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Being Crazy
Bishop Michael Curry of North Caroline spoke these words: “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who actually do. Jesus was crazy and said, ‘Follow me and be crazy - crazy enough to love when it is easier to hate, to forgive when you really don’t want to, to care when it is easier to care less.” What a relief to hear someone else felt this way. It’s crazy to want to implement what Jesus told us to do.
 Our religion/faith/creed has gotten so complicated, so divisive, so political, so exclusive, so violent and so filled with opinion that we tell a Jesus story that we think we can live with, we can buy, in order to ignore the truths of what He actually said, what He charged us to do, and what He actually did. On the contrary we’ve become judges, gate keepers. You can do this. You cannot do this. You are ok. You are not. You can come in the door. You aren’t clean enough.
In the true gospels, I do not see Jesus dealing with anyone in this way. He said ANYBODY - He did not say a select few - not just the holy pilgrims or the upright citizens , not just the downlow citizens, or the rich or the poor, the 99 per cent or the one per cent, not just goodie-goodies, but also the troubled ones locked in doubt or prisons, lost in drugs and alcohol - He said ANYBODY who believes in Him and who WANTS to believe in him is part of His crowd. Just say His name and you are IN. You and you and you and you and me. It does not matter what people think of us. What matters is how we relate to Jesus in our heart, soul, lives. As Bishop Curry said, we Jesus followers must be crazy enough to love when it is easier to hate - to forgive when we really don’t want to, to care with unlimited compassion even though it is much easier to walk on by like those not wanting to be bothered in the Good Samaritan story. If one is serious about Christianity, he or she must be crazy like Jesus. Well, hello folks I am one of the crazy ones. Are you?
The disciples who were on Jesus cruise got accustomed to Jesus’ crazy take on things - how he’d bust through the social classes, the political pieties, the “don’t go there’s” and give his heart and healing touch to the moist unlikely person, a short guy in a tree, a group of thankless lepers, wayward women and a thirsty Samaritan woman at the well, and don’t forget those crooked tax collectors. To understand and accept was difficult for his followers, especially for his friend Peter, the serious outspoken one who often put foot in mouth. But Jesus never turned his back on any person unworthy in the eyes of most, the person undeserving and most disturbing, the person surely you or I might never have selected or trusted.
So maybe we should re-consider. Maybe we should take a chance and be crazy. I lean in that direction, encouraging prisoners in Musto (mental institution), in Libertad (violent prison), or delinquents in Juvenile Court who have just assassinated a rival gang member, or the homeless at our community breakfast, or a mother appearing before my Foster Care Review board who had birthed 12 crack/cocaine babies, all of which were removed under severe abuse charges, now pregnant again, and wanting her babies back; or a mentally ill woman I met on my ride-along with a police officer, who thinks she is Elvis’s daughter, and I had to encourage her to trust the male police officer and please get in the car for a ride to a safe place.
It was through ministry in the bowels of Com-Car and Libertad in Uruguay that I found the crazy heart Jesus wants his servants to have. I think about it every time we walk through Holy Week or lift the bread and wine for our Eucharist. Have we come too far from the original intent of Jesus’ last supper? In my craziness, it has always seemed to me on that night Jesus was having a casual supper with his friends, realizing what He was about to be betrayed by one of his most dedicated disciples, and He would leave them all in a cruel way. His close circle still failed to understand why He was here or where He was going or what was going to be required of them in the future. But that was okay. Jesus knew they were only human. He was too at that moment. And He did some crazy things - allowing a woman to anoint him with oil and bathe his feet. And then He started washing everyone’s feet and telling them to wash each other’s feet and really the feet of the world. Now that certainly seemed crazy to his fellowship group.
Then he picked up a loaf of common bread and said when you all get together again and every time you get together and perhaps remember me, think of this bread which I am sharing with you as my body, and this cup of red wine as being my blood. And share them, eat them in remembrance of this night when we have been together. Remember me in this place at this time in this way. Was he really crazy? Judas thought Jesus had lost it. His disciples were confused, not understanding that within 24 hours He’d be hanging on a cross taking all the blame for the world’s sins, and yet in His egregious suffering, asking for forgiveness for each of them “for they knew not what they were doing.” This was just flat crazy.
Jesus, when He shared food or prayer, never left anyone out, never ignored anyone in His presence, nor even His betrayer or His enemy. He didn’t say, for instance, when He was feeding 5000 fish and bread, you get some, you don’t. He did not judge their appearance, their occupation, their needs or their histories. He included, embraced ALL, easily, willingly, lovingly. There was Inclusion, not that EXCLUSION which has today become a thorn in the growth of our religion.
