Simon Birch
There is a lovely little movie called Simon Birch that I like to watch from time to time. It is the story of a little boy, named Simon Birch, who is born with a wasting disease that keeps his body small, like a dwarf, (and perhaps like St. Paul – some believe he also suffered from such a disease), and brings with it some predictable health problems. Simon is born to a family of stone cutters in a little town on the coast of Maine. Since my father’s family also comes from such a place, the environment of the movie is familiar to me, a small town in Maine. And it is set in the 1960s, which is also when I was a child, so the pictures of small-town life in Maine are oh-so-familiar.
But it’s not that really. It is the deeper truths that this movie reveals that really speak to me, and that’s the reason I watch it over and over and every time I see something new in it.
Simon’s parents are stone cutters in a stone cutting town. Think about stone. It is hard, it is seemingly impenetrable. It is useful, and it is also hard to break it up into pieces that can be useful. When we first come to some knowledge of truth, it is like this. We know it is useful, but we have a hard time getting it. The Ten Commandments are like this. They originally came on tablets of stone. The most literal level of their meaning is useful to people who are trying to live together in peace. But there are other levels of truth in the Ten Commandments, and to see these, we have to be able to break up the stone of our own hard-heartedness. Jesus took the Ten Commandments on a deeper level of truth – he told us to be aware of how we treat one another in the invisible realm of our thoughts and emotional swings. Do we murder there? Do we covet there? Do we bear false witness in our thoughts about other people – in other words, do we judge them unfairly, criticize them, and refuse to see the good that is there along with what we deem to be bad? Jesus knew our personality structure – he knew all about us, and he knew that we do all these things. So he spoke directly to his disciples about this, because he figured that they were with him because they were willing to see this in themselves.
Simon is like one of those disciples – he really wants to learn. He has a hunger for God. He is not afraid to see his own inner world clearly. He knows that he has negative things going on in there. And he also knows that God is calling him to something higher. He wants to serve God with all his being, and he wants help in finding out how he can get past the inner obstacles, his fears, his resentments, and be able to do this.
So, he goes to church – to an Episcopal Church actually – with his best friend, whose mother comes to pick him up each Sunday.
In church, he is always in trouble. He doesn’t follow the rule – the rule is to pretend that you are already following God. The rule is to confuse an outward life of respectability with a true following of God. But Simon is barred from leading this life of pretense by his obvious disease. Like the people who flocked to Jesus and received his teaching with enthusiasm, Simon is an outcast already. He can’t pretend to be other than he is. So he says what is on his mind – and sometimes his words are quite prophetic, and upsetting to the fragile pretense that protects us all from inner awareness of our own spiritual ‘dis-ease.’
Simon has the sense that behind the façade, there are treasures hidden in the church like precious stones of truth. He is seeking them out, and he also objects to false leads. During one Sunday time of announcements when there is a great deal of talk about the coffee hour, Simon shoots off his mouth: Coffee hour is not a sacrament! Jesus never said anything about coffee and donuts!
He gets in trouble for this, of course.
But part of getting in trouble for him is trying to get to the inside man – the rector – whom he believes must have some insight into deeper truth since he is the spiritual leader of the congregation. So after getting into trouble in Sunday School yet again, the teacher sends him to the rector’s office, and Simon can hardly contain himself. As the rector is sternly reprimanding him for upsetting his Sunday School teacher, Simon apologizes and then seizes the moment to ask his question: Does God have a purpose for us?
The rector is a bit perplexed. His own life is aimless. He does not seem to be impelled by a sense of deep meaning or even real faith in God. Like most of us, he is just going through the motions so much of the time, that it has gotten to be a habit. He has stopped asking questions that the small mind cannot answer.
But Simon persists. “I believe God has a purpose for my life,” he says. “There is something he means for me to do. I just don’t know what it is.” And this is the crux of it, this is the heart of the matter.
“Simon, Simon, faith is good, but let’s not get carried away,” says the priest in resignation.
