First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Acts 2

“Can I Get a Witness”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

March 30, 2008

Rufus Johnson is perhaps one of Flannery O’Connor’s greatest and worst creations. He was a club-footed boy who grew up in the woods with a prophetic grandfather whose visions increased with moonshine. Rufus was in and out of every kind of detention facility, schools could not contain him and in the end he was running wild through the small southern town that O’Connor created as place for this demonic child.

Rufus is one of her worst in that he could be both good and bad. He could charm and destroy in a moment. He knew the gospel and felt justified for his evil. The crux of the story is that Rufus is invited to come and live with a social worker who is convinced that a good home and some stability will turn this boy around. The social worker, Norton, believe he can save the boy with kindness and possibility. This is one of Flannery O’Connor’s favorite targets: believing you can make things better by being nice.

O’Connor believes grace makes us better, and grace is born of suffering, and the grace of Christ who suffered on the cross is the suffering that truly saves. In creating Rufus she manufactured an extreme example of how often little fruit good intentions can bear.

Yet there is something more in her story entitled, “The Lame Shall Enter First.” Near the end Rufus turns on the “do-gooding” social worker who has invited the boy into his home. Rufus convinces the man’s son Sheppard that the only way he can be with his dead mother is to kill himself, then he can be with her in the stars. When the police arrive to determine the cause of death of the ten year old child, Rufus turns to the police and suggests that this is all the culmination of Norton’s perversion and repeated attempts at molestation.

It is a painful, painful ending. Kathy always rolls her eyes when I describe this as a favorite. Terrible as it is, it is a favorite. It is so because it has created a huge impression on me. As I venture into doing good, serving on a board, visiting at the jail, entering into a hospital room, I remember Norton and Rufus. I remember them and their warning: my good intentions cannot save, my acts of kindness or sharing will not create a better world.

An earlier moment in the story is ever with me as well. Before everything burns up in the end, Norton and Rufus argue about religion. Norton cannot begin to imagine how a boy with Rufus’ IQ and potential could ever be duped into the fantasies and foolishness of theology and the Bible. Rufus says, the Bible is true. What it says is true. To illustrate his point he takes a bible and rips off pages and begins to eat them. Through his chewing he says, whether I believe it or not, it is true.

Here Flannery O’Connor’s worst character is also her best. Rufus is a witness against, not only good intentions, but the belief that what we believe is ours to determine, something we make up or manufacture. Rufus makes all these apparent not only in the extremity of his actions, but in the absolute quality he suggests. The Bible is what it is; it says what it says. Interpret it, read, eat it even, but never believe it is up to you.

As Norton is being arrested and hauled away with his life in ruins O’Connor makes her point: beware of good intentions. Beware of trying to be a messiah. Saving the world is a violent business.

In the opening chapters of Acts, these are the big themes with which the disciples are confronted. Their Messiah didn’t land a big contract or obtain a great position, he was nailed to a tree. Their belief in him wasn’t born of territories gained or numbers posted, but a suffering that was overcome not by grit, but grace. The Lord they proclaimed gave his life as a sacrifice for all, not a heroic deed to win a battle. If we look at this obstacle and try to imagine the rather absurd quality of the gospel the disciples, now apostles had to preach Rufus and Norton in O’Connor’s story are not that far off.

No matter how much we gild it or glorify it, we must remember that the cross was a criminal’s death in a world just as precarious as this one. Would we believe in a condemned man? Let alone believe he was the Lord of all creation? Soren Kierkegaard called this the scandal, the offence of our faith. Kierkegaard argued quite rightly that the opposite of faith isn’t doubt, it is offence. When we lose faith in someone, we don’t doubt their existence, we are offended by their deeds, we lose faith in them as a person. We have all said, “I have no doubt what you are saying is true, I just don’t trust you, believe you.” Kierkegaard said, such offence is the nature of losing faith.

And to his credit Kierkegaard said, the message at Pentecost is offensive. Doubt doesn’t begin to grasp the level of challenge Peter’s words convey. The God of creation has redeemed the world because he made a promise to a ancient Israelite king 1000 years ago? Because Jesus suffered and died, there is grace for me before God? A Galilean peasant is my Lord?

Traveling to Israel is one of the greatest exercises in this offence for me. There is nothing like standing in the streets of Jerusalem with cars whizzing by and ultra-orthodox Jews pushing people out of the way all laced with the post card sellers and bread dealers to make you realize this was not a cosmic event, not some metaphysical possibility or a big bang theory Peter was putting forward, it was a raw and profoundly implausible notion.

Unlike Rufus, Kierkegaard doesn’t claim a kind of fait a compli. It isn’t just what it is. For Kierkegaard, the offensive gospel Peter preaches is all about the way God is not our discretion, nor is faith our assent. The gospel and God are placed before us as a moment of faith. To believe we must leap, and in essence, surrender ourselves to the mercy of God.

