His Name Was Earl

This sermon was heard at The Federated Church on Sunday August 28, 2016, the Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jeremiah 2:4-13
Psalm 81:1, 10-16
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

This is an odd story, as many stories are. Of course if all stories were "normal" there would be no point to recording or telling them. This is the story of someone I met one day at First Presbyterian Church in Marshall, Texas named Earl. I'll let you decide if this story is worth recording and telling.

Early one Wednesday afternoon I had a meeting with my Spiritual Director. According to the Spiritual Director's International Website, Spiritual Directors are folks "who share a commitment to the art of contemplative spiritual compassionate listening." The closest certified Spiritual Director to Weatherford is the Rev. Carol Waters in Clinton.

Spiritual Directors aren’t counselors. They are fellow travelers who listen and ask good questions like a counselor, but their concern is with spiritual health and development instead of mental health. The image they use to describe their work is called The Three Chairs. This description of The Three Chairs Concept comes from their website:

In one chair a seeker sits, desiring a deeper relationship with God, a Higher Power, or Ultimate Reality. In a second chair, a spiritual director listens, inquires, and holds the space for the seeker to encounter the true Spiritual Director in the third chair.

On that Wednesday afternoon, to help me encounter God, he asked me how I had been blessed lately. I talked about my second anniversary at the church (celebrated about ten days earlier) and about other stuff, but he knew there had been so many stresses in my life that sometimes the tiny diamonds of blessings got buried under tons of dung. One comes sprinkled like pixie dust and the other comes dumped from a bucket truck. Ever feel like that? Can I get an "Amen"?

Not long after my Spiritual Director left, a man rang the church doorbell. He was a black man at the door, maybe in his late 20's but looking much older. He told me his name was Earl and he could not read or write; and he sounded like someone who could not read or write. I hate using what we from Kansas called "discouraging words," but it was true. He was dirty. His clothes were in tatters. He looked, moved and sounded like the walking-talking stereotype of an illiterate black man in deep east Texas. God forgive me for this overgeneralization, this stereotype; but then again, this might have been a part of some sort of test. More on that in a couple.

When I answered the door, he said that he was sent over to us from another church because he was looking for some bibles. While he couldn’t read, that was no problem because his mamma could. While he couldn’t read them for himself, he knew some bible stories but he had no idea what they were called or where to find them.

I said "Sure" and headed toward the chapel where there was a surplus of bibles. Georgia, the church secretary, offered to go and get some from the spares stored in the choir room instead. That was perfect. So he came into my study while she went to the choir room for the bibles. I also gave him a Gideon New Testament-Psalms-Proverbs book. He asked for three of those. No problem, there are plenty more where that came from.

He asked me to mark some things for him. No problem. He asked me to mark "that place where it says 'the Lord is my shepherd.'" No problem, the 23rd Psalm coming right up! By this time Georgia got to my office with the other bibles and she started marking them. Then he asked for that story of the guy who "Satan took everything he had but God returned it seven times. "No problem, Job coming right up!”

This is when Georgia told me she had to leave. She had an appointment. No problem, it had been in the works all week. That left us alone, Earl and me, just the two of us.

This is when Earl made a less precise request. He said that he was watching the Trinity Broadcasting Network the other day and they mentioned a scripture "where God brings two people together who have nothing in common, but it blesses them both."

I thought about it for a moment. By this time, I had begun to believe Earl was a soul God placed in my day so I could be blessed, and be a blessing too. Kind of the on the nose about what my Spiritual Director said not twenty minutes earlier.

I told Earl that I didn't know the verse they used on TBN or what they were talking about, but I wanted to share Hebrews 13:2, "Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it." I told him that as much as we were a blessing to him by giving him the bibles, he was a blessing in my life. He was the man I needed to see that day. So I marked it in the bible he handed me and that's when it got weird.

Suddenly, Earl's demeanor completely changed. He stood taller. His eyes became clear. His voice took on a power and command I did not expect. He blessed me. I mean he blessed me, not in some general “you are a blessing in my life” way, he blessed me. I don't know exactly what he said because I was so taken aback that I didn't hear everything he said. What I did hear was, "We won't see each other again for a long time, but we will see each other again," and that's where it got fuzzy again.

As he started to leave he dropped one of the small Gideon testaments, and when it hit the floor, the moment was over. The electricity in the room was gone. His old voice returned, he smiled and said "Whoops."

It's said that the vast majority of people never have a spiritual experience while in church. Well, I had mine that day. I met a man who seemed to shrug off his human facade like I’ll take off this robe after church. He blessed me and told me that we will meet again one day. He spoke with a voice of peace and authority that I haven't ever heard another human being use. Was Earl an angel? Perhaps, I think so. Biblical Greek translates the word we use for “angel” as “messenger” and I got a message.
Does that make me crazy? Well, if I’m crazy, that’s not the reason.

I was asked if I had been blessed lately and not an hour later, there’s a man who in his own way is giving me the message that “God said ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’” Don’t get me wrong, at that moment my life didn’t turn around. Life wasn’t a bowl of cherries. Every moment hasn’t been “happily ever after.” There is struggle, but as much as I have ever felt helpless I have never felt hopeless.

If Earl had walked into most offices, he would have been ushered out as quickly as security could get there. That’s the nature of most offices. Not so in the church, thank God. So it was my good fortune to be blessed that day to offer him a seat and because of that he blessed me.

There was nothing tangible, physical on this earth he could offer me. Nothing. He had nothing, he owned nothing. He was waiting on his mamma to bring back the car. They might have been sleeping in it for all I knew. All he wanted was the Word of God and I had plenty of the printed variety. He wanted some instruction too and so I could offer him the Word of God proclaimed. He had nothing, but he had a lot of it.

So in a way, without intending to, purely because I was living in the moment, I was doing as Jesus commanded in Luke 14:12-14. There was a man in my office who could never repay me. He had nothing to give me; and I didn’t know he had anything I wanted. I was able to have him sit at the table and feed him with the bread of life and give him the living water that satisfies hunger and thirst, the Word of God. By this I was blessed. I was blessed by an angel named Earl.

Come to think about it, maybe those were the verses the folks on TBN were talking about. “God brings two people together who have nothing in common, but it blesses them both?”

After he left, about five minutes later our Worship Leader, a man named Al, came in to pick hymns for Sunday’s worship. I asked him if he saw a black man leaving, either getting into a car or walking away on foot, because I wanted to tell him this story. He said he didn’t. I didn’t think there was any way Earl could make a “quick getaway” and was sure Al would have seen him. No, Earl was gone.

Friends, I keep asking if you have had any experiences like this. Last week’s board meeting included this story and three others from three board members. So that you know, the other six aren’t off the hook, there’s another meeting in two months.

There are so many questions of faith, but here’s one for the people of faith: How have you been blessed? How have you been blessed lately? How does your faith make a difference in your life? As Christians in a world that has a warped view of Christian values, we are like Jesus, we are being carefully watched, and when we live our lives like our faith makes a difference, the world sees. That’s when the world begins to understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s time to show the world the Gospel again.