"Faithful to One Another"

First Presbyterian Church
October 29, 2006
Peter S. Buehler
Matthew 5:27-30

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.'
But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust
has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Wendell Berry is a favorite author of mine, not only because he writes so beautifully, but also because he draws his characters with the utmost care and respect. They are citizens of the fictional town of Port William, a small Kentucky farming community, their stories take place mainly in the first half of the 20th century.

In "A Jonquil for Mary Penn," set in the year 1940, Berry introduces us to Elton and Mary Penn, a newly married couple, working hard to keep their small farm in hard times. Mary's parents were convinced, it seems, that she had chosen poorly, HOWEVER. From childhood she had been told that college was in her future, and that she was destined to be married, as the author writes, "to a solid professional man, a doctor perhaps, or (and this her mother particularly favored) perhaps a minister." But at age seventeen Mary met and fell in love with Elton Penn, a year older, but who had been making his own living since he was fourteen. He had taken charge of himself, we learn, and, "though he was still a boy, had become a man." Mary's family was unconvinced. Her choice had been unacceptable to them. So much so, Berry writes, that, "she no longer belonged to that house. She no longer belonged to (the) family. To them it (was) as if she had never lived."

Elton and Mary had neighbors, however; six households in total.
Their farms were close, their friendships were closer. Mary was particularly fond of one neighbor woman, Josie Tom, whoM we also like instantly: "a plump, pretty, happy woman, childless but the mother of any child in reach." Josie Tom, like the other women, could do many things well -- cooking, sewing, canning, preserving, among numerous skills. She was particularly adept at needlework, always embroidering a long cloth, it seems -- a Christmas present for someone, that began with the earliest flowers of spring and ended with the last flowers of fall.

The story, however, begins on an ominous note -- Mary Penn is sick.
We see her getting up with her husband one morning in the predawn darkness to build a fire and warm the house. Mary says nothing about how poorly she feels; the only hint Elton has is that as she cooks breakfast for him, she fixes nothing for herself. Not hungry, she says; she'll fix something for herself later. It is a bitterly cold morning, but Elton is drawn to his work. Elton Penn went after his work, the author writes, "as a hungry dog ate."

It is one reason Mary loved him and was so devoted to him. Yet when Elton goes out and closes the door behind him to face the long day ahead, we can feel Mary's isolation and misery. Normally engrossed in chores herself, on this day she could hardly lift herself out of her chair. The fire in the stove goes out and she is unable to face rekindling it. Putting her nightgown back on, Mary retreats to her bed, where she lies chattering and shivering. Berry writes, "it seemed to her that a time might come when sickness would be a great blessing, for she truly did not care if she died. She thought of Elton, caught up in