October 1,
2017
Ezekiel
18.1-4;25-32; Matthew 21.23-32
+ Anyone
who knows me for any time knows how I LOVE cemeteries. I know. It’s weird. It’s
morbid. But they sort of obsess me to
some extent.
I love to
think about all the stories contained in a cemetery—all the stories that are
untold, all the stories that are just mysteries. I love also how each cemetery is
unique in its own way. Each has its own characters, its own “feel.”
Of
course, we now have our own memorial garden here at St. Stephen’s, which also
is unique in its way. But, what few of
us know is that, just a few blocks north of this church, there are two
cemeteries. Unless you actually get out
of your car and walk into the actual cemeteries you wouldn’t even know they’re
there.
And I do
invite you to go and visit theses cemeteries. If you do, you’ll see, in each, a large
boulder.
In one
cemetery the boulder is inscribed COUNTY CEMETERY #1. The one is located at the end of Elm Street. Where the road forks, one to the Country Club
and the other to the former Trollwood, right there, on the left fork toward
Trollwood, is the cemetery. You’ve
probably driven by it countless times and never had a clue.
County
Cemetery #2 is located on the other side of the old Trollwood, just within
A third
County Cemetery was located on north Broadway. In 1984, those graves were moved to Springvale
Cemetery, over by Holy Cross Cemetery, near the airport, because they were
falling into the Red River through erosion. One of my great-uncles, who died in
1948, is actually buried in that cemetery.
For the
most part, many of the graves in Springvale are marked. But in the first two cemeteries, there are no
markers at all. No individual
gravestones mark the graves of the people buried in the first two cemeteries. In fact, if you walked into them, you would
have to force your mind to even accept the fact that it is a cemetery.
But there
are hundreds of people buried in those graveyards. Hundreds.
These are
the forgotten. These were Fargo’s hidden
shame. Beginning 1899 and going through
the 1940s, this where the prostitutes, the gamblers, the robbers were buried. 100 years ago next year, in the Fall of 1918,
the Spanish Flu hit the world hard, and Fargo was definitely not spared. Many of
the unclaimed victims who died in the epidemic were buried in the County
Cemetery #1.
This is
also where all the unwanted babies were buried. There are lots of stories of
unwanted babies being fished out of the Red River in those days. This is where the bodies of those unnamed
babies were buried.
And when
one walks in those pauper cemeteries, one must remind themselves of those words
we hear from Jesus this morning in our Gospel reading.
“Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes
are going into the Kingdom of God ahead of you.”
There, in
those cemeteries, lie the true inheritors of the Kingdom of God.
Last week
in my sermon I quoted the great Reginald Fuller, who said:
“[This]
is what God is doing in Jesus’ ministry—giving the tax collectors and
prostitutes an equal share with the righteous in the kingdom.”
That—and
those words of Jesus we heard in this morning’s Gospel reading—are shocking
statements for most of us. And they
should be. It should shock us and shake
us to our core. It’s a huge statement
for him to make. Partly it does because,
things haven’t changed all that much.
OK. Yes,
maybe we don’t view tax collectors in the same way people in Jesus’ day
did. But, we do still have a similar
view regarding prostitutes—prostitutes are still looked down upon by our
society in our day. Jesus uses these two
examples as prime examples of the “unclean” in our midst—those who are ritually
unclean according the Judaic law.
We, of
course, have our own versions of “unclean” in our own society. They are the ones in our society that we tend
to forget about and purposely ignore.
But we really should give them concern. And I don’t meant from a judgmental point of
view.
I mean,
we should give all those marginalized people we ourselves may consider “unclean”
by our own standards our compassion. We
should be praying for them often.
Because to
be viewed as “unclean” in any society is a death knell. It is a life of isolation and rebuke. It is a
life of being ostracized. The unclean are
the ones who have lived on the fringes of society. They are the ones who have lived in the
shadows of our respectable societies.
The “unclean”
of our own society often live desperate, secret lives. And much of what they’ve have to go through in
their lives is known only to God.
These are
the ones the so-called “alt-right” religious in our society view as “unclean.” (And
yes, there ARE alt-right religious people, closer than most of us want to
admit. These alt-right religious bullies have essentially destroyed the Church
and been a bane to my existence from early on).
These
victims of alt-right religious persecution need us and our prayers. They need our compassion. They definitely don’t
need our judgment.
As
uncomfortable as it is for us to confront them and think about them—or to BE
them—that is exactly what Jesus is telling us we must do. Because by going
there in our thoughts, in our prayers, in our ministries, we are going where
Jesus went. We are coming alongside
people who need our thoughts, our prayers, our ministries. And rather than shunning them, we need to see
them as God sees them.
We see
them as children of God, as fellow humans on this haphazard, uncertain journey
we are all on together. And, more
importantly, we see in them ourselves.
Because some of them ARE us.
Some of
us here have been shunned and excluded and turned away. Some of us have been bullied by the alt-right
religious. Some of us have been treated as less than we are by these
established religious people who smugly claim to be doing the “right” thing.
So we can
understand why prostitutes and tax collectors were viewed with such contempt in
Jesus’ day.
The point
of this morning’s Gospel is this:
The Kingdom of God is not what we think it is.
It is not
made up of just people like us. It is not some exclusive country club in the
sky. (Thank you, O God, that it is NOT some exclusive country club in the sky!)
And it is certainly not made up of a
bunch of “alt-right” Christians who have done all the right things and
condemned all the “correct” sins and sinners.
It is, in
fact, going to be made up people who maybe never go to church. It will be made up of those people we might
not even notice. It will be made up of
those people who are invisible to us. It will be made up of the people we don’t
give a second thought to.
As I
said, in our society today we have our own tax collectors, our own “unclean.”
They are
the welfare cases.
They are
the homeless.
They are
alcoholics and the drug or opioid addicts and the drug dealers.
They are
the lost among us, they are the ones who are trapped in their own sadness and
their own loneliness.
They are
the gang leaders, they are the rebels.
They are
the ones we call pagan, or non-believer or heretic.
They are
the ones we, good Christians that we are, have worked all our lives not to be.
This is
what the Kingdom of heaven is going to be like. It will filled with the people who look up at
us from their marginalized place in this society. It is the ones who today are peeking out at us
from the curtains of their isolation and their loneliness. They are the ones who, in their quiet agony,
watch as we drive out of sight from them.
They are the ones who are on the outside looking in.
They are
the inheritors of the kingdom of God and if we think they are not, then we are
not listening to what Jesus is saying to us.
When we
think about those county cemeteries just a few blocks north of here, we need to
realize that had Jesus lived in Fargo, had he lived 1900 years later and had
died the disgraceful death he died, that is where he would’ve ended up. He would have ended up in an unmarked grave in
a back field, on the very physical fringes of our city.
In fact, Jesus is
there.
He is
wherever the inheritors of his kingdom are.
Those
cemeteries for me are potent reminders of who inherits. They are potent reminders to me of who
receives true glory in the end. It is these—the forgotten ones, the ones whom
only God knows—who are in glory at this moment.
Of
course, we too are the inheritors of the Kingdom, especially when we love fully
and completely. We too are the
inheritors when we follow those words of Jesus and strive to live out and do
what he commands. We too are the
inheritors when we open our eyes and our minds and our hearts to those around
us, whom no one else sees or loves.
So, let
us also be inheritors of the Kingdom of God. Let us love fully and completely as Jesus
commands. Let us love our God. Let us love all those people who come into our
lives. Let us look around at those
people who share this world with us. And
let us never cast a blind eye on anyone. Let us do as God speaks to us this
morning through the prophet Ezekiel:
Let us “turn, then, and live.”
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