Christ the King Sunday, November 26, 2017, St Martin’s Episcopal
Church by Annette Fricke
Let’s have a
little fun. A friend of mine from high
school English class sent me a ‘lost’ English word. The word is ‘Mamamouchi’
and it is a delight to say out loud, and has an equally delectable meaning:
‘someone who believes themselves more important than they really are’.[1]
We have all met such people in our lives as well as those who have really
contributed to our well-being without bragging about it to the whole world.
Christians are not called to be a mamamouchi, but rather to be among the weak
and humble.
What does it mean to enter the Kingdom of God? How is it that relating
to the weak and humble are linked to entering the Kingdom of God? One answer might be that one who has been a
member of the church here on earth has died and gone to heaven. That was something I was taught as a child
and that somehow there is a direction we go when we die and it is up. The problem with that thinking is that it
talks about what happens later, not now.
The other problem is that what really happens in the afterlife may have
no resemblance to daily living. I think
it is a misinterpretation of the gospel to think that this life-long hope in
the resurrection is somehow not realized until we die and yet we continue to baptize
and confirm and take Eucharist weekly, all of which come with the promise of entering
the kingdom.
Just this past week, early on the morning of Thanksgiving, after
plans were made to spend it with my girlfriend from first grade, her sister and
their mom, I received the sad news that my second mom had died at 3 am. Mostly, I thought about her generosity to
me. I travelled with her family to
Spokane. I played at her house. She was
my Camp Fire Girls’ leader. She helped me learn how to sew clothes. It seems
that when we are giving to others, we are most alive as persons, dispensers of
God’s love as we live out our callings, our God-given vocations. It is not so much what happens to people when
they die as it is what happens when we are alive. It is common to not realize God’s work in our
lives through others till we reflect on it days to years afterwards. Yet we
also must take care of ourselves as much as we are able, knowing that special
people in our lives will not always be there. Self-care is a good thing as long
as we are aware that being selfish and doing things only for our own gain is
not. A lost English word that comes to
mind is ‘Mamamouchi’, ‘someone who believes themselves more important than they
really are’.[2]
This parable seems to point out that all of our relationships are
important, among believers as well as with people outside of the church.
Indeed, this parable seems to imply that the outsiders will be judged by how
well they treated believers! We are weak
in their sight. We are not the powerful. Throughout the ages, Christians have been
persecuted for their beliefs, ridiculed or ignored. In times past, strong
Christian leaders who defied the Roman Catholic Church were burned at the stake
for their beliefs and declared to be heretics. At other times, it seems like we
all must have something contagious, so others stay away. Helping out the weak
means helping those in our midst as well as those who are not yet believers or
simply do not feel comfortable coming through our doors. Jesus does not appear
as a powerful presence in the world.
Instead, we get from others, “Where is your God? God must be absent or out on a long
journey.” Some still want to believe
that God will show up with a grand entrance back into our history, our
humanity. Instead, every prediction of
Jesus’ return does not happen. We also
sometimes hold on to that idea that God will somehow definitively prove
non-believers wrong. We forget that God
does not work that way. God is not like
that. God is also the weak one. God is the sick one in a hospital bed, the
one incarcerated for life, the one on death row, and the poor, hungry and
thirsty that are struggling to keep themselves and their families alive. God is
the weak as well as the humble giver, loving us far more than we can either
imagine or deserve.
In the days after Thanksgiving, when we are to remember all that God
has given, I offer this poem:
The Gift by Mary Oliver
Be still, my soul, and steadfast.
Earth and heaven both are still watching
though time is draining from the clock
and your walk, that was confident and quick,
has become slow.
So, be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful. That the gift has been given.[3]
Let us go forward into Advent, thankful for what we have and for what
we have in abundance and may we always remember to share with others our
God-given gifts. There is nothing
we can do to earn our way to salvation because it has been freely given and is already
here. Jesus died on the cross to make that possible. We didn’t earn salvation, we
inherited it. We are not called to be a mamamouchi
because it is not us who are great, it is God.
