The Lunch Room

"The Lunch Room"

Isaiah 43:1-7
January 10, 2010

But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O
Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall
not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame
shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your
Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. Because
you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for
you, nations in exchange for your life. Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your
offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, “Give
them up,” and to the south, “Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my
daughters from the end of the earth— everyone who is called by my name, whom I
created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”

As I’ve mentioned one too many times here, I grew up overseas, and though we came
back to America in the summers, especially in the latter part of those nine years, I have
to admit that coming back home to actually live in the US was quite a culture shock. I
had lived in Indonesia from the age of 2 to 11 and I was quite comfortable there, in the
sense that I knew everyone in the school—there were only 4 kids in my sixth grade
class, and only 11 or so in the 5th grade, and maybe 50 or 60 total in the whole
American school I attended, which actually only went from kindergarten to 8th grade.
When I came back to the states, it was like entering into a whole new world, because I
never actually gone to school here, and absolutely didn’t know a living soul beyond my
relatives, and didn’t really know how I was expected to act or be—it just was a different
world, in many ways, from the one I had come from, even though, of course, I am a US
citizen. What made it even more difficult was the fact that I arrived in Oklahoma City
right when I was getting into junior high, the time of life which is sort of a mini-hell for a
lot kids anyway. Let’s face it, folks: nobody can be as cruel as junior high kids,
especially with those they immediately spot as different in any way. Perhaps it’s just
part of the growing up process in this country, but most of us had to run through the
cruel gauntlet of junior high, but then you add on arriving in this country without any
sense of how to dress, right when it all of a sudden seems to matter, or how to make
friends for the first time, really, or how to acclimate to a classroom that was filled with
three or four times as many kids as you had ever experienced…it was a rough time for
me.

And I tell you the worse part of it, the one that some of may be able to empathize with,
and that was lunchtime and the dilemma of where to sit—or, really, who would let sit
with them. Because I hadn’t grown up with any of these kids, the kids at Cimarron
Elementary School in Edmond, Oklahoma didn’t know me and I didn’t know them, and
so they had already established their cliques, and weren’t about to let in a weird looking
outsider, and so I eventually just started looking for a place where I would be tolerated,
even ignored, rather than harassed, or teased or whatever—again, it was junior high,
and at that age, it’s all about being in or out, being cool or not cool, being like everyone
else. Now, let me make this clear, I am not looking for sympathy—I can see many of
you putting together your thumb and fore fingers, playing the smallest violin in the
world—but I wouldn’t wish the daily terror of getting your lunch tray, and trying to
navigate the emotional minefield of the lunch room on any 13 year-old. For me, I finally
got accepted—well, tolerated, by the only people who would let me sit with them without
being intentionally ignored or harassed, and that was the school geeks, who even then
were a hard sell!

But I will tell you that there was one place where I did feel accepted by other kids my
age, and that was at church, in my youth group, at Village Baptist Church in Oklahoma.
At that church, I wasn’t a nobody—I was a somebody, and because I know that not all
church youth groups are like that, I have to tell that I think a lot of it had to do with my
youth minister at the time, Ronnie Adams, who somehow seem to meld this motley
group of cool and not-so cool teenagers into a remarkable, accepting and loving group
of kids, which is truly a miracle, at least it is to me, and that is coming from a guy whose
done some youth work himself, not so successfully.   Somehow, those of us who were
outsiders were accepted in that place, even if we weren’t accepted at our own different
schools, and truly, there was never a place that I felt more welcomed, more included,
more home, than I did in Village’s youth group, something I am thankful for, and is
probably one of the reasons why I haven’t given up on the church, though, like perhaps
many of you, I’ve got more than a fistful of reasons on why it would make sense to do
so.

That whole issue of included and excluded, insider and outsider, I experienced years
ago is part of our text today, though in a much more grand scale, in this beautiful and
remarkable slice from the book of Isaiah, where God speaks to the people of Israel
exiled in Babylon through the prophet Isaiah, or at least through one of the writers of
this text, of which most scholars think there were three of four. The best and brightest
of Israel—the smart ones, the rich ones, the charismatic ones, and, yes, even the
bureaucrats, had been carted off to the capital city of Babylon as part of strategy by
the Babylonians of draining the swamp, so to speak, taking out the elements that might
make it possible for a rebellion to swim, to take hold in the conquered lands they
occupied. And, I suspect this strategy it goes back to the old adage that it’s best to
keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer, because that way you can
keep an eye on what’s going on and whether or not there are rumblings of rebellions in
the ranks. Decades and decades of living away from their homelands, multiple
generations living and dying away from home, had brought the Jewish people to the
edge of despair, and the pervasive hopelessness was as thick as the air is in the
summer months in Houston, Texas—hot, heavy and oppressive.

But here comes Isaiah, or one speaking in Isaiah’s name, and he starts in the previous
chapters by reminding them of what had gotten them to that place in the first place—
their disobedience, their unwillingness to do justice with the least of their brethren, their
decision not listen and hear what earlier prophets had said, had been the thing brought
them into captivity, according to this prophet. Still, there is hope, and that is where
chapter 43 starts, where God speaks, and begins at the beginnings, begins by pointing
out the biggest reason why God still gives a damn about them: “He who created you, O
Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel,” so says God in this text, and it words of
possession and creation—“you are mine,” the prophet has God saying here. And so at
the root of our relationship with God, and with the world that God has created, at the
root of it all, is the truth that we are included by God because we are created by God—
our very creation is a birthright, a mark of the One who created us, a sign of our insider
status.

