Imagine this: you are not alone.
A friend arrives in the middle of the night.
Gift number one: a friend
Gift number two: delivered safely to your door!
Two gifts. Me, and you.
A third gift: the connection between us.
Jesus taught them in parables, saying,
Imagine this: the cupboards are bare.
You have no stomach-filling gift
To offer a road-weary traveler.
You are embarrassed. You are tired.
It is beyond late, too late.
But rather than keeping your sorrow
Hidden, and your secret emptiness,
You go out. Down the steps (shabby slippers and all)
Shrugging the back-door coat over your shoulders,
Through the yard to the neighbors.’
A motion-activated light does its work
Illuminates the developing hole
Above your big toe, as you stare –
Hard – at the cement, at your slippers,
Willing this asking moment to be
– well – less awkward
[Knock, knock]
Again, with urgency
[Knock, Knock]
Jesus taught them in parables, saying,
Imagine this: the neighbor comes.
Gift number four reveals itself:
Neighbor! Neighbor awake! Neighbor listening!
And the words tumble, inelegant, from your lips:
Gift number one: a friend
Gift number two: here!
Good friend, dear friend.
Problem: no food.
Query: Help??
Jesus taught them in parables, saying,
Imagine this: the answer is yes.
The answer is yes
Merely because the question is asked.
It is not a frivolous question.
You had the guts to ask for bread.
You knocked! You woke the neighborhood!
And here we are racking up gifts.
Have you lost count yet?
Gift number one: a friend.
Gift number two: here
Gift number three: the connection!
Gift number four: a neighbor
Gift number five: who gives!
And there is a miracle at work here,
As the gifts rain down from heaven.
The miracle is not that a friend shows up at your door, safely.
It is not that your neighbor hands over the bread,
Despite sleeping children and cautious eyes.
It is not that you, nighttime companions,
celebrated kitchen-table reunion communion
Nor, that you finally, hours later, slept.
No, the miracle is this:
You asked.
Jesus taught them in parables, saying,
Imagine this: you are not alone.
Imagine this: you are not alone.
Really, you are not alone.
This is the gift. This is the good news
the reign of heaven revealed,
Imagine this! You are not alone.
This surfeit of gifts, close and distant relationships,
Midnight wakings and moving feet and asking lips and bread.
A tumbled-out story and moths fluttering in the porch light,
The asker and the asked, the seeker and the sought.
Who is the midnight traveler?
And who is it that wakes?
Whose cupboards are bare?
And just who is knocking on whose door?
He taught them in parables.
It made them think.
Ask, and it will be given.
Seek, and you will find.
Knock, and the door will be opened.
Alleluia!
Amen?
Amen.
Preached at McFarland UCC on July 28, 2013 (Pentecost+10, Year C). Text - Luke 11:1-13
