5 Epiphany - Annie's story

5 Epiphany Year A
February 12, 2017

I have the privilege this past Thursday of hosting the monthly meeting of the Episcopal clergy in the region.   I really enjoy those meetings because it’s important for us to be together and to share in community.   It’s also great to hear the successes my colleagues are enjoying as well as sharing in our common frustrations.  While we were gathering and greeting each other, my friend Emily walked into our kitchen, and a few minutes later said, “Hey, Tracey, I know where this cross came from…”  She was referring to this crocheted cross which had been hanging outside the sacristy… “Oh yeah? Tell me about it” I said.  I admitted I knew nothing about the origins of the cross, and that I think it has been hanging on that hook the whole time I have been here.

    Emily told me that she had one just like it, as did the Deacon at St. Christopher’s.  Apparently, there are also a few at St. Mary’s Edmond.  There were crocheted by a woman named Annie.  She was a parishioner at St. Mary’s who was baptized there one Easter… Annie was mostly homeless and wandered around a bit, living with someone who was abusive to her and who sponged off of her meager Social Security.  She ended up in Midwest City for a while and gave our some of her crosses… she also sold other things she made to have extra money.  She went back to Edmond, and there was some work done to get her a real apartment.  As is often the case with folks like Annie, she ended up refusing, preferring her life on the streets.  I don’t know that anyone knows why… I also don’t know how one of her crosses made it here.  I assume she came here a few times somewhere in her journey to and from St. Mary’s.   She continued to be involved at St. Mary’s even when she was told that they couldn’t support her need for motel rooms.  Annie died suddenly while walking along in Edmond where lots of shopkeepers apparently knew her.  St. Mary’s claimed her body when no one else would and held a memorial service for her....

    Today we hear more of Jesus’ sermon on the mount… he tells his disciples that they are salt of the earth, the light of the world… What do you think of when you hear that someone is “salt of the earth”?  The people that Jesus was teaching that day would have been pretty simple people, fishermen and other folks who worked with their hands, people who probably lived difficult lives when the empire was around and making things difficult; but otherwise good, honest people who longed for a message of hope that would sustain them and those whom they loved…

Jesus certainly wanted to bring a message of hope to them… he also wanted them to BE a message of hope… they are salt… light… they are the ones who are to bring the light into a dark world…

And that is certainly our message too.  Discipleship is not about looking around at others and wondering who is going to do… discipleship is about doing, and doing joyfully.  Annie’s story in many ways is a tragic story and we can sit and talk all day long about her choices and wonder why she would refuse permanent, warm housing… But here’s the thing… it doesn’t matter… and it didn’t even matter when she was still alive.  Those were her choices which she made freely.  Her choices didn’t affect her discipleship.  She was a person who lived a hard life, harder than most of us will ever know for ourselves, at least I hope we never will… and yes… when we try to “help” someone into a better life, sometimes they make decisions that we wouldn’t make… but…

Annie loved the church… it was a place of love, acceptance and kindness. Probably something she didn’t get much of elsewhere.  And Annie, in her way, gave back.  She gave these crosses because it was something she could do to spread light… she knew how important the symbol was… she could crochet… so she used her talent and gifts to give back to the church and it’s people whom she cared about and who helped her to know Jesus… and in her doing so, I think she taught us about Jesus… her simple gifts were and are gifts of light.  I am pretty sure Annie knew the importance of the symbol of the cross as much as any of us do; and certainly, Annie was a broken and frail human being… but guess what… so are all of us; we are all broken in some way; we all have ways in which we make bad choices; none of us gets it right; and yet, even with all of that, Annie didn’t let it stop her from being light…

The sermon on the mount is serious business.  Matthew’s gospel assumes that Jesus is the messiah, the savior in whom the kingdom of God has been brought to earth… the kingdom is not some far of place of rewards when we die… certainly the kingdom’s fullness is only realized at the heavenly banquet… but… it starts here and now… and all of us who claim to be disciples have responsibilities to bring kingdom light into the world… no matter who we are, no matter how we are broken… we all must trust that Jesus is who he says he is, and that he has given us what we need to be light and salt to the world.  None of us will do it quite the same; Annie’s gifts were hers.  She used them because she knew that’s what disciples did.  She took sacred vows at her Easter baptism to be a disciple, and in the simple act of crocheting a cross, I think she succeeded.

You are the light of the world… some days maybe it’s not a very bright light, but it is light nonetheless; it is the light of Christ that we have each been given in our baptism… it is the light that we are to use to help spread the kingdom of God.  And perhaps, when we join our dim light with another’s the light will get even brighter.

There is much tension around us these days… no matter who we are, we are disciples called to bring light into the world; not just to people who agree with us or who look like us, but to everyone we encounter.   That’s how light works.  Our challenge is to figure out what gifts, what light Jesus is asking us to use; and then without fear to act in love to use that light...What gifts are we hiding because we think we are too broken to use them?  May we be the light we are being called to be…. Even a small glow can transform the darkness.  May we be transformed this day so that we might help transform the world around us...