The Doctor’s waiting room, which was very small, was almost full when the Turpins entered and Mrs. Turpin, who was very large, made it look even smaller by her presence. She stood looming at the head of the magazine table set in the center of it, a living demonstration that the room was inadequate and ridiculous. Her little bright black eyes took in all the patients as she sized up the seating situation. There was one vacant chair and a place on the sofa occupied by a blond child in a dirty blue romper who should have been told to move over and make room for the lady. He was five or six, but Mrs. Turpin saw at once that no one was going to tell him to move over. He was slumped down in the seat ... his nose ran unchecked. ... if that child belonged to me, he would have some manners and move over-there's plenty of room there for you and him too. ...
Next to her was a fat girl of eighteen or nineteen, scowling into a thick blue book which Mrs. Turpin saw was entitled Human Development. The girl raised her head and directed her scowl at Mrs. Turpin as if she did not like her looks. She appeared annoyed that anyone should speak while she tried to read. The poor girl's face was blue with acne and Mrs. Turpin thought how pitiful it was to have a face like that at that age. She gave the girl a friendly smile, but the girl only scowled the harder. Mrs. Turpin herself was fat, but she had always had good skin, and, though she was forty-seven years old, there was not a wrinkle in her face - except around her eyes from laughing too much.
Next to the ugly girl was the child, still in exactly the same position, and next to him was a thin leathery old woman in a cotton print dress. She and Claud had three sacks of chicken feed in their pump house that was in the same print. She had seen from the first that the child belonged with the old woman. She could tell by the way they sat- kind of vacant and white-trashy, as if they would sit there until Doomsday if nobody called and told them to get up. And at right angles but next to the well-dressed pleasant lady was a lank-faced woman who was certainly the child's mother. She had on a yellow sweatshirt and wine-colored slacks, both gritty-looking, and the rims of her lips were stained with snuff. Her dirty yellow hair was tied behind with a little piece of red paper ribbon. Worse than [black folk] any day, Mrs. Turpin thought.
The gospel hymn playing [on the radio] was "When I looked up and He looked down," and Mrs. Turpin, who knew it, supplied the last line mentally, "And wona these days I know I'll we-eara crown. ...
Sometimes Mrs. Turpin occupied herself at night naming the classes of people. On the bottom of the heap were most colored people, not the kind she would have been if she had been one, but most of them; then next to them -- not above, just away from -- were the white-trash; then above them were the home-owners, and above them the home-and-land owners, to which she and Claud belonged. Above she and Claud were people with a lot of money and much bigger houses and much more land. But here the complexity of it would begin to bear in on her, for some of the people with a lot of money were common and ought to be below she and Claud and some of the people who had good blood had lost their money and had to rent and then there some colored people who owned their homes and land as well. ...
-- Mrs. Turpin began a conversation with the pleasant looking lady. --
“If you want to make it farming now, you have to have a little of everything. We got a couple of acres of cotton and a few hogs and chickens and just enough white-face [cows] that Claud can look after them himself.”
"One thang I don't want," the white-trash woman said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "Hogs. Nasty stinking things, a-gruntin and a-rootin all over the place."
Mrs. Turpin gave her the merest edge of her attention. "Our hogs are not dirty, and they don't stink," she said. "They're cleaner than some children I've seen. Their feet never touch the ground. We have a pig-parlor - that's where you raise them on concrete," she explained to the pleasant lady, "and Claud scoots them down with the hose every afternoon and washes off the floor." Cleaner by far than that child right there, she thought. Poor nasty little thing. ...
The woman turned her face away from Mrs. Turpin. "I know I wouldn't scoot down no hog with no hose," she said to the wall.
You wouldn't have no hog to scoot down, Mrs. Turpin said to herself. ...
There was nothing you could tell her about [white-trash] people like them that she didn't know already. And it was not just that they didn't have anything. Because if you gave them everything, in two weeks it would all be broken or filthy or they would have chopped it up for [firewood]. She knew all this from her own experience. Help them you must, but help them you couldn't.
All at once the ugly girl turned her lips inside out again. Her eyes were fixed like two drills on Mrs. Turpin. This time there was no mistaking that there was something urgent behind them. ...
"If it's one thing I am," Mrs. Turpin said with feeling, "It's grateful. When I think who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got, a little of everything, and a good disposition besides, I just feel like shouting, 'Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!' It could have been different!" For one thing, somebody else could have got Claud. At the thought of this, she was flooded with gratitude and a terrible pang of joy ran through her. "Oh thank you, Jesus, Jesus, thank you!" she cried aloud.
The book struck her directly, over her left eye. It struck almost at the same instant that she realized [Mary Grace] was about to hurl it. Before she could utter a sound, the raw face came crashing across the table toward her, howling. The girl's fingers sank like clamps the soft flesh of her neck. ...
Mrs. Turpin's head cleared and her power of motion returned. She leaned forward until she was looking directly into the fierce brilliant eyes. There was no doubt in her mind that the girl did know her, know her in some intense and personal way, beyond time and place and condition. "What you got to say to me?" she asked hoarsely and held her breath, waiting, as for a revelation.
The girl raised her head. Her gaze locked with Mrs. Turpin's. "Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog," she whispered. Her voice was low but clear. Her eyes burned for a moment as if she saw with pleasure that her message had struck its target.
