Door Buster Bargain

Preached at
Prescott Memorial Baptist Church
March 11,2012

I Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

They are doing it again. The trees are leafing and budding. Over and over again- the trees are willing to give new life a chance.

Let’s do something together… Feel your feet on the floor. Feel the promise of the floor to hold your feet down. Realize with me how easy it is for us to take gravity for granted. Not one of us has worried since we came into this sanctuary that our feet might float up away from the floor and leave our heads dangling down from the ceiling. Take a deep breath. Fill your lungs. Let it out. Take another deep breath and let your shoulders drop. Let them relax. Notice how you are breathing, taking deep breaths and you are not at all worried about whether or not there will be enough oxygen in this sanctuary for you and for all of us while we worship together. There are some things we trust, some things that surround us in such abundance that we fail to appreciate them at all. Total bargains too. Gravity and oxygen are free.

We’ve been taught to value what money can buy. When the Twin Towers fell in NYC and our nation stood in despair, grief and confusion we were told to go shopping. It was labeled as patriotic to spend money. We shop—therefore we are... true patriots?

Because we're convinced there’s a limited amount of wealth in the world we have also been convinced there is an indisputable scarcity of all things valuable and meaningful. There’s not enough of anything for all of us to have what we want, what we need. So, because we trust in the religion of never enough, we work longer hours and worship the gods of consumption. It’s what our culture is good at—consuming.

Our colleges and universities no longer teach students to think. Instead the students are fed information. They expect to be handed information that will land them a career that will earn enough money to pay back all the loans they took out to be fed information. Money makes our consumer operated world go round.

Our institutions and systems encourage us to trust in scarcity. We admire those who get more wealthy than the rest of us. This is how we got into the banking crisis and the financial meltdown. We see the wealthiest consumers among us as heroes. The banks and bankers are above being held accountable. And so we bail them out even after they have reached in our pockets and stolen millions from us. We reward them with bonuses. They are the clear winners in a consumer society.

But every once in a while we hear about something different. Every once in a while we meet people who are motivated by something other than money. We read about cultures where people, relationships and nature itself are valued above all else. We have heard stories about groups of people foolish enough to trust that there is always enough of what really counts in life.

About twenty-two miles northwest of the city of St Francisville, Louisiana is Angola Prison. It’s a state prison for men who have been sentenced for life. Murderers, thieves and violent offenders of every kind live behind the walls of this legendary prison. The annual Angola Rodeo has made the place famous as have the crimes committed inside the prison. The men who live in Angola wear t-shirts that read: Angola ain’t no place to be. And sadly the men in Angola do not expect to get out or go home. Angola is their home. The inmates there are family for each other.

Burl Cain, a huge man with thick white hair, is the warden. He realized about ten years ago that the men in his prison were aging, getting sick and dying. He suggested that the prison open up a hospice program, a way for inmates to die with dignity, a way for men to avoid dying alone. Warden Cain suggested that the inmates be trained to provide hospice care to their dying brothers. And so the program began.

The actor, Forest Whitaker, has made a documentary that tells the story of the Angola hospice. The film is called “Serving Life.” Four new hospice volunteers are interviewed for the program as the film opens.

Ratliff, a tall African American man with wide boney shoulders once killed a man during a drug deal gone bad. The team of hospice professionals who sat at a table in front of Ratliff questioned him. “Have you ever lost anyone yourself?”

Ratliff looks up at the ceiling, remembering. “My mother.”

There is kindness in the nurse’s voice as she asks the man, “How did you handle that loss?"

“Not well.” Ratliff scratches his head and rubs his chin. “I still feel like she’s with me, you know? And I guess I wanna be part of this program to help somebody out, show my mother I ain’t all bad.”

The film shows four new volunteers going through rigorous training by other inmates and health care providers. They work beside their mentors. Then they get their first patients. We watch as they make beds with hospital corners, change diapers, dress bed sore wounds, hold the hand of dying men and watch through tears for the last breath. Ratliff has been a tough guy and yet this hospice work calls for courage more authentic than anything he has previously found inside himself.

Each hospice patient gets a quilt. Steve, serving time for first degree murder, has developed skill as a quilter. The other men assist Steve with piecing the quilt together. They have flowers, butterflies on them. The name of the man who is dying is sewn on the quilt. The volunteers present each hospice patient with his own quilt as he dies, keeping him warm. And that quilt is also used to cover the man’s casket as it is rolled out of the prison and down the hill to the cemetery.

Kevin, who has lung cancer, is filmed as he dies surrounded by hospice volunteers, men who care for Kevin tenderly, lovingly, reassuring him that he is not alone and that all is well on earth and in heaven. They lay his quilt across him and hold his hand as he fades away and breaks free from his prison life.

Ratliff reflects: “It gets hard, just watching a man wither away like that. But you got to be there anyway. They say hospice is about dying with dignity but I think hospice is helping us learn to live with love.”

The warden walks though the cemetery filled with white wooden crosses and he speaks of Kevin and his death. “He did a terrible crime, no doubt about that. But that’s not something we can change. The crime is done, history. This hospice program sets an example for how to live our lives now, giving back and making a difference for somebody else.”

There’s a light inside the sanctuary of each one of us. Caring for each other makes that light burn brighter. Murderers. Thieves. Violent offenders put away for a life time have found new light and life within themselves by giving themselves to others. It costs them nothing. Not a dime is exchanged. It’s something altogether different than what our culture would have us value.

We are the temples of God’s love. Our bodies, our time, our passions, our energies are the places where the light of God's love lives.

There are some things we can trust and depend upon. There is enough air for us to breathe. Gravity will hold our feet on the floor. It may sound foolish but we can trust that there is enough in this world for everyone to be satisfied. We don’t have to depend on the marketplace in order to live a rich and full life.

According to Peter Block and John McKnight who wrote The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods, the competent community focuses on the gifts of its members, nurtures relationships, serves others and offers hospitality to strangers. In the midst of these practices the community experiences an abundance of all that really makes life worth living. And that is the real door buster bargain.

Jesus went into the temple at Jerusalem and drove out the merchants, turned over the tables and poured out the money. “Stop!” he ordered, “Stop making my Father’s house a market place.” Stop cheapening this rich life you’ve been given by making everything a commodity that can be bought and sold.

They are doing it again. The trees are leafing and budding. Over and over again- the trees are willing to give new life a chance. Such foolishness is the wisdom of God among us.

Amen