A key part of Grace Chuimia coming to visit here this last month has been to discern the falling out of the choir. I haven’t shared this with a lot of people, but once the choir returned there was a great amount of dissention among their ranks and in the end some extortion.

Returning home with the money to build the church, a number of choir members claimed that the money was theirs and that Grace and Rev. Harra were keeping their money from them. Members of the church, family members of the young people who came here, harassed Rev Harra for months, demanded his firing and spread terrible rumors about Grace.

There was a terrible moment for me about five months ago when I thought, “What have we done?” I thought a great deal about the extravagance the choir was shown, the money falling from the sky at the Clayton Opera House and so on and so on. It must have just ruined them was my conclusion. It turned their precarious existence upside down. There was too much, too fast and it destroyed their lives. In the end I didn’t lose faith in them; I lost faith in me. What a terrible lot comes to those who are well intended.

Hence an important part of Grace’s visit was to discern what transpired and how I am going to be in the midst of this congregation for two months. This has been a great question I have carried since October. We talked at length about this and a number things came clear. In her description I could now I see the reason why Rev. Harra mailed me the copies of the receipts for the iron sheets that go on the roof. At first I thought that was a bit over the top, but now I see why: he needed me to know what was being said was not true. He was not keeping the money; he was using for what it was intended. Perhaps the biggest moment came when Grace described the receipts from another angle.

His board of elders, she said, wanted to take this money. In the past she said, they would do fundraisers for the new building, money would come in. When the money came in though no materials would be bought, but the treasurer would have a new car, an elder would have a new house. Rev. Harra’s session it would appear were in the habit of building their own lives under the name of the church.

I didn’t know this when I sent a very caustic letter to Malawi with Don Klug. Poor Don was given the very difficult task of reading words that had little grace in them. I told the elders that if greedy children ran their church, the church was not entitled to the gift of the roof and they should send the money back. I reiterated the confidence I had in Rev. Harra and told the congregation I expect to enjoy my time with him when I come in June.

Grace explained that the letter turned the congregation and turned out the then current board of elders. As she described the months that have followed, the way Rev. Harra now has a group of men and women who are not pilfering the church I felt very small. All of sudden I could see that the gift of the choir wasn’t iron sheets, but possibility of a new day for the spirit of the church. The choir members weren’t doing anything abnormal; they were seeking a piece of the money just as the elders were. Now I could see God’s hand at work. Far, far beyond whatever I had intended or believed.

I always find Africa to be an humbling experience. Struggling with the mess the roof funds seemed to be creating, I lost faith in myself. In the end I could see faith should have never been with me, but with God.

This is the great message Peter preaches. This is the challenge he puts before the crowd. Jesus is what God has done; it is his son; the Lord and Messiah given. This is not what we have crafted. Because, I got to tell you, if I were going to craft a believable message it would never be that a Galilean peasant who has a special skill with bread and fish would be the way unto God and salvation for the world.

And the other message is just as hard to accept: suffering is the way God brings mercy. I can’t begin to tell you how much easier Rev. Harra’s life would have been had he simply gave each choir member $200 and let the elders divide the rest. He could have told me the iron sheets were stolen, or that they were on order. Yet, he suffered through months of personal assaults and in the end won a new day for his congregation. No amount of good intention can foster this. It is faith that makes you stand in the gap and suffer. And it was suffering that created a new life in Mchengatuba.

That God has wrought salvation for us in the death of Jesus on a cross and this salvation is now offered in the light of his resurrection is a scandal. No amount of philosophy or rationalizing we can muster will ever undo this moment where we leap in faith or withdraw in understandable offence. The scandal of our faith has not change one iota since Peter preached this first sermon. Like a long thread that runs from this pulpit over two millennia and unto the streets of Jerusalem so is the offence of our Gospel. We believe in Jesus Christ God’s only begotten son.

And just as offensive is our belief that in losing our life we save it; in the death of Christ we find freedom from sin; in our sacrifice we find blessing. Soon after his sermon Peter was going to see and understand how problematic this message would be to the world, how much offense it would cause as the Christians would be thrown from the synagogues, some to their deaths. Soon and very soon he would encounter the difference of good intentions and God’s hand at work.

People ask me each week how the preparation for my sabbatical is going. Usually I speak of plane tickets, shots, and housing. Yet the most important preparation has transpired this week. I am now mindful that God is at work, working even through my misguided, albeit good, intentions. God is at work in me, in you, in this church, in Rev. Harra, in Mchengatuba, and even in the choir. God was making something good even out of greed.

To believe is never easy, to be redeemed, made right with God never without pains of childbirth. Amen.