“Jayber Crow, Paul, and Fidelity to Grace”
Suggested scripture: 1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Jayber, the town barber, loves Mattie,
this is the novel Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry.
But Mattie is married to someone else,
and her life is hard, for her husband is unkind and unfaithful.
Jayber believes that Mattie has need of a faithful husband.
He decides it will have to be him,
so in a secret that he never reveals to anyone,
and certainly not to Mattie,
he vows to be her faithful husband.
He lives out that vow by helping her in every way he can,
every way that is appropriate,
acting always for her well-being, being a good neighbor to her,
even denying himself other romantic relationships,
and never revealing his own feelings to anyone.
He keeps this vow that no one knows about as long as they live.
Many would mock Jayber's foolishness.
And yet Jayber models for us a man who,
though he has other choices, chooses a radical faithfulness.
We do not always value faithfulness very highly.
Instead we value freedom, the freedom to be me,
the freedom to make choices, and then make different choices.
We value pleasure and comfort.
We may value self-fullilment above faithfulness.
Jayber's story is strange, but no more so than Paul's advice
in his first letter to the church in Corinth.
If meat has been offered to idols,
and we don't believe in other gods, like these idols,
is it ok if we eat the meat?
We're part of this new Christian movement now.
Are we bound by the same dietary laws that we were before?
Paul says that meat is meat,
and God does not care if you eat it or don't eat it.
But - and here's the kicker - while you have the right to eat meat if you want to,
if by doing so your sister or brother is weakened in their faith,
than you must no do it.
How un-American is that?
I should deny what I want and have a right to
because it might distract another from the path?
Forget it!
Paul would have understood Jayber Crow.
Paul was inviting his people to be faithful to community,
to be faithful to the weakest and most vulnerable,
though it called for some self-denial.
Jayber committed himself to being faithful to love,
faithful to another's well-being,
though it called for much self-denial.
Issues of faithfulness run through all our days and ways;
it becomes a spiritual practice for us.
We try to be faithful to the present moment.
We grow in our ability to be faithful to community,
especially, like Paul, to the weakest and most vulnerable.
We try to be faithful to the vows we have made,
to the commitments to which we've said yes.
We learn (maybe) how to be faithful to our deepest, truest self.
We hope to be faithful to our dreams.
We'[re just learning what it means to be faithful to the planet.
We try (perhaps) to be faithful to God.
I first began to think about faithfulness years ago
when my partner and I were in a rocky place for a time.
At first, people were supportive.
But as time passes and we still struggled,
both friends and therapists began saying
you don't have to up up with this;
you have a right to what you want:
you deserve to be happy.
We found many resources that would help us feel fulfilled as
individuals, but few that would help us honor our commitment.
Sometimes relationships do need to end,
or commitments need to change.
Sometimes we do need to let go.
We understood, though,
that a committed relationship is a spiritual path.
It is about the process of transforming the ego of each person
so as to open them to oneness-
the very thing ego is always trying to avoid,
and Spirit is always trying to bring about.
If we were to walk away from the struggles,
what we'd be walking away from
if God's transforming work on each of us.
Faithfulness is the container that makes that work possible.
Faithfulness in love
or prayer
or parenting
or committee assignments
means staying no matter what feeling come and go
Mother Teresa always seemed to have a great sense of God,
of Jesus' love and presence.
We now know, though, that those feelings,
which she experienced in the beginning, left her,
and for decades she felt God to be absent and uncaring.
She felt abandoned by the One to whom she had given her life.
But she kept on praying and serving.
Why?
The inner rewards which had made it all worth it were taken away.
What kept her going?
It was not her feeling that sustained her.
It was her faithfulness.
From the beginning of my life,
I've been lucky enough to see what faithfulness looks like..
My father was a simple man.
There was nothing flashy about him.
He was very ordinary.
In a crowd you'd hardly notice him.
But he was profoundly faithful:
to his family, to his responsibilities, to his word, to God.
He did what he said he'd do.
He was a person of integrity.
He kept his promises.
Those given him to care for, he cared for.
To the best of his ability, he was faithful to the gospel.
One day, Dad, who was in his 80s and generally politically
conservative, said to me "You know, kid, there are some churches
that don't welcome gay or lesbian people."
"I know, Dad."
He was silent for a moment and then he said,
"Jesus wouldn't like that."
Simple man. Simple faith. Profound faithfulness.
Because God is faithful,
any time we choose to be faithful,
we're holding God's presence in the world.
Like the monks who kept learning alive in the Dark Ages,
one who chooses to hold faithfulness is keeping it alive
until the culture can once again see its value.
Faithfulness is not easy.
We live in community because we can't do it by ourselves.
Sometimes we need others to sustain us.
Sometimes we need others to remind us.
In a southern town during the struggles over school desegregation,
a white citizen's group had formed
to fight the court order to desegregate the schools.
It was a tense time.
A meeting was called at the high school to discuss tactics
for fighting the racial integration of the school.
In a packed auditorium, speaker after speaker
condemned the court order and urged the people to resist.
Late in the evening, the pastor of the local Baptist church,
with great dignity and presence, rose to speak.
He had served in he congregation, in that community, for decades.
He spoke in deliberate, grave tones.
"I am ashamed. I am ashamed.
I have labored here for many years.
I have baptized, preached to, and counseled many in this room.
I might have though that my preaching of the gospel had done some good.
But tonight I think differently.
I cannot speak to those who are not of my congregation,
but to those who are, I can only say I am hurt and ashamed of you.
I might have expected more."
He left the auditorium.
The meeting resumed awkwardly.
But one by one, most of the members of the Baptist church
quietly left the room until the auditorium was half empty;
the meeting dribbled off into adjournment with no action taken.
The schools in that wont integrated the next month without incident.
The good pastor reminded his people that the world will
always call us to choose between the gospel and other gods.
He called his people back to faithfulness.
(Resident Aliens. Stanly Hauerwas and William Willimon, P.111)
We want to be faithful,
faithful to our promises and faithful to our dreams,
faithful to our loved ones and our God,
faithful to this community called Earth,
faithful especially to the weakest and most vulnerable among us,
this in a world where being unfaithful is easier, expected, even.
It's because of Jesus and Paul
and Jayber Crow and Mother Teresa
that we practice faithfulness.
It's because of the ordinary people
whose lives have been for us a living gospel
that we practice faithfulness..
It's because of the children who are watching us,
learning what they see,
that we practice faithfulness.
It's because of the future
that we want to be different than the past
that we practice faithfulness.
Sometimes we're good at it,
this practice,
and sometimes we're not.
But we help each other.
Together, we practice faithfulness.
We open to grace.
©2009 Janice Jean Springer
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