February 4, 2007: IF THIS IS HOW YOU TREAT YOUR FRIENDS . . .
Isaiah 6:1-13, Luke 5:1-11, Psalm 138
Eileen Parfrey - Springwater Presbyterian Church

Let me tell you a story. Well, maybe two stories, but it's about two women-Cheryl and Janice-whose stories overlap. We could call the story, "Whom shall I send?" after God's question to Isaiah after blowing his socks off by actually showing up in the sanctuary. But the women might object to that title because, like Isaiah and Peter, they eventually responded to God's call with an awareness of their own sin. "Go away from me, Lord, for I am sinful."

"Whom shall I send?" The question every church-raised kid in a certain era heard growing up. The question is not necessarily an easy one to answer. Nor is it necessarily easy to decide what the "right" answer might be. Hearing that question at the end of every visiting missionary worship service, Cheryl thought the answer was, "Me! Me! Send me!" She thought the logical consequence of volunteering after that question was to be sent as a missionary to Africa or China. Until she got older and heard the rest of the story-the part where God gives Isaiah the impossible task of preaching so that people won't listen. What kind of job assignment is that?

Before Cheryl had come to grips with the answer to that question, she had left her "good girl in the church" life. She was right in the middle of her rebellious youth when everyone was marching on Washington to end the Vietnam war. The church struck her as kind of beside the point. "Whom shall I send?" was forgotten in the righteous indignation of working to change the world. Back to the land and reduce, reuse, recycle were more time-consuming than she'd first imagined, and they took up most of her time. When she and her husband wanted to start a family, they were part of a generation breaking out of traditional gender-roles, and so they agreed to alternate years earning a living and staying home with the kids. When her career in banking seemed more promising than his waiting for the draft, alternate years in the workforce and as homemaker went by the way-side. "Whom shall I send?" meant sent to grad school in banking, sent up the bank's corporate ladder. Later, "Whom shall I send?" meant learning about Downs Syndrome when their second child was born and, as is often the case with families who have children with disabilities, how to be a single parent when the marriage broke up.

"Whom shall I send?" began to mean parent meetings at the older child's school and advocacy for the younger child's education. There she met folks from the local Presbyterian church doing the same thing: advocating for children with disabilities. Amazingly, none of these folks had children with disabilities, but including children with cognitive and physical challenges in the mainstream of life was a matter of faith for them. And not just talking about it or writing letters, these Presbyterians built relationships with the kids, supported the parents in practical ways, until finally these Presbyterians were able to do something not even her parents had been able to do: they convinced Cheryl to get over her, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful person." Cheryl went back to church.

Janice, on the other hand, never left the "good girl in the church" life. For her, "Whom shall I send?" had meant serving as a Mission Volunteer with the PCUSA in the Philippines. When she came back to the US, she and her college sweetheart got married. "Whom shall I send?" got answered as she was sent cross-country to follow her husband's upwardly mobile career. At least it wasn't a Third World country, she thought, as she found them a place to live and worship and have their babies. She stayed good, stayed home, and stayed suburban. Not much sending there, but then, her depression was keeping her in place until finally it wouldn't stay in the kitchen drawer any longer. The knife she took to her left arm meant "Whom shall I send?" got answered as "me-to the psych ward" while she fought off her demons.

Well-meaning friends told her, "If you were only right with Jesus you wouldn't be depressed." "Whom shall I send?" began to feel like "sent away from the church." But she stayed as her pastor simply said, "Welcome to the human race." Part of getting well meant the emotional/cognitive equivalent of Isaiah's burning coal on her lips. "Woe is me! I'm a person of unclean lips!" began to look like grace, and she stayed put. Her local NAMI chapter (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) invited her to be involved in a program called, "In Our Own Voices," telling her story of struggle with mental illness. When churches asked for a speaker and NAMI asked, "Whom shall we send?" Janice was the one who went.

This is where Cheryl and Janice finally met. Two women, acutely aware of their own checkered pasts, two women who had lost hearing God's voice in the question, "Whom shall I send?" They met in an adult Sunday School class in that church, connecting over their favorite childhood Bible verse, "Whom shall I send?" and their eager childish response, "Me! Me! Send me!" Connecting over their adult realization that the mature response to that question is, "Woe because of my sin! Woe! Because I am only human." Knowing that "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful person" is grace because they had tried everything else in their power, and it didn't work. Each woman had worked herself into an emotional break down or a broken marriage and finally discovered the grace in empty hands and her acknowledgment of her humanity.

The question from the very beginning always was, "Whom shall I send?" The answer from the very beginning always was, "Me! Me! Send me!" All the difference in the world is in what each woman thought was being sent. It wasn't in changing the world or in Third World mission work. Those were faithful responses. But the coming of God's kingdom, is more about accomplishing ordinary things in extraordinary ways than it is in strength or miracles. Not walking on water, but in bringing clean water to thirsty people. Not parting the waters of the sea, but in using water responsibly as a resource. Not turning water into wine, but in living into water promises. You remember water promises, don't you? The promises we make as the water is poured over our heads, the promises we make to just try to be like Jesus. To bring comfort to the grieving, to give relief to the poor, to defend the kids with disabilities, to be fair employers, to not gossip, to give your boss the full day of work, to live simply so that others may simply live. Little, ordinary things. These are the ways we answer God's question, "Whom shall I send?" Sure, we say, "Me! Me! Send me!" And, like Peter and the other fishermen, we are sent back to fishing. Or whatever the rest of our week is like. But it's a different kind of fishing, a different kind of ordinary, because we ourselves are different. Here I am; send me.