Psalm 8
Mark 9: 2-8
This is the Fourth of a sermon series called “The Cowtown Christ” that reimagines the story of Christ from the gospels by setting it in modern day Fort Worth. The Cowtown Christ is Jesse, a Mexican-American young woman with an unusual relationship with God. She preaches that “The City of God,” “la Ciudad de Dios” has come to Fort Worth, just as Jesus in His ministry taught that The Kingdom of God had come to the earth. It’s a message of God’s presence and hope in the real world, but also of concrete responsibility.
Jesse, the Cowtown Christ, had assembled a diverse group around her, whom she called mis compañeros cercanos, my close companions.
There was Joanna, an Iraq war veteran who was now a Fort Worth Police officer who worked with the homeless; Anna, a Palestinian Muslim doctor, who admired Jesse as a wise female leader; Peter, the former gas company executive and recovering alcoholic whom Jesse had met at the Apple store; Nate, an African-American community organizer from Stop Six; John, the mega-church pastor who hadn’t quite decided what he thought of Jesse, yet; Mary, the teenaged runaway that Jesse had rescued from working at an underage strip club; Glenda, a slighty-off-kilter homeless woman who was diagnosed as paranoid-schizophrenic and was very laid-back about taking her meds; And Jude, a well-known local psychologist with a burgeoning practice.
One day Jesse came to the eight of them with eight picnic baskets. She said, “Okay, mis compañeros cercanos, it’s time for you to start doing my work. Each of you take a picnic basket.”
They did. Jesse said, “Inside each you’ll find the same two things.”
Nate looked inside and looked up, puzzled. “A piece of toast and frozen tilapia?”
“That’s right,” Jesse said. “There was a tilapia sale at Fiesta. And that’s not just any toast, amigo—that’s Texas Toast!
“Now, here’s what you’re going to do. I’m teaming you up, two by two.” She handed out a bunch of white aprons. “Put these on. I’m sending you out as servants of your neighbors. In fact, I’m sending you out as waiters. Wherever I send you, I want you to serve a meal to the people who are there. Entiendes?”
Jude, the psychologist, was confused. When he was confused, he stroked his van dyke beard. He said, “Jesse, are we supposed to serve them with just what’s in this basket?”
“That’s right, Jude. Is there a problem with that?”
“Well,” he said, “I hope there aren’t too many there. This isn’t much food.”
“Believe me,” Jesse said, “It will be enough. Believe me. Here are your assignments:
“Joanna and Nate—there’s a city council meeting tonight dealing with lots of police related issues. A lot of African American folks are angry about a recent shooting; and the new police contract is on the table. It’ll be a fun meeting! I want the two of you to go there and serve.”
Joanna and Nate both stood there dumbfounded. You see, Joanna didn’t trust Nate, because she’d attended meetings with citizen groups where Nate had been a vocal critic of the police. Likewise, Nate viewed all police officers with suspicion. And now Jesse was sending them to a place where they’d have to serve people on both sides, who knew them both!
It was the same for them all. John the mega-church pastor had always been suspicious of Anna the Muslim doctor, because she was Muslim; likewise Anna was uncomfortable around John, thinking him arrogant Fundamentalist male chauvinist pig. They were sent to serve at an all-male conservative Christian prayer breakfast. “But—I’ll know all those guys,” John said, horrified.
Jesse just smiled.
Peter, who’d attended strip clubs, was embarrassed around Mary, the former stripper; and she wasn’t sure what to think of him, either. They were sent together to serve at a local women’s shelter.
And finally, Jesse teamed up Jude the successful psychologist and Glenda the paranoid schizophrenic homeless woman to serve lunch at a meeting of the Tarrant County Psychological Association at the Petroleum Club. “Excuse me,” Jude said, raising an eyebrow. “I’m actually supposed to attend that meeting. Can’t we do something else?”
“Nope,” Jesse said. “If you want to serve la Cuidad de Dios, the city of God, then you have to learn how to be humble.”
And off she sent them, two by two.
