Jesus said, "Feed my sheep. 18 I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go."
This week was very significant for me at work. The people in this church amaze me. They are my object lessons about what God is like. For instance, on Wednesday, Dottie and I drove all the way out to Calvert County to see an elderly couple, shut-ins who can no longer make it to church services or anywhere else for that matter. They were so delighted to meet me as a young aspiring minister. The wife's eyes filled with tears as soon as Dottie told her that was what I am doing. How humbling to think that people are counting on me in a way and on my generation make right what they see as wrong in the world.
Her husband had just gotten out of the hospital this past weekend, but his eyes were bright and his voice kind. As his wife hobbled slowly with her walker over the an armchair to sit and talk with us, he ran up behind her and led her with his hand on the small of her back; the classic chivalrous gesture. That couple has been married for 70 years!!! There just aren't words to describe my wonder at such a thing; at such a small gesture that encapsulates thousands of days and millions of hours together.
We talked and caught up and then Dottie had me read Psalm 121 as we served communion to them. When she leant over and handed the bread and the wine to Bev, the old woman, I realized that she was right in her traditional, liturgical words: "Bev, this is the body of Christ broken for you. This is the cup of salvation poured out for you". Jesus really is for her: a woman so pale that you can see the blue veins pumping in her wrists, a woman wearing her faded nightgown and linty slippers. Jesus really is for her. More than for anything we could produce or muster up to impress him.
And that day I couldn't imagine wanting to be anywhere else.
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