Henrietta United Church of Christ

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, 29so that no one might boast in the presence of God. 30He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31in order that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."

Sermon:

(Bursts into the back of the sanctuary dressed in an old stocking cap, ratty coat, and disposal company shirt, and interrupts the end of the scripture reading.) Dude! There are a lot of dressed up people in here. Hey, excuse me for interrupting whatever you all do in here, but I just gotta tell somebody who believes in God what just happened while I was picking up trash up in the city. I think you’ll want to know about this. Would that be okay?

(Takes off coat and gives it to a parishioner.) Make sure nobody steals that, okay?

See, I was just workin’ up in the South Plymouth Ave. area. You’d probably call it a tough neighborhood. Well, it’s a tough neighbor for me to work in. When I pick up the trash, I have to stop in front of the house I used to live in before my Ma took off on me when I was 10. I pass alleys I used to get beat up in. I even have to pick up trash for a couple of the bad foster homes I lived in.

Anyway, about 5:00 this morning, me and my buddy Alphonse was busy hoppin’ off the truck, dumping the garbage cans, and hoppin’ back on. Suddenly this guy comes up behind us saying, “Yo! Hold up a minute!” We turn around, and there’s this tall black dude holding up his hand like a Indian or something. Me and Alphonse are like “Whoa”, and we drop our garbage cans and jump back up on the truck. But this guy says, “Don’t be scared. Listen up a minute. I’ve got some news for you. This is going to be the best news you’ll ever hear, and you’re going to be the first to get in on it.”

By this time our driver Max has jumped out of the cab armed with a tire iron he keeps handy for “emergencies.”

“Man, you guys are jumpy,” the black dude half laughs. He’s like totally chill. He holds up both his empty hands, his white teeth all showing in a big smile, and his eyes twinkling in the street light.

“Tonight God has given you guys–and everyone in the world--an awesome gift. Tonight, right here in the city of Rochester, a baby was born who is going to really help change this messed up world around. He is going to speak such truth, mobilize such hope, and inspire such love, that people will mark this very night as the beginning of a great turning from strife towards true peace, where everyone begins to work for the good of everyone else.”

We was all looking at him like, “Yeah, right; somebody let this dude out of the Psych Center before he was fully cooked.”

“This is for real, my friends,” he went on. “There’s an alley behind Monica St. In an abandoned garage back there, you will find a newborn baby wrapped in an old sweatshirt and lying in a cardboard box. Check it out for yourselves. You’ll see. And tell them Gabe Angelo sent you.”

As he slipped away into the night, my brain was thinking about what kind of trap had been set for suckers in that abandoned garage. But it was weird. Just listening to that guy talk had put me at ease.

Alphonse said, “I’ve seen that dude before. One night before you guys knew me, I was having the worst night of my life. I had lost my job, my girl, my sobriety, and then I got evicted. I was in a hole so deep I didn’t know which end was up. So I stole some money and bought me a bag of heroin. At least I would leave this world with a good buzz. I was in an alley ready to shoot up everything I had. And that same dude sat down on the ground with me. He said the same thing: don’t be scared. And he started asking me what was goin’ on. After I spilled my guts, he helped me realize that my life was like a gift still waiting to be unwrapped. I still had something important to live for. He persuaded me to trust my Higher Power to help me find my way back to life one step at a time. By the time he walked away I was actually feeling hope flowing through me. I got back into AA and started putting my life back together. Gabe Angelo is different, all right. But he ain’t a fruitcake.”

“Listen guys,” Max said, “you might think this is whacked, but you know that abandoned garage he was talking about? Well, I was having a dream about a garage like that when the alarm went off this morning. It was just an old ramshackle garage, but it had a glow of light and peace I could feel all the way into my soul. How do you figure that?”

I felt a shiver run up my spine, and something like a lump in my throat. “Maybe we should check it out,” I almost whispered. “I’m in,” Alphonso said. Max said, “We’ll have my tire iron, in case this is a setup.”