And this is the problem. Resignation and reconciliation are not the same things. By Baptism we are called to the new ministry of reconciliation, not the old ministry of resignation. Baptism calls us to new life and this sets up a conflict with the old person in there who wants to keep it all just as it is. Faith is meant to carry us away. Faith is to transform us. Baptism is not a rite of passage – it is an initiation into an utterly new level of Being, a transformed state of living. It makes all things new. It is to carry us away. The new ministry of reconciliation is important – we must reconcile the old with the new by lifting it to a higher state of consciousness. Resignation would keep us in the old prison of habit. Reconciliation requires that we change.
And Simon’s question is the right one – how do we do this? How do we seek and serve God? How?
One of the many paradoxical things I’ve had to come to understand (however dimly) in this journey of faith is this: I have to go against what is within me and wanting to just stay the same – and for this reason I have to resist the impulse to say “no” to new life. Instead, I have to say yes whenever the call comes.
The more I say yes, the more the call to the new and unknown comes to me. The more I say yes, the more work there is to do. The more I say yes, the more Christ can empower me with grace to try to follow him. But the yes I have to say is not to what “I want”, the yes is to whatever I am being asked to do, whether I want to do it or not. And very often, the call comes and this personality does not want to do it in the least – wants no part of it, can see all the trouble it will bring, and the hard, hard work, and this personality wants very much to say “no.”
I remember once in North Station in Boston I needed to buy a train ticket for a train leaving in 10 minutes. There was one man sitting behind the ticket counter. I went up and he refused to speak to me, kept turning his head, and wouldn’t look at me. I kept persisting because I needed that ticket. He finally said, “Look, union rules, I’m on 15 minute break, no tickets.”
If you have ever gone seeking you know that it is a hard thing to find people who will help. Most of us are busy with some other agenda, and we can’t even pay attention. It’s “union rules” or “that’s not in my job description,” or “I’m on vacation,” or “the game is on in 5 minutes,” or some such thing. Our personalities are very busy trying to get more of what they like and less of what they don’t like. Based upon that thinking, there are a million reasons to say no when a call comes and only one reason to say yes, but that one reason is why we are here – for the love of God.
So let me tell you about three calls that I’ve heard, and that I’ve said yes to, despite the strong impulses in this personality to say no.
First, there is one that has danced around the edges of my awareness for a long time – it is the sense that we are called to offer classes and services with and for our larger community in Carroll County. And a concrete way of doing that revealed itself last fall with weekday classes for children. After this lead to 12 baptisms at Easter, it seems there is a call to expand this effort. A group of us are meeting April 23 to begin envisioning how to use our facilities more effectively as a school, to offer all sorts of classes with and for the community, to be of service.
Second, out of the blue two weeks ago, came a call from a young man who wants to support the creation of a children’s home in Carroll County – this was an incredibly generous impulse. And yes, creating a children’s home in the U.S. is about the most complicated thing you could ever envision doing. But nonetheless, say yes and keep working, learn more, see what works, keep trying, best effort. A group of us are meeting April 30 and exploring this idea more, and I’m learning so much about the needs of children in Carroll County, meeting some amazing people who work in this area. I’m not doing it because it was on my agenda – I just had to say yes when the call came. I think that something will happen here, what the project will be, I don’t know, who, what, how? I don’t know. But let’s keep working on it.
And third, a group of people met with me last week with the strong desire to put together mission projects in the third world that will help hungry children. They are willing to take money from their own family budgets to help those who have no clean water, no food, no clothing. They are willing to take that precious 2 – 4 weeks of annual vacation and go work in the third world. With that kind of willingness, things can happen.
Thomas had to go back to the source of Love to know that it was real. He had to see for himself that Christ was stronger in the power of Love than ever, despite his crucifixion, despite all that he had suffered, he was not full of fear, resentment, defeat, resignation, or condemnation. Christ’s love is still the realest thing around – and seeking to serve such a Master is the best thing we can do with our little lives. We won’t find fulfillment anywhere else.
So yes, yes, yes, let’s jump into the waters of Baptism – let’s allow ourselves to be lead into new life, beyond what we like or dislike to the one that loves us beyond all imagining, the one who loves for real and in the face of harsh realities – Jesus Christ.
The Rev. Edie Bird
April 15, 2007
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