Harold D. Baker

I love the Gospel story of the rich young man. It is edgy, in the modern sense; it has sharp edges, like the two-edged sword of today's Epistle. The story is told so that we feel those edges on our skin.

You may not know that my wife Marianna is interested in creative writing. She once had a story published in a Russian newspaper, and what do you suppose it was, but a retelling of the story of the rich young man? Her alteration of the narrative has wry cynicism, resembling Chekhov. The young man just leaves, because he has many possessions. He is not sad, or at least not very sad, or at least not sad for long. He has many possessions; why should he give them away? He knows he is righteous and keeps the Law of God; the question of eternal life is just an intellectual interest. No big deal. Prophets and teachers are many, and he will find one who fits.

Now, the point is that we are in the position of that young man. We want to identify with the disciples, but we belong to the young man's world, and its values press in on us from every side.

Jesus liked the rich young man. He likes people who go straight to the point: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus plays with him for a while. Jesus leads him right to the brink, making it all sound easy, just a matter of following the rules. Then, at the last minute, he uncovers the abyss: You must give up your wealth. You must give up your wealth. Give the money to the poor, and follow me. The stark meaning rushes in with a shock, and the young man shoots off like a billiard ball. The disciples themselves can barely endure it. Peter starts to justify himself. The disciples have in fact left everything to follow Jesus, their families, work, homes, unburied dead, without discussion or hesitation, on a moment's irresistible impulse; they were called and they went. Still, like the young man and like us, they are trapped in the assumption that status and wealth are something intrinsic that cannot be taken way.

Very few persons can make the impossible choice this story presents. Leia and Dwight Smith run Catholic Worker's Isaiah House a few blocks from here. They gave up business careers to devote their lives to the homeless. At times their house and yard have held well over 100 persons, some sleeping on the floor of the Smiths' own bedroom. If you have never been there, it is worthwhile dropping by to visit. They will show you around and tell about what they do.

Jesus is truly the prophet in this passage, exposing the insidious roots of injustice in our world. What he says resonates with the words in Amos about the ways of wealth. The Old Testament reading is also one of harsh imperatives: "Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate." Give up the practices that separate rich from poor, build a new Kingdom, a perfect Kingdom. It is a great tension that we are caught in, between the evil that is and the good that is to come. This tension animates all of history, and the promise of final victory energizes our work of the present. Yet how do we moderate this tension? How and where do we dwell in the midst of it?

Here is where Messiah comes in. It seems to me that this pervasive conflict in our historical existence is what gives such powerful enchantment to the sacred spaces that we find for ourselves, sometimes as individuals but especially as members of a community. Time and space. Like some mysterious chemical reaction, the pressure of what Amos calls the "evil time" in our spirits crystalizes living space into protective kernels of peace, holiness, and purpose. From these kernels, the work of the Kingdom radiates outward into the surrounding world. Isaiah House is one such kernel. Messiah is another.

You should all be reading Fr. Brad's book, The Spirit in the Desert. I'm buying my third copy today. (Hey, I'm a landscape geek.) What an inspiring story it tells. It is astonishing that the physical traces of American Indian life and spiritual practice are still visible to the naked eye, if you know how to look, as Fr. Brad does. This is after centuries of wind, flooding, earthquakes, and human depradation. You can look down at your feet and see where people were and what they did. The book is a journey to a very different world, that is by some miracle still accessible to us.

(Fr. Brad Karelius, The Spirit in the Desert: Pilgrimages to Sacred Sites in the Owens Valley, Charleston: Booksurge, 2009. Buy Online.)

In modern life, the places of spiritual focus are often buildings, sometimes built in inflections of the natural environment. In the Muslim world, mosques are located at close intervals throughout any city, so that the faithful never have far to go for their five daily calls to prayer. Western societies in the Christian era have also populated their lands with church buildings. In Europe, one sees the graceful diffusion of elegant spires and towers throughout the towns and cities and countrysides. Stately synagogues nestle in historic urban centers. Practically every view gets its shape and character from sacred architecture. The same is true in much of the United States. New England has the handsome temples of picturesque towns; the industrial east and midwest have the soaring stone basilicas of immigrant neighborhoods.

We are drawn to these structures; something in us needs them. It is enough at times to tear us out of our accustomed lives. The poet Rilke writes:

Manchmal steht einer auf beim Abendbrot
und geht hinaus und geht und geht und geht,--
weil eine Kirche wo im Osten steht.

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

(Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, Trans. and Commentary Robert Bly, New York: Harper and Row, 1981, pp. 48-49.)