We all climbed into the cab and found the alley that runs for just a block behind Monica St., right behind the women’s shelter. Max turned on the high beams, and stopped at a garage that looked like I used to feel after a week of drugging. He turned off the lights. “Hmmm, ain’t no light coming out of it now, ‘cept I guess maybe a candle flame,” he said. He switched the lights back on.” Then he looked at me. “Jimbo, why don’t you take this tire iron and peek into that broken window. If you smell trouble, jump back in and I’ll see if this big mama can lay rubber.”

I was next to the door, so what could I say? I sauntered over like a wasn’t scared of nothing, but I was holdin’ that tire iron like a pair of vice grips. When I looked through the window, somebody was looking out at me! It was a man with a Hispanic looking mustache.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“What’s going on in there?” I asked as I tried to look past his head. I could make out what looked like a woman behind the candle. Then I heard it. I heard a baby making baby noises!

“Alphonse! Max! There is a baby in here! Gabe wasn’t jivin!”

“Gabe?!” the man said. “Gabe who?”

“Gabe Angelo. He said to tell you he sent us.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“We was just out picking up the garbage,” I told him, “and Gabe comes up to us and says he’s got good news for us, that a baby was born in an abandoned garage who is a gift from God–to everyone–us included!”

With that, the man with a mustache quickly opened the side door and motioned for all of us to come in. We all paused at the door, quickly casing the joint. “It’s just me and Marie here and the baby. Tell us everything Gabe said.”

I told him how Gabe told us that this kid was going to get so much truth and hope and love going in this world that things would start turning from strife to peace and from darkness to light.

He and the girl looked at each other. The man’s chin started to tremble, and the candle light caught the tears welling up in the girl’s eyes. The man sat down beside her and drew her close and she laid her head on his shoulder. They both started crying quietly. I don’t know why, but a tear or two welled up in my eyes as we quietly sat down and looked at the baby, wrapped up in a sweatshirt and sleeping in an old Valvoline box.

Marie wiped her face with her sleeve, looked us over, and started talking. “I met Gabe a few months ago when things were looking really, really bad. My parents own a farm in Orleans County. Jose here came through with some other migrants every spring to help with the farm work. It’s lonely out there in the country, and when I was going through my tomboy stage Jose taught me to play soccer and how to pitch. When I got a little older, we’d just talk. He has an understanding heart. He knows a lot about loneliness, and a lot about a lot of things I never learned at home. My parents did not like me hanging out with him, but we’d find ways to sneak off together. Well, I ended up getting pregnant. I still don’t understand how it could have happened. We never actually really did it. Jose was sure I must have been with somebody else. But it couldn’t have been anybody else’s.

“When I finally got up the courage to tell my parents I was pregnant, they really hit the roof. They said that shaming the family by getting pregnant was bad enough, but having a half Mexican kid in the family was totally out of the question. They wanted me to have an abortion right away. My parents saw this baby as an inconvenient growth in me. But I saw it as a life, a kind of a miracle in a way. I can’t explain it, but I felt deep inside me that God must have a plan for this miracle baby. How could we just get rid of it like it was nothing?

“My dad fired Jose and kicked him out of the migrant barracks. Jose felt really hurt by my dad and by me. He didn’t even say goodbye or say where he was going.

My parents said that if I threw my life away and had this child, don’t expect them to help pay for college or support me in the future. They just wouldn’t quit pushing me.

“So I ran away to my mom’s cousin Liz’s house here in Rochester. When my parents found out about it, they persuaded Liz that what I needed was “tough love,” so Liz told me I couldn’t stay there any more and told me I would need to go back home with my parents. So I took my bag and walked out, and went to Highland Park. I was sitting on a bench, feeling huge waves of lostness and aloneness washing away all my faith and hope. That’s when I met Gabe. He just sat down, got me to pour out all my pain, and helped me find that feeling deep inside me that there was a higher plan in this somehow. He said I didn’t have to understand it. All I had to do was not be afraid of the future, and trust God to bring good out of what seemed so bad right now. That’s when I began praying, ‘Let me be an instrument of your will.’

“I was living on the street and in shelters, trying to hold onto this faith. That’s when I met up with Jose again, at the Salem Soup Kitchen.”