Here’s what happened to Joanna and Nate at the city council meeting:
When they got there, the meeting had already gotten pretty heated. Hundreds of residents were there, as were several representatives of the police, including the chief. Stop Six residents were furious and grieving over a recent police shooting. Speakers remembered past police incidents they believed were handled wrongly. They raised complaints that African American motorists were twice as likely to be stopped by police as white and Hispanic motorists in Fort Worth. They accused the police of racial profiling. They talked about “overzealous police officers” harassing their teens and said the police were “criminalizing poverty.”
The chief pointed out that he had established a Multicultural Education committee comprised of citizens to help with diversity training for officers. He pointed to progress already made.
Then the debate about the police contract
came up. The union was still angry over changes in the pension plan, and feared the fire department might get a better deal than they. They wanted a contract that balanced what they felt they’d lost.
Council members argued that city was losing money and had to make cuts. The Union responded they’d brought this on themselves through past decisions. The mayor said, yes, but this is now, and we have to do something today.
People on every side had legitimate points, but they seemed to talk across one another. They could never find a common ground and just grew more and more frustrated with one another.
Then Joanna and Nate showed up, wearing aprons, carrying two picnic baskets. For some reason, no one stopped them as they pulled tables and chairs into the area around the speaker’s podium. The debate just continued louder over the noise they were making.
Then Joanna and Nate started to take food out of their picnic baskets. They produced a feast—chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, a couple of vegan dishes for the two vegans activists present, and a low-calorie, heart-healthy meal for a council member who was on a diet. Lots of sparkling cider.
Nate waited for a quiet moment, then said, “Dinner is served.”
The debate stopped. Council members, the mayor, police, citizens, and city staff suddenly found themselves ravenously hungry. They pulled chairs up to the table.
Joanna said, “Let us pray,” and everyone went quiet. She said, “Thank you, mi Papa God, that all we are and all we have are yours, not our own; and you make miracles with them–and with us.”
And people began to eat. And as they ate, they began to talk.
Police officers and Stop Six residents started talking family, common interests, things they cared about. City budget people and council folks started talking to union representatives about their lives. Then they started to talk about the topics they disagreed with one another about.
And somehow, by the end of the meal, everyone had produced agreements all sides could live with. There was a newfound respect between all sides about all the difficult issues they were facing and a newfound commitment to solve them.
And Joanna and Nate became friends.
The next day, when the results of the meeting were reported in the news, people didn’t remember the meal. They vaguely remembered Nate and Joanna being there, being voices of reason. But they spoke of their opponents on the various issues with respect and made promises they meant to keep.
The same sort of thing happened to the other pairings, too.
All except one.
Jude was in a foul mood from the moment Jesse gave them the assignment. It only got worse as he drove Glenda to the Petroleum Club, with Glenda gabbing incessantly in run-on sentences about things that meant nothing to him. He drove them both there early so that he could be there before any of his peers from the Psychological Association arrived. He had the attendant park the car and walked in the building as far ahead of Glenda as he could; she was actually running to catch up.
When they arrived upstairs to the Petroleum Club, they both went in the kitchen where the other servers were and put on their aprons. Jude told Glenda he’d take care of everything and sat her and her basket in a corner out of the way.
Disgusted, he didn’t even look in his picnic basket, but just emptied it into a trashcan. Then he looked around.
Now among Jude’s many accomplishments—summa cum laude graduate of UT, two Ph.Ds, a medical degree, three best-selling self-help books, two years in a row voted a Top Ten psychologist in Fort Worth Magazine, and a black belt in karate–Jude was also a gourmet chef. So he checked in with the executive chef, who knew him, checked what was in the kitchen refrigerator, and soon he was preparing a magnificent lunch of steak au pauvre and blue cheese potatoes.
When the time came, he entered the psychological meeting with a flourish, wearing the apron and carrying the meal and a $150 bottle of white wine that he’d bought himself. He took it to the head table, opened the wine and served it to his startled fellow doctors. Jude served the gourmet meal he’d prepared to the president of the association. He explained that he was modeling the importance of service in building a community. They invited him to sit and soon he was sharing a glass of wine and laughing with his friends.
In the meantime, Glenda came in and quietly served a lunch of veal ossu bucco with a side of asparagus seasoned just right to the doctors sitting at the other tables in the room.