Each Sunday for 35 years I had the honor of offering the Holy Supper in the Anglican Cathedral in Uruguay, (and also Calvary Church in Memphis.) When I was the celebrating deacon, the bread and wine had been properly blessed by Bishop Miguel. It was locked in the sacristy safe. When I was still a deacon, I used the words of the Great Litany and sometimes, when the organist failed to show, I’d have to play the five hymns we sang on the piano - remember that? Whenever I went day by day, in my purse, was the pix holding holy wafers and a frasco of anointing oil in case there arose a sudden request to comfort or help or pray for someone in distress, needing prayer in the name of Jesus, be it in hospital, prison or on the street. You understand, a female ordained deacon or priest in this Catholic country was a crazy thing.
But my crazy ministry took place four or five days a week in Com-Car prison and in the maximum-security prison of Libertad. The wardens allowed me to offer the Spanish Mass to the prisoners about once a month. So I’d drive 20 or 30 miles to the prisons, carrying a tote bag with the sacred bread and wine covered with an old lace cloth, along with a paper tablecloth but proper linens and a cup and a plate. I’d set the meal up on the remnant of a cheap plastic table that wobbled. In modulo 13 of Com-Car, prisoners who wanted to share the Eucharist were allowed to come to the basement hall. Usually a few guards joined in for this odd experience of a female priest. Most of the guys sat on shaky benches or broken plastic chairs, the stench of bathrooms not far away. It was the area where families came during visitation three-to four times per week when they could bring clean clothes and food to share with their sons, husbands, fathers . Every piece had been inspected at the entrance- the perimeter guards used knives to slice through cakes and casseroles and loaves of any sort to make sure no weapons or drugs were hidden within. There were no dining rooms in any of the prisons.
Wind whipped through the cell block windows that were mostly without glass. Towels, soccer banners and sheets hung from those barred windows like distress flags. My long white alb blew out like a weather balloon. The deacon stole and scapula I wore kept it from flying in my face. In the most dangerous of prisons, Libertad, the doors would be barred and all the guards chose to stand with their guns on the other side, thinking surely this lady was crazy to go in there. They knew a riot could ensue when the gangs from section One got close to those from section two and three. Yet. I could not fear knowing not only God was my protector, but also, on earth, there was a power structure even in prison - Pierri the escape artist gang versus Rambo’s Mafia drug trafficking gang. True the guards would have been helpless if something went wrong. But I trusted it wouldn’t. It was a crazy experiment that was good.
We were there together in that horrid smelly, cold and dangerous place to share the love of Jesus. And to do what Jesus had said that night 2000 years prior when He relaxed with his companions and shared a simple cup of wine and bite of bread in remembrance of him. If you had been present you were part of what was happening. That’s what always spoke to me. There was no judgement that Holy Night. Jesus did not say you can have the Eucharist, you cannot because you weren’t circumcised, baptized or you are a woman. How each one got to where he or she was not the point. By being there, each one was in the household of God, for the moment. They were in a holy place for a minute in their lives. In the prison, that cold concrete room with falling apart chairs, for an hour, was a church that offered prisoners hope, love and maybe you could call it assurance that somehow each one would be touched that morning in that place by a craziness only God can give. Some had never heard of the Eucharist. Some didn’t know how to act. A few were slightly accustomed to the Catholicism of the service. They didn’t care - or maybe they did - that here was an ordained woman doing what was not really acceptable by the state church with which they were more familiar. So standing in line, each man or boy clasped his hands behind him, and opened his mouth to receive the bread tinged with wine that had the same meaning of being part of the kingdom today as it did 2000 years ago. There was no selection or judgement here. There was love, sharing, craziness.
We put so many rules and restrictions on our religion. I worry all the time what we as priests need to do to give the Word of God to people who are not too sure about what or who God is. I’ve told this moment often. As chaplain in the British Hospital, I attended a young 16-year-old who had a future in soccer and whose mother was the OBGYN nurse at the hospital and a very strong and devoted Baptist who ministered to the overtly poor. We talked often. She never lost hope, I continue to ask, didn’t she want me to baptize her son, since being Baptist, it had not happened yet. She wasn’t concerned. I could do it right at his bedside, I suggested. Not yet, she said. Then he had to have a bone transplant because the cancer was raging and he was confined in a disinfected, sanitized room where no one could enter but his mother. We could speak through a tiny window. And I asked, maybe too many times, when can I baptize him. I thought it was my job. We never discussed the possibility he would die.
And he did die, a few days later. I was beside myself with grief and a feeling I had failed him, his family and God. How crazy it was that baptism could be an issue for entrance to heaven. So I went immediately to Bishop Godfrey and in tears asked him what was going to happen - since we of the Catholic based faith believe it’s baptism or resurrection is not assured. I pleaded that his family was such faithful servants of God. And Bishop Godfrey, looked at me with that calm peace he always had and asked, “Do you think Jesus loved this young man?” And I exclaimed, “Of course He did.” And the Bishop said, “Well, that is your answer.” I’ve never forgotten that. God converts craziness into blessings, if we just let Him. Amen.
~ Rev
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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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