Texts: Matthew 25:31-40; Revelation 21:1-6

Speaker: Derek Yoder

Good morning! It is a joy to be with you this morning. Barbara Brown Taylor shares about being invited to bring a Sunday morning message to a congregation that was new to her. She asked the local priest what she should preach on, and his response was a model of hospitality: “Come tell us what is saving your life now.” “Come tell us what is saving your life now.” That is such a beautiful invitation. And that is how I feel, sharing with you this morning. Joel contacted me a few months ago and asked if I could perhaps speak about disability awareness. What your invitation means to me is that I get to tell you about the community that I pastor, the community that I love, the community that has been the vessel of God’s saving grace to me. Today, what I’d like to do is… to mash together the two scriptures that you have heard this morning. I would like to share how it is that my community has been saving my life. And I would like to off er “Beholding” as a spiritual practice. It is a practice that I have been learning. I think it’s helpful for disability awareness—but also for a broad awareness of where God is and what God is doing in the world. So let me introduce you to my community: Pleasant View.
Pleasant View was founded in 1971 by the churches of Virginia Mennonite Conference. At the time, families in the state of Virginia were often encouraged to place their children with intellectual disabilities into state institutions. And among Mennonites in the area in which I now live (Harrisonburg City and Rockingham County), this didn’t sit well. Parents wished to keep their children within the faith community. Pleasant View was started so that persons with intellectual disabilities could stay in the church community, even after their parents could no longer care for them. Now this seems quite reasonable; then, not so much. Fifty-four years later, Pleasant View off ers residential and day support services, as well as supported employment and a few other services. I have worked at Pleasant View since 2018. For the last four years, since the retirement of my mentor, Dave Gullman, I have been the pastor there. To be clear, we aren’t a traditional congregation. For example, there is no Sunday morning service that I’m missing this morning. But because I have a community that I care for and that I’m accountable to, we use ‘pastor’ to describe what I do, rather than ‘chaplain’. Now I sometimes tell my community that part of my job is to listen to and tell stories. I try to listen to their stories; I try to listen to God’s story; and then I try to weave those stories together. This morning, that’s what I’d like to do—tell stories—and I want to start briefl y with the lectionary reading from Revelation. As we share stories about our lives, we often have an origin story: Where did we come from? What has shaped our values? Why are we the way that we are? And sometimes we also have a destination story: Where is it that we’re going? Where do we hope to be in ten years? What do we aspire to? What are the things that really matter? In Christian community, when we talk about origin stories, we’re in conversation with Genesis. When we talk about destination stories, Revelation helps to shape the conversation and invites us to dream big. Now, I want to highlight a word from the scripture in Revelation… a word that you didn’t even hear! The word is ‘Behold!’ It sounds a little antiquated, doesn’t it? In fact, you’d hear it if we used the King James Version. (But I’m not saying that we should!) In more recent Bible versions, the translation might read ‘Look!’ or ‘See!’ So in verse 3, we heard “See, the home of God is among mortals.” (NRSV) Or “Look! God’s dwelling is here with humankind.” (CEB) But maybe something has been lost, because ‘Behold’ asks us to do more than to just look or see. Maggie Ross suggests that “the word behold is arguably the most important word in the Bible and by extension in spiritual life. . . .[It] alerts us to pause, however briefl y, to be vigilant, because something new, something startling, is about to be revealed.” She goes on to say that “beholding is a process of continual death and resurrection,” as we quiet our thoughts and allow God’s Spirit to off er something new. Addison Hart suggests that ‘behold’ goes beyond simply “paying attention”; it’s more than “intellectual comprehension”. To behold is a spiritual practice. Well here in Revelation, it says, “Behold! God’s home is here among us!” Or at least it will be when things are the way we want them to be. So the word ‘behold’ asks us to consider… Is that true now? Is God among us? In what way? Or how might God be showing up? — About 15 years ago in my life, I was looking; I was seeing; but I needed to learn to behold. I was working as a scientist and doing a job that I really loved. But in my everyday life, I was struggling to behold God. I know enough to know that God was there; and yet, I struggled. “God, where are you?” Our Christian story suggests to us that “Christ is the image of the invisible God.” (Paul says that in his letter to the Colossian church.) Ok… so “Christ, where are you?” At that time, our other scripture for today set me on the path of beholding, although I didn’t name it that way at the time. Jesus suggests in Matthew that there might be times in our lives when we encounter a person who is hungry or thirsty or a stranger. Or maybe there is a person who needs clothes or needs a visit. And what we don’t necessarily realize at the time is that that person is Jesus. And so to try to alleviate this restlessness that I was feeling in my own life, I started looking for strangers. I needed to learn about Christian hospitality. That search could have led in a variety of directions, but a friend suggested to me that people with intellectual disabilities can be very good at teaching about hospitality. Maybe I could learn from them. Maybe I could behold God dwelling among us. —
So now I’ll begin my mashup of these two scriptures. You can decide how well they work together… — Behold, I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I try to spend as much time as possible at Pleasant View’s Day Program. While I was preparing for this story telling, I walked past one of our oldest residents and overheard him asking for a drink. He simply said, “Cold water!” One of my younger colleagues, who was just getting to know him, went to the kitchen, and she brought back a cup of cold water. And I wondered to myself, Could it be that simple? Was Jesus there in that encounter? Did she behold Jesus in need of a drink? Did he behold Jesus ministering to him, as he received cold water from her? — Behold, I was a stranger and you welcomed me! Our former pastor at Pleasant View, Dave Gullman, tells about the time when his daughter, Hannah, was baptized. Hannah is a person of deep faith. Her church is important to her. She nurtures relationships, not just between herself and others, but also among the people that are meaningful to her. And so, if you are with Hannah, she will greet you by the hand, and then she will take your hand and make sure that you have greeted others who are nearby.
