When I became a parent I began to understand what children had to teach me. When I became a priest I began to understand what children have to teach a community.
A woman at a very small parish I served brought her young son with her each week to choir practice. He would stand in the middle of the church in order to feel the vibrations of the organ coming up through the wooden floor and those vibrations traveled through his body to the place music lived in him, and he would smile. It made him especially happy because he couldn’t hear music as the rest of us do because he was deaf. His first language was American Sign Language.
It was the custom at this church on Pentecost to read the gospel in many different languages, echoing the passage from the Acts of the Apostles that described the chaos of the first Pentecost when people from many different tribes all understood each other despite their linguistic differences. The reading was a choreographed affair with the deacon beginning to read the gospel in English. After a few sentences someone started reading the same text in Spanish, or French, or Urdu. If you spoke any language in addition to English you got recruited to participate. Done well this is an astonishing and moving experience, but the year I remember in particular had something extra.
The deaf child very much wanted to participate in this Pentecost tradition so at about age seven he memorized the entire text from John’s gospel that would be read on Sunday morning. When it came time for the gospel everyone participating took their scripts and he stood up at the front by the pulpit where he could be seen.
The deacon began to read: “On the evening of that day, the first day of the week . . .” And the boy’s hands became like wings, fluttering through the air, describing that day when Jesus came right through the walls, through time and space, and said, “Peace be with you”. All the other languages were being spoken full tilt while all eyes were on the child as his small delicate fingers held up the full weight of this important religious text. Those moments held a richness and a power that brought the entire congregation to some deeper, inchoate understanding of what the words of John’s gospel have meant to peoples all over the world down the long corridors of Christian history.
The Christian community is strengthened by the inclusion of all different kinds of people in its worship, its social life, and its ministries. It is one of the few places where we sing together on a regular basis. We’re given opportunities to know people with opinions, backgrounds, experiences, spiritualities, callings, and outlooks that differ from ours. We’re offered many chances to comfort people in their grief as they will comfort us in ours, and to rejoice with those whose happiness surely affects our own. And we learn to see past differences and disabilities to the gifts each of us has to contribute.
During these strange pandemic times we remember the moments of connection and understanding which perhaps we took for granted, knowing that next Sunday we’d be in the midst of the community again. Zoom works for some, but not all of us and there’s no substitute for new and familiar faces keeping us moored in our own lives. Summer has turned, just slightly, and the days have shortened. As I face whatever it is that will come in the next weeks and months I rely on the community that keeps me connected and grounded, one Body and one Spirit, through the one hope in God’s call to us.
Blessings,
Anne+