Then Jose pipes up, “Yeah! You can’t believe how glad I was to see her! After I left Marie’s farm and hitched a ride to Rochester, I had a really powerful dream. There was this light filled with love and peace, telling me that the baby Marie was carrying was an important part of God’s plan. God needed me to help her raise the child. So I said Okay in the dream. But when I woke up, easier said than done. I found out that Marie had run away to Rochester, but I had no idea how to find her. I was living day to day, working where people wouldn’t ask to see any papers, just praying every morning that if I stayed in Rochester, God would help me find Marie. And then there she was, sitting at a table in the soup kitchen, with her belly out to here.

“To make a long story short, we’ve been living on the streets ever since, sometimes in shelters but sometimes there’s no room or you’ve used up your time with them. In the meantime, Marie’s getting bigger and bigger. Last night we were out in the cold because all the shelters were full, and Marie’s pains started. We were afraid to go to a hospital, because if they start asking questions about me, I could end up getting arrested as an illegal alien and get deported. And if they start asking questions about Marie, they could take the baby away because she’s homeless. I had sometimes stayed in this garage when Marie was in the shelter, so we decided to make the best of it in here. I had seen what to do in the migrant camps before, so I helped her as best as I could, and the baby came out okay. But I tell you something. It was very, very hard to hold onto the faith that God had some kind of special plan for this baby with a start like this. You guys showing up the way you did really helps.”

“It helps a lot,” Marie nodded, as she and Jose squeezed each other again. Thanks so much for coming.”

“Sure,” I said, “but I’m still having trouble with this. Somebody tell me why God would allow His special child to be born to a homeless girl and an illegal immigrant in a cold, abandoned garage? What kind of Almighty God would do that?!”

Everyone fell silent except the baby, who was now starting to cry. Marie picked him up, tucked him under her sweatshirt and began to nurse him.

Jose said, “Maybe a God who doesn’t have to be all high and mighty would plan it that way. Maybe God knows that the best way to reach us without our being afraid of Him is to get down where we are in our struggles and our suffering, and be with us where we feel so powerless.”

Alphonse said, “A little like Gabe does, maybe.”

“Well okay,” Max said, “but how’s that going to change anything–make there be real peace and get everybody working together for what’s good for everybody.”

Marie said, “I don’t know for sure, but maybe it’s like this. This baby needs Jose and me to feed him, protect him and take care of him. Maybe one of you guys might, say, get him some diapers, and somebody else might be moved to get something for him to wear and a blanket. If we love this baby and invest ourselves in him, he’ll grow up to show us how to create a better world and inspire us to do our part. But even then he’ll need us to help him. See, the Almighty God can’t sit on His throne and command that there be peace on earth, or that everyone has enough to live on, or that we take care of His creation. If we’re ever going to have a world that really works for everybody, ordinary people like us will have to believe in that plan, and we will have to invest our lives in it and help it grow. We have to be partners with God, like Jose and I are trying to learn how to be.”

“But why did we get chosen to be in on this?” I asked. “Why three garbage men that don’t even go to church, and never get any respect from anybody?”

Max said, “Maybe it’s God’s way of saying, no matter who you are and how low you feel, you can be part of God’s plan.”

“Max,” I said, “I never heard anything come out of your mouth but stuff about beer, the Bills and babes. And I ain’t never said this word before, but I say Amen! We really are a part of God’s plan. Gentlemen, I think we got a little shopping to do.”

And we jumped in the truck and made a very unauthorized trip to Wal-Mart. Max said, “I’ll get some food.” Alphonse said, “I’ll cover the diapers.” And can you imagine me pickin’ out baby clothes?! We dropped off our gifts, and there was smiles and hugs and tears all around. We finished our trash route, and I just had Alphonse drop me off here on my way home to Stonewood Village.

You know, I ain’t never felt so good in my life. I ain’t a nobody, no matter how people look at me, or how I look at me sometimes. God has a plan for this world–to turn it around and make it something beautiful, a place that gives life and hope and meaning to everybody. But God needs help–my help, your help–everybody’s help. We can do this together, because God’s in this with us.

To think that I learned all this from a baby lying in a cardboard box. Oh, did I tell you the baby’s name? Manuel. It means “God’s with us.” God is with us! Halleluia! Amen!