Thread by @jeffblack945

#RevThread # 123
“Quiet Heros”
Gertrude

1/ It’s good to take a regular Sabbath from contemplating Trumpism.

2/ He only upsets us so much because he threatens something so beautiful: life as a free people. It’s time to remind ourselves of how beautiful that can be. It’s why we resist.

3/ So here comes the first of some stories about folks or things too important to surrender to the nihilism of greed. A lifetime spent in pastoral ministry has given me a chance to meet many beautiful Americans.

4/ In the early 90’s, a bunch of us, including Gertrude, went to Israel.

5/ Every church has someone who is at the spiritual center of the church. It’s rarely the pastor. It’s often, as in this case, an elderly person everyone senses prays much and walks with God. Gertrude was my intercessor. She was 87.

6/ We were outside Jericho, in a 5th century desert monastery. Our guide told us the path heading east from there was the old Jericho Road, which Jesus had walked on his final trip to Jerusalem. It was a bit dangerous, with cliffs to the right of the path, but it was manageable.

7/ Many in the group wanted to get on the bus and go back to the hotel; some, including Gertrude, wanted to walk where Jesus had walked. There was a great buzz about that being too dangerous for her.

8/ Gertrude wasn’t easily dissuaded. I told the group who wanted to walk the road to start on their way -- I would follow with Gertrude..

9/ Of course it was Gertrude who grabbed me in her good strong hand when I got too close to the edge; I helped her over some of the rocks. I worried that it was getting dark....

10/.. And then it occurred to me that I was walking on a genuinely holy path with the holiest person I knew, so I thought maybe God had arranged this, so I asked God, “What”s up?”

11/ I felt my gaze be turned to her, & I believe this is what I heard, “She is indeed my daughter & my church, & you are doing ok. Your job is to set the direction, not to worry about her pace. Do not hurry my church; just walk alongside her & give her the little help she needs.”

12/ That was a pretty good understanding of some of what God wanted me to learn. Looking back now, though, I can see that God wanted me to accompany Gertrude on her journey more profoundly than that.

13/ See, Gertrude’s daughter had confided in me that she was a reverse tither. The widow of a wealthy banker, Gertrude lived in a modest cottage, and gave to the poor 90% of her income.

14/ A quick story about that. Most of Gertrude’s giving was to agencies & individuals outside our church, but one day the head of Habitat for Humanity came to speak. We put a model of a home in the aisle...

15/.. I asked the folks on their way to communion to drop their donation inside the model house. We had to raise 40K to do a house in Kansas City’s inner city. I figured it would take a few months to raise that amount.

16/ At coffee hour, the treasurer came up excitedly to tell me we were good to go. “WHAT?!” Turns out Gertrude put a check for 30K in the model house on her way to communion. Only he and I knew who had done it.

17/ That summer we built the house. As you may know, the family who are to receive the house always put sweat equity into the building. One of our members (the VP of a big insurance company) & I were working in one the bedrooms alongside a boy about 9 whose room this would be.

18/ I listened to my parishioner tenderly ask the child if he was excited about his new home. “Yes,” he said, shyly adding, “I’ve never had a bed of my own before, and now I’m going to have a whole room.” I watched the big exec tear up as he refocused on painting the wall.

19/ Gertrude’s path, which God was showing me, is a path of generosity and of modesty, of making careful and intelligent decisions about living on less, living with less, and learning how liberating it is to give.

20/ We live among unseen saints. Follow them, not the guy with his golden name on gaudy towers.