Today is either Epiphany Sunday, or, as some churches like to also designate it, it is
“Baptism of our Lord” Sunday, the time when we hear the Scriptures about Jesus own
baptism, where the Spirit is seen as descending on Jesus, and God declaring God’s
oneness with this Jesus, this Child, this Son of God, who is baptized at the river
Jordan. Often on days like this, we preacher types remind our congregations about the
spiritual mark that baptism places on our souls and bodies, on our beings, a sign of
inclusion into the kingdom of Spirit, the kingdom of God, and the Christian church. But
our welcome into God’s embrace goes back even further, further than even our
baptisms—it goes back to the reality of us just being human beings, beings that have
been created by the God in the first place. Baptism is nothing more than a visible sign
of that invisible reality, that inclusion at the table that goes back to the moment when
God created humankind. “You are mine, you are included, because I made you,” so
says the living God.

And what does this inclusion bring, this welcome that comes to us simply because we
have been created, because we have been made by God? Well, according to our
texts, it brings us presence; it brings us a God who is with us, through the waters,
through the hellish moments of our lives. In Jewish thought, the waters always
represent chaos and fear, and by culture, it was rare for Jews to really head out on the
high seas, beyond the lakes, because there was a profound and mysterious fear of all
the unknown that sea seemed to represent. Here, in this Scripture, God says that
“when you go through the waters, through the seas, I will be with you. When you are
shuttered up in the prisons of Babylon, I will be there, and when the fire is set to
consume, you will not be burned, because I will protect you.” Because we are created
by God, therefore we are included by God, and because we are included, God will be
with us, God will guide through the worst of times, times in exile, time of alienation, times
of fear, times of loneliness.

The rest of the text, well, the rest reminds us what God is willing to do for us, to barter
and trade, to push and pull for us, to make the nations give us up, release us, like
Babylon one day would give up its captives, after so many years of captivity. And if we’
ve spent a lifetime wondering where to sit at in the lunchroom, about where we belong
in this world, and whether or not we are actually included in this world, the answer is
actually here in this text, rooted in our reality as created beings. I know we Christians
spend too much time arguing about whose in and whose out—I think it’s one of the
earliest Christian sins, these endless arguments about what the Gospel is and who it
includes, and one that has turned off too many of my friends because it so often
seemed to exclude them, either by saying you are included if you do this, or love this
way, or they simply were turned off by some versions of Christianity because they didn’t
want to live in our world that seemed to be divided by insiders and outsiders, the saved
and unsaved, the faithful and non-faithful. If religion was all about that, they were
pretty sure that it wasn’t about them. And I can’t blame them. I mean, who could,
really, if you wanted to actually live within the world that God created, rather than trying
live above it, which Jesus never did, and which he decried the Pharisee’s attempt to do
so.

No, this God pull us up and pushes us through, in this messy world and life we live, the
real world, even when its difficult, even when we would rather succumb to the waters, to
the chaos, to the fear. And anyone who has gone through hell and back knows you
always come through it with scars one way or another. Some years ago, on a hot
summer day in South Florida, a little boy decided to go to the old swimming hole behind
his house. In a hurry to dive into the cool water, he ran out the back door, leaving
behind shoes, socks and shirt as he went. He flew into the water, not realizing that as
he swam toward the middle of the lake, an alligator was swimming toward the shore.
The boy’s father, working in the yard, saw the two get closer and closer together. In
utter fear, he ran toward the water, yelling to his son as loudly as he could.

Hearing his dad’s voice, the little boy became alarmed and made a U-turn to swim to his
father. It was too late. Just as he reached his father, the alligator reached him. From
the dock, the father grabbed his little boy by the arms just as the alligator snatched his
legs. That began an incredible tug-of-war between the two. The alligator was much
stronger than the father, but the father was much too passionate to let go.

A farmer happened to drive by, heard screams, raced from his truck, took aim and shot
the alligator. Remarkably, after weeks in the hospital, the little boy survived. His legs
were extremely scarred by the vicious attack. And on his arms were deep scratches
where his father’s fingernails dug into his flesh in an effort to hang on to the son he
loved.

A newspaper reporter who interviewed the boy after the trauma asked if he would show
him his scars. The boy lifted his pant legs. And then, with obvious pride, he said to the
reporter, “But look at my arms. I have great scars on my arms, too. I have them
because my dad wouldn’t let go.” (Homiletics Online website)

The remarkable thing about it all, really , is that God didn’t push and pull for us, didn’t
barter with world for our release, because we said yes to God—no, God did all those
things, including never letting us go, God included us because God said “yes” to what
God created—us—we who have been formed and made by God, and that simple
reality, one that is so fundamental as to be so often missed, is the reason why we are
always home, why God has motioned us to the welcome table, as we stand with our
lunch tray, our eyes darting back and forth, desperately looking for that one safe place
in the lunchroom, this God motioning over to the nobodies and the somebodies of this
world, all of us. We are included by God because we are created by God—it is our
birthright, it is our birthmark, a hint of which we get in the moment of our baptism.
Whenever the chaos breaks out and breaks forth, the One who created us, this One
who is our home, is there, beside us, holding us, scars and all. Amen.