The Petroleum Club banquet manager stepped in looking a bit confused. “I had prepared chicken divan for this meal,” he said. “Where did the veal come from?’
Jude asked Glenda the same question as they were driving back. “The veal came from the picnic basket,” she said. “Didn’t you look in your picnic basket?”
The various teams met Jesse at historic Oakwood Cemetery. As they gathered under the stately trees and among the august monuments, Jesse took their picnic baskets, in which each team had stored their leftovers, and spread the leftovers on a table she’d set up.
“We all wonder sometimes how in the world we’re going to bring people closer to the City of God,” Jesse said. “Even if we believe, how do we convince everyone else to believe? What you’ve proved today is you don’t have to convince everyone else. If you have the faith, if you believe in it, it’s enough to make a difference.”
Jessie waved her arms around to indicate the whole cemetery. “This is an amazing place,” she said. “It’s like all of Fort Worth’s history in one place. You’ve got civic leaders like John Peter Smith; veterans of every war; and all the saints and sinners from the old days when Fort Worth had ‘Hell’s Half Acre,’ and was noted for crime and prostitution. You’ve got a crooked lawman like sheriff “Longhair” Jim Courtright over here and the famous brothel madame Mary Porter right nearby. You’ve got the monument to African American civic leader William MacDonald down there; and you’ve got the graves of the Confederate soldiers not that far away. What brings them all together?”
“They’re dead,” John pointed out.
“They’re human,” Jesse said. “Beautiful, wonderful, magnificent works of art made in the image of their Papa God. Each of them wondrously and marvelously made, the bible says, made little lower than angels, but crowned with honor and glory.
“They were made to build la Ciudad de Dios, the City of God, here in Fort Worth together. And they did some good things. But somehow they couldn’t get together. Somehow something went wrong and things didn’t go the way God intended.
“Now, they can only be together in death. They can be united in the City of God at the resurrection of the dead.
“But is that the only time they can be united? It would break God’s heart if that were true. God sees our true hunger. We long for the City of God, even if it’s just a taste, just a small sample of it. We hunger for it. We need to be united to one another, to be healed of our suspicion of one another. To be united to God the Father and Mother of us all, who makes us one. That will only happen when we understand that we are all loved by God; when we look at one another and see in the other God’s child.”
As she was talking, a strange thing began to take place. It seemed that the colors of the sky, the grass, the trees, the monuments, became vivid and bright. Jesse herself was bathed in a shining light. In fact, the light actually seemed to come out of her, a natural part of her.
Confused, her close companions began to look around. They noticed lots of people coming toward them, dressed in clothes of all periods of history in the last couple of hundred years.
There was Jim Longhair, the sheriff, and Mary Porter, the madame; William McDonald the early Twentieth century black politician side by side with a figure in confederate grey. They saw people who they recognized from history, but who weren’t buried at Oakwood: Quanah Parker, the Comanche chief who gave up war for peace; Amon Carter, the tough-minded newspaper man and civic leader; Van Cliburn, the extraordinary pianist and generous Christian gentleman; Nancy Lee Bass, the philanthropist.
Each of them came to the table, which was now set with a feast too glorious for words; and all of them came together. All of them looked up at Jesse, who seemed to be floating in the air. And as she floated, a gentle voice, almost like a breeze, spoke: “Jesse is my Beloved Daughter; and all of you are my Beloved Children. Listen to Her. Listen to Her.”
And all those gathered at the table seemed to bow and curtsey toward her; and then they turned, and signaled Jesse’s close companions to come; and when they did, all those famous people served them bread and wine from the glowing Table, while Jesse looked on smiling.
And suddenly it was all gone. It was just a pretty day in Oakwood Cemetery with the birds singing and Jesse standing at a table that was sitting slightly lopsided on the uneven ground.
“That was amazing,” Nate said.
“Unbelievable,” John agreed.
“Like a dream,” said Joanna.
“What are you all talking about?” Jude said. “I didn’t see a thing.”
Cowtown Christ and The Cowtown Christ Shines Among the Saints and Sinners, and all contents herein, copyright Fritz Ritsch, 2013.