I was up at Life’s Journey this week visiting Stacey Denny’s mother, who’s in hospice there. They have a bookshelf in the lobby filled with religious books, including a book called Heaven, written by a man named Randy Alcorn, whom I met 30 years ago when I started writing books. The flyleaf on the book said the Reverend Doctor Randy Alcorn was the world’s foremost expert on heaven, which I thought was interesting, since he’s still alive. That’s kind of like me being the world’s being the foremost expert on Tanzania. You would think it would require a trip. Nevertheless, Randy is an expert on heaven and the first thing he wants us to know is that heaven is a city, which right there makes me not want to go, since I’ve always preferred the countryside. Contrary to popular belief, there aren’t many harps. I don’t know who started the harp rumor, but Randy Alcorn isn’t buying it. He does think there are talking animals in heaven, not that he has seen them first-hand, mind you, because again, he hasn’t actually been there.
According to the Reverend Doctor Alcorn, our pets will be in heaven, which is nice, since most everyone else will likely be in hell. Approximately 100 billion people have lived on Earth, and Randy says only a little over 2 billion of them have been Bible-believing Christians, which means only 2% of the people who’ve ever been born are in heaven. I have the feeling he’s not counting Episcopalians and Unitarians, or for that matter, smart-alecky Quaker pastors.
Now this is what I don’t understand, and perhaps why I’m so bad at religion, but have you noticed religion’s claim to know everything about things we’ve never seen, places we’ve never been, and beings we’ve never met, but far too often cannot see the evil staring them in the face, cannot see the tyranny close at hand, cannot hear the hateful chant, cannot taste the bitter bile of greed. How can religion know so much about things that matter so little and so little about things that matter so much? Why do religions have such clarity about the invisible while remaining clueless about the visible?
We’ve been talking about the do’s and don’ts in times of change. Let’s add this to our list: In times of change, make every effort to see what you’re not seeing. Look carefully at what is escaping your notice and the notice of others. See what others aren’t seeing.
Despite my tortured relationship with religion, I love being a Quaker. And I especially love being a Quaker in times like these. Because when times are good, when the sun of justice is radiant and full, when the stranger is welcomed, when there’s scarcely any difference between the haves and have-nots, there isn’t much for a Quaker to do. While we are grateful for good times, we were not built for them. Quakers weren’t born for the easy times. We were born for the hard, uncomfortable, difficult times. If you want to see Quakers come alive, give us a challenge, a wrong to be righted, an injustice to be identified and resolved.
Do you know what we’re doing when we gather each week? We’re practicing our caring. When our son Sam was a flight medic in Alaska, two or three times a week, in weather good and bad, they’d get in the helicopter, fly to some remote spot, and practice helping someone. They did this, so that when they were actually needed, they’d be ready. They were prepared. We’ve been doing the same thing, practicing our caring, and now we’re needed, and we are prepared. So let there be no whining, let there be no excuses that we are unable to make a difference, that we are unprepared to face this hour. This is the moment for which we’ve been practicing.
Quakers have always spent the easy times practicing for the difficult times. When the mother of Quakerism, Margaret Fell, visited the prisoners, petitioned the King, and cared for the poor, she was putting into place the lessons she’d practiced in the easier times. When John Woolman traveled among Friends denouncing slavery, he was putting into place the lessons he’d practiced in the easier times. When Bayard Rustin, that angelic troublemaker, was working with Martin Luther King Jr., he was putting into place the lessons he’d practiced in the easier times. Let’s not for a moment say we are not up for this moment. Of course we are, we have been practicing.
Now is not the time for hang-dog expressions, now is not the time to let our shoulders droop and spirits flag. We are Quakers, and we’ve been practicing. We are ready for this.
When Jesus was a child and teaching in the Temple, he was practicing in the easy times to be ready for the difficult times. This is perhaps the most important reason we come to meeting on Sunday morning. In his book on heaven, Randy Alcorn said the purpose of church and heaven was to worship God, as if God is some narcissist demanding homage or else. I don’t believe that for a moment. We come to meeting on Sunday to practice within these walls the work we’ll be doing outside these walls. We come here to see what might otherwise escape our notice, to discern together those things that matter.
My mom and dad moved out of our childhood home in 2005 to a smaller home. Mom said without a big house to maintain she could finally relax. It didn’t last long. A month after they moved into their new home, a family from Guatemala moved in across the street. A man, woman, and two little girls. The man abandoned them, so the woman was left to provide for herself and her children. She didn’t speak a word of English. Didn’t own a car. So my mom, a retired teacher, went to work, teaching the woman English, taking her to the grocery store, teaching her how to mow a lawn. I never even knew my Mom could mow a lawn, but apparently she’d been practicing. She enrolled the girls in school, tutored them, found the mother a job, helped the mother apply for citizenship, and a year later drove them to the federal building downtown to be sworn in as American citizens.
I now realize she had spent her adult life practicing in the good times in order to make a difference in the bad times. And you’ve been doing it too. I know you well enough to know that about you. Now our nation needs us. It needs our deep devotion to democracy. It needs our expertise, our experience, our renewed commitment to decency and dignity. We are Quakers, we are up to the challenge. Coursing through our spiritual veins runs the lifeblood of those Quakers who’ve come before us, righting the wrong, loving the unloved, lifting those of low estate, leaving in our wake a tidal wave of hope and healing. We have been preparing, and we are ready.