Reading the End of the Novel First?

"He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’ " Mark 4: 26-29

I can't stand transitions. I like beginnings, and I'm so-so with endings, but I get real impatient in the middle, the getting from here to there. Seriously, I'm one of those sinful people who usually reads the end of the novel shortly after beginning it. It's a terrible habit, very frowned upon in society. I usually do read the whole novel, but it helps me be able to put the book down for a few seconds if I know where the thing is going.

Keith, Lucas, and I are sitting right in the center of a transition right now, as we finish out our year-long internship here in Monroe, and wait as whatever what God has for us next unfolds. And it has been driving me batty!

I am reading another young adult fantasy novel from the library, which I really like: Graceling, by Kristin Cashore. I must admit that I skipped to the ending on this one, because I couldn't put it down otherwise, and it's hard to read straight through anything in my life, with a 21-month-old like Lucas, a dog like Billy, and a husband like Keith! Heh heh. But it is a great book, a really good story, and now as I read it cover-to-cover the way I'm supposed to, I'm realizing that one of the beauties of this book is the way Cashore develops the relationship between the two main characters. And that in skipping ahead, I missed out on the tensions and flow of that development.

And then it dawned on me how much I try to do this in my life. I want so bad to know the "end" of the story, to rush through the middle so I won't be held in suspense. But here I am, thirty-three years old, with a toddler and just really getting started in a vocation that it will take me a lifetime to master in any real way. And so, I'm right in the middle of everything! My whole life is suspense!

So I guess I'd better learn to appreciate it somehow, for the wondrous mystery that it is. This morning, looking at the daily lectionary, the above parable from Mark's Gospel came up, and I heard it in a new way. The farmer doesn't know how the seed sprouts, and the earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain. The development of the plant is a mystery, but it is an important mystery, an unfolding which has to happen for the plant to grow to fruition. But the exciting thing is watching how it happens.

It's not just that it's worth waiting for the mystery to unfold, but the joy in life is watching and appreciating exactly how that will happen, bit by bit, turn by turn.

Saint Family Reunion

Last weekend Lucas and I were attending the Saint Family Reunion in Ohio. Some of you may not know it, but I was already a half “Saint” before I was ever baptized. You see, my mother’s maiden name was capital-“S” Saint, as she is the daughter of James Giles Saint the Third (who was, incidentally, a Presbyterian minister—after all, what would you do with a last name like “Saint”?). So my genetic half-Sainthood doesn’t mean I’m already halfway through the process of sanctification. Though it does mean that, yes, our family theme song is “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

At any rate, four branches of the Saint family gathered together at the reunion last week. Now, when I told one of the local church members about this during our time at the Food Bank this week, he laughed and said, “If my family had a reunion, you’d need a SWAT team there to keep the peace!” Some of you might have a similar feeling about getting together with your extended family. Lots of old arguments, hard feelings, and irreconcilable differences coming together over dinner, not something many of us enjoy.

But what was remarkable was how peaceful our family reunion was, as I imagine these things are as present in our extended family as in anyone else’s. We had the whole gamut of political and theological views represented in our gathering. We had all ages of people and many kinds of lifestyles. We had Salvation Army officers, global missionaries, multiple Presbyterian ministers, Unitarian Universalists, and I'm sure some "spiritual but not religious" thrown in for good measure.

I think the oldest was my great Uncle Bill, who is probably in his late eighties. He was accompanied by his caregiver, his gynecologist son John, who wore scrubs all weekend and told a dirty joke I won’t repeat here. Half the family laughed at it and half of them didn’t understand it. We had loquacious cousin Aland, free-spirited teacher Amari, tatooed Suzanne, and shy psychology student, Jenny. Some of us were single parents of toddlers, and some of us, like me, in that role for the weekend, were trying to figure out how they manage it on a day to day basis! We had strong-armed Aunt Dottie, who if you stretch her, reaches 5 feet, marshalling all of us together for a family picture. It was something to see.

One of the more remarkable moments was during our Sunday morning family worship service. My sisters, Julie and Beth, and I had been asked to lead the group in singing "In My Life, Lord, Be Glorified." A pretty simple tune, in which you can substitute various phrases: "in our church" or "in this world" or whatever. With the upcoming Sunday lectionary in my mind, upon which I am currently trying to write a sermon (II Samuel 7: 1-14a and Ephesians 2:19-22) I asked the group to sing "In this house, Lord, Be Glorified." It was lovely to see and hear all of these wonderful people, in all their variety, who are all family in some way, who are all "saints" in some way, singing this song together.

The Ephesians passage says something about this:

"So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God."

God reunited the Saints, and God continues over and over again, to reunite all the saints, as people of all different kinds come together in community, worshipping and inviting God to be glorified in their midst.