stop and talk in her office as he was leaving work and she was arriving.  They talked about their faith lives. 

The most amazing story, though, is worth repeating at some length.  My uncle’s church was Friendship United Methodist, and being Wesleyan, they believe in community.  Clearly, they also believe in grace.  They are encouraged, during the fellowship hour between services, to talk to people, to reach out, to be friendly, to be part of the community of faith.  My uncle, a loner who smelled and talked loudly and didn’t like to play by other people’s rules, nevertheless took this to heart.  The church secretary told us that Rick’s habit was to circle around the various conversations happening during the fellowship time until he found one to hover near.  He would stand outside the circle, listening, and then suddenly be in the midst of it.  I could picture that. 

The church secretary had, in this manner, talked to Rick in the past, although never about anything personal.  She had of course never mentioned to him that she was having some personal struggles.  One Sunday, while she was standing in a conversation group, Rick circled around the outside of the group, reached in, and dropped a bag at her feet.  “This is for you,” he muttered, and walked off.  Have I mentioned he was an unusual person?  I imagine conversation stopped while some eyebrows went up.  “What is it?” asked someone else in the group.  A third person picked it up and pulled from the bag a brand-new book with the receipt still in it.  The book she held up as a prop was not pristine and had, she said, been read everywhere, including the bathtub.  The book was titled God Never Blinks: 50 Lessons for Life’s Little Detours and looked like a self-help type of book with some spirituality sprinkled in.  She wasn’t much of a self-help book type.  I don’t blame her for setting the book aside.  A few days later when she saw Rick again, he asked her, “Have you read that book yet?”  She said she had not.  The following Sunday he accosted her again and asked, “Have you read that book yet?”  She explained that she was really busy and getting ready for a trip but would take the book with her on the plane.  She did so.  She said that she cried most of the five-hour flight to California because it felt like the book was written specifically for her, about her, maybe even by her.  She kept reading parts of it to her husband and saying, “Doesn’t that sound just like me?”  He verified later that she had been doing this even after the plane trip, sometimes calling him into the bathroom to read a passage.  She said the book spoke to her so deeply and was so exactly just what she needed that she keeps it next to her bed and expects she will read it over and over.  How did he know she needed that particular book?

When she returned from her trip and saw Rick at church, he asked again, “Have you read that book yet?”  She was able to say that she was almost done with it.  He asked her which chapter she liked best.  She was surprised that he had read the book, since it had come to her looking pristine and unopened, but then he said, “Chapter ten is my favorite.” 

She went home and reread chapter ten, which was titled, “God never gives us more than we were designed to carry.”  It was a chapter about a family with a Downs’ Syndrome child in the early 1970s, a time when more often than not such children were institutionalized and were nearly always marginalized.  To make matters worse, the mother died, leaving the father with five children, the youngest with Downs’ Syndrome.  The father, rather than treating his Downs’ Syndrome son as a burden, made him the center of the family, and when the father grew old enough that his children began to make arrangements for the care of the youngest sibling when the father passed away, they all wanted him.  The child who was different and disabled was not a burden but a blessing.  That resonated with my uncle.  And now with my family as well.

As my dad said at the funeral, Rick was a frustration to his family.  He always had been.  But the stories we heard that Tuesday night opened our eyes to the possibility—no, the reality—that no soul is too broken, too odd, too smelly, too opinionated, too irresponsible to be an instrument of the divine.  In fact, maybe people like my Uncle Rick have less getting in their way when it comes to being infected with the Holy Spirit.

The trouble I have with the Holy Spirit is that it doesn’t have as many compelling Bible stories.  The Old Testament has hundreds of stories about how God is with God’s people.  The gospels are story after story about how Jesus acts with God’s people.  But other than the story of Pentecost and some testimonials from Paul, I don’t hear much about the third part of the trinity.  I’ve been taught that it exists, but how?  What does it look like in the world?  It occurred to me, as I listened to the stories of the mysterious behavior of my oftentimes difficult and disgusting uncle, that I was at last hearing stories of how the Holy Spirit finds its way into a human life, and from there, into more lives.

How can one possibly explain what happened to us at that funeral except to say that the Kingdom of God was among us?  Just as Jesus promised, it found us through the prodigal son, the leper, the unclean.  We were shocked and then humbled and brought to tears.  The world turned inside out for us, and we left a funeral rejoicing.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 1:26-30, explains it better than I can:

 ²⁶ Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. ²⁷ But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. ²⁸ God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, ²⁹ so that no one may boast before him. ³⁰ It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.

Amen, Paul.  So be it.  And thanks, Uncle Rick, for teaching me a few things the way no one else could have.  I hope I never forget.  I suspect you’ll be laughing and rubbing your hands for a good long time over that one.  That joke was on us, and it was your best yet.  In fact, I’m going to retell it….