[Trans. HB:
It happens that a man gets up from evening meal
And goes out of the house, and keeps his way,
Because a church stands somewhere in the East.]

The man leaves because he has an image in his mind. The image is of something that he needs to make him whole. He doesn't know what his life will be when he finds it, but it will be different. The poem goes on to say that his children "bless him as if [he were] dead" (segnen ihn wie tot), but he is headed for rebirth.

This attraction is both aesthetic and moral. The social and educational writer Jonathan Kozol studied the south Bronx neighborhood surrounding St. Ann's Episcopal Church, in order to write his book, Amazing Grace. At the time, it was the poorest zip code in the United States, and may still be. St. Ann's, with its Rector Martha Overall, was completely absorbed in serving the needs of the community, devastated by AIDS, drugs, and the violent chaos of the streets. Sound familiar? In and around this fragile shelter, Kozol found unspeakable beauty in the lives and words of struggling children and adults.

At the end of one chapter, Kozol confronts an HIV-infected woman at nightfall in a nearby park and asks her, "What do you call this kind of place?"

She looks perplexed. "What do I call what place?" she asks.
"This place here--what do you call it?"
"This place here?" She shrugs. "This here is the ghetto."
[...]
I ask, "Why do you live here?"
She looks around her at the street and shrugs again. "This is where poor people lives," she says. "Where else you think poor peoples goin' to be? You a professor? You want to meet poor peoples, you come to the ghetto."
[...]
After she leaves, I leave the corner also and walk to St. Ann's, where vespers have begun. The pastor's clear and calming voice fills the chapel of the church, in which six people from the neighborhood have come to pray.

(Jonathan Kozol, Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, New York: HarperCollins, 1996, pp. 137-38.)

"It isn't my religion," Kozol writes, but he goes in just the same. This book is a shining witness. St. Ann's could easily have been just a chapter or a footnote, but instead it is the center of his story, just as spatially and socially it is the center of this neighborhood.

Doesn't this make you think of Messiah and its mission? St. Ann's was founded in 1841 by the family of Gouverneur Morris and other leading citizens of New York City at that time. Messiah was also built in a much different time from our own, to serve a very different community from the one here now. Yet history and culture and economics and geography will have their say, and a church becomes what it must be. Today, Santa Ana is the gateway to the American Dream for many thousands of people, and Messiah stands in that gate as a witness to suffering and compassion, struggle and celebration, death and rebirth.

How sweet it is to have a place that you are taken up in, that becomes part of you. It is natural and joyful to give of yourself for such a place and for the work that spreads its blessings. I have one last story to illustrate this.

On a business trip to Des Moines, Iowa, I decided to go go a local AME church. It turned out that there were several in town, including one close enough to walk. (The African Methodist Episcopal Church is a traditionally Black denomination, formed around the turn of the 19th century.) Sunday morning I set out from my downtown hotel and, after about 40 minutes' walk, arrived at the church. I was rattled by the sight. It was not a fancy neighborhood, to say the least, and the tiny old church building looked scruffy. I thought it might be closed, but there were cars in the unpaved parking lot, so I took a deep breath and went in.

As soon as I came inside, the perspective changed completely. It was full of light and warmth and people of different ages, and the interior had been kept with loving care. People came up to say hello and introduce themselves, and then the music and the service began. The music was high-energy and captivating. During announcements I was asked to introduce myself, say where I was from, and so forth. I told them that I went to a church called Messiah, in Santa Ana, California, that was just as friendly and warm as this one, and that they should definitely come if they were anywhere near. This was duly promised. The sermon in AME churches is long; this sermon is almost over, but there we would be only about 1/5 of the way in. But you wouldn't mind! The minister referred to an early photograph of the congregation in which parishioners are shown standing barefoot on the ground. That is where we come from, he said. Now, he said, we have lots of things: cars, nice places to live, clothes, food to eat, so let's remember where it comes from, let's remember Whom it comes from, and let's remember to give back. Amen, people said. There is need all around us, and this church is engaged with that need, so help us do what we have to do. Amen, Amen. This church is the minister to God's people, and you are the hands and feet and minds and souls of this church, so dig down and give of your treasure. Amen, Amen.

I was indeed "revived" when I left that place. The sense of mission was so similar to our own. There were differences of style and tradition, but the guiding force was completely familiar. I hope someone from that church in Des Moines visits Messiah some day, and I know that they will have the same sense of welcome when they do, and the same sense of a great work being done by hands and feet and minds and souls, by people who give of themselves for the joy that this work provides them. Let the people say, Amen.