Because of Hannah’s faith, there came a time when it seemed good to Hannah, to her parents, and to the Holy Spirit, that Hannah should be baptized. But in some ways, Hannah comes to her Anabaptist tradition as a stranger. We value baptism upon confession of faith. And because Hannah is a person with Down Syndrome, her confession sounds diff erent—perhaps appears diff erent—than other confessions we are comfortable with. How would she, as a stranger in this regard, be perceived by her congregation when requesting baptism? Dave shares the story of that Sunday: how Hannah was enabled to off er her faith in ways that were authentic to her; and how then in the celebration of baptism, the congregation welcomed her. Another story about Hannah, this one a bit more personal. In the few years before the COVID pandemic, I had some mental health challenges in my life—some anxiety, some depression. I was still in the time of wrestling with how to hold faith… how to fi nd hope. There were times I felt like a stranger to myself. And during that diffi cult time, Hannah taught me how to pray again. I was not a stranger to her. To her, I was her friend. And being her friend meant that we were going to pray. It didn’t matter if I believed in God or not. It didn’t matter how much faith I had. It didn’t matter what my emotions were doing on any given day. Hannah just said “Pray”, and I prayed. And in prayer, Hannah welcomed the stranger in me and brought me as a guest to God.
Revelation says, “Behold! God’s dwelling is here with humankind.” Did Hannah’s congregation recognize the image of God in Hannah? Did Hannah recognize the image of God in me? — Behold! I was naked and you clothed me! This is a short story. One day during the COVID pandemic, before I was Pleasant View’s pastor, I was working at one of our residences. And I was kneeling in front of Eugene, helping him with his leg brace and shoes. And in an unexpected moment, I had the breathtaking sense that I was kneeling on holy ground. After catching my breath, I looked up, but it was just Eugene. — Behold! I was sick and in prison, and you visited me! One challenge of life at Pleasant View is that we are fragile people. Here are a few stories that involve the end of life: Sunday afternoon, just a week after I began as pastor, I was called to one of our houses for Gwen. We gathered around her bed to care for her. I wasn’t quite sure of what was proper for me in my new role or what I should be doing. I was fi nding my way. But we surrounded her with love. We were her community blessing her as long as we could. Gwen died early that evening, and I watched and I learned as three of my colleagues carefully cleaned Gwen’s body and dressed her in beautiful clothes.
The care of those three women for Gwen reminded me of how the women went to the tomb early on Easter morning to tend to the body of Jesus. — A month later, I was asked to visit another house where Amy was at the end of her life. I shared this with her housemates, and we cried around the dining room table. I asked them, Would they like to gather beside Amy’s bed to be with her? So we did. And then Garland, her housemate, stayed there. He stayed by her bed until bedtime. And he returned the next morning as soon as he was awake to be with her again. Later that day, when I went back to the house to tell them that Amy had died, Garland returned to her bedside yet again and stayed with Amy until people from the funeral home came and took her body. All that time, Garland was a silent testimony that Amy was a beloved child of God. Garland was a man of few words. But a few days later at the funeral home, he walked directly up to me and pointed to himself and said, “Prayed.” I am certain that he prayed and that those prayers carried Amy directly into the eternal embrace of God. I am still trying to learn all the lessons that Garland and Amy were teaching during those two days. — And just this week on Tuesday, I was asked to go to Mason’s house. I shared with his apartment mate that Mason would not live much longer. This apartment mate is someone who is non-verbal. However, throughout the day as people were coming to say good-bye, this person would take their hands and lead them to Mason’s room. It was as if he was saying, “Come! Behold the image of God!” — Revelation says, “Behold! God’s dwelling is here with humankind. God will dwell with them, and they will be God’s peoples. God himself will be with them as their God.” Honestly, I don’t know how this works. I think there is a mystery here: that as I in my community and you in your community, wherever you are—as we commit ourselves to seeing the image of God in the stranger, as we stop to behold, then somehow God’s dwelling is here with us. And I don’t think it’s just symbolic or metaphorical. I think God is there. I think God was there in Mason’s room this week. Revelation goes on: “[God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. There will be no mourning, crying, or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And I have to stop and catch my breath. This is our destination story, God dwelling with us, but we’re not quite there yet. Despite God being present, there were many tears this week. — By sharing these stories this morning, what I hope that I’ve conveyed is that, in some of my most spiritually confused times, committing myself to beholding the Image of God in unexpected places has saved my faith; and in this, my community has been my teacher. What I have learned about God is important: that God’s time is the time needed for relationships; that God’s power shows up as love and vulnerability; that God prioritizes community; and that God’s love is able to hold tension and complexity. God’s dwelling is among us… and it isn’t yet. Sometimes, people wonder, “What does it mean to be made in the image of God?” Is it perfection? Rational thought? Creativity? Being relational? (I tend toward that last one.) But my community cautions me: asking how we refl ect the image of God is a bit like asking who is my neighbor. Someone will always show up to challenge your idea of the image of God, and someone will always present themselves as a neighbor when you’d like to walk down the other side of the road. And it’s a bit like asking about disability awareness: It’s important to think about accessible and welcoming spaces. We need to carefully consider the content of our worship and classes and programs. And we need to interrogate our theology for ways that it excludes people. Please, do all of those things! But fi rst, how will you commit yourself to seeing the image of God in each person? And then how will you do the work of disability awareness together ? I’ll leave you with this. Andreas Andreopoulos (Orthodox priest, theologian, and professor in England) suggests that “if it ever becomes possible to discern the love of God and God’s refl ection on every human being. . . .and if we are ever able to see the potential saint inside [each person, then] we will already be in Paradise, surrounded by the Saints. “Behold! The dwelling of God is among God’s people.”