-- Later in the day, after all the drama was over, Mrs. Turpin, lay down in her own bed to rest, and she started talking to God. She knew that somehow Mary Grace had given her a message from God. ---
The ... image of a razor-backed hog with warts on its face and horns coming out behind its ears snorted into her head. She moaned, a low quiet moan.
"I am not," she said tearfully, "a wart hog. From hell." But the denial had no force. The girl's eyes and her words, even the tone of her voice, low but clear, directed only to her, brooked no repudiation. She had been singled out for the message ... The message had been given to Ruby Turpin, a respectable, hardworking, church-going woman. ...
"What do you send me a message like that for?" she said in a low fierce voice, barely above a whisper but with the force of a shout in its concentrated fury. "How am I a hog and me both? How am I saved and from hell too?" ...
"Why me?" she rumbled. "It's no trash around here, black or white, that I haven't given to. And break my back to the bone every day working. And do for the church.” ...
"How am I a hog?" she demanded. "Exactly how am I like them? ... There was plenty of trash there. It didn't have to be me.” ...
A final surge of fury shook her and she roared, "Who do you think you are?"
The color of everything, field and crimson sky, burned for a moment with a transparent intensity. The question carried over the pasture and across the highway and the cotton field and returned to her clearly, like an answer from beyond the wood. ["Who do you think you are?"]
She opened her mouth but no sound came out of it. ...
A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw ... a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were tumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black [folk] in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They, alone were [singing] on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces even their virtues were being burned away. [To read the full text of "Revelation" by Flannery O'Connor, click here.]
1 Corinthians 13
1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever!
Once upon a time, there were a group of cooks who never ate. They met together to cook. They made the most incredible dishes - adding just the right spices and holding the pan over the heat just so. But each week after they finished cooking their masterpieces, they tossed them into the trash bins and returned home. They missed the point.
Once upon a time, there was a Manchester United fan club. They all had the Man-U shirts and hats. They knew all of the players’ names and statistics. They had autographed balls and photos. Their fan club met every week, but they never talked about soccer, and they never watched any Manchester games - ever. They missed the point.
Once upon a time, there was an artists’ guild that didn’t do art. Artists from around the city met together to talk about the art of art. They discussed brush strokes and the tools for chiseling marble. They had heated debates about the best kind of paper to use when painting with water colors. However, the curious thing was that none of these artists ever did any art. They missed the point.
Once upon a time, there was a book club that met every week even though nobody ever read the books. They would talk about this and that and have a cup of coffee, while the books sat on the coffee table unopened - with fresh, uncracked spines. They missed the point.
Once upon a time, there was a church that talked about God’s love. They sang about God’s love. They preached about God’s love and had careful theological definitions about the extent of God’s love. But they were impatient and rude. They were selfish and difficult to work with. They were overly critical and liked to exclude others. They were great at talking about love, but not so good about actually loving. They missed the point.
What is the point? Fundamentally, what is the point of church? Jesus answers that question for us pretty clearly.
Matthew 22
37 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
The point of the church is simple - love. This is the first and most important part of our church’s vision: Being renewed by God’s love to love God, ourselves, and others. That is why we are here. The point ... is ... love.
In the 1945 movie The Enchanted Cottage, a former pilot rents a home in the countryside. One arm is useless and his face is deeply scarred from burns when his plan crashed. He hires a shy, homely maid to look after the house. At first, they endure each other’s company because of their mutual need. Then, they begin to open up and share their true selves. Slowly, they fall in love. And slowly, mysteriously, the begin to change. His scars begin to fade. She becomes more attractive. Their clothes become more stylish, and they develop a walk of confidence and poise.
To other people who do not share their love, they are still they same old, scarred and homely people. But to each other, and to their blind neighbor next door, they are transformed. Seen through the eyes of blind love, and growing in the light of love, they have become deeply beautiful people. Love has transformed them.
Let me suggest three venues for us to pursue the transforming power of love.
First, within the church. Most of us came here from another church. We have our own sets of tastes and personal preferences. Maybe you want more hymns or harder-edged music. Maybe you want more discussion or more traditional theology. Maybe you keep thinking of the churches you left behind. Maybe, God has a message for us in the old Crosby, Stills and Nash song, “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, then love the one you’re with.” If your church isn’t what you want it to be ... then love it until both you and your church are transformed by God’s love.
Second, within your home. Maybe your spouse works too much. Maybe your kids are disrespectful. Maybe your mother-in-law gives you headaches. Maybe your husband or your wife is not a Christian. Maybe you and your neighbor just can’t get along. If your family or home aren’t what you want them to be ... Love them until it both you and your family are transformed. Love them until both you and your neighbors are transformed by God’s love.
Finally, within yourself. Maybe you feel like you just don’t measure up. No matter what you do there’s always a nagging sense that you’re not good enough. Maybe you have an addiction that you are ashamed of. Maybe you’ve beaten it; maybe it’s beating you. Maybe it’s on days like today, when the discussion is about love, when you love yourself the least because you see how unloving you are most of the time. If you are not who you want to be ... let God love you and love God the best that you can until you are transformed by God’s love.
The beautiful Gospel of Jesus Christ is that God loves us no matter what. No person and no problem are beyond God’s healing love. Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins and to fill us with his love. God raised Jesus from the dead, and he can raise us with new life and new love through his Holy Spirit. Let God love you and be transformed by his love.
O Love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths, its flow
May richer, fuller be.
2 comments:
Amy Says: Beautiful sermon today! Very thought-provoking.
i'm glad i read this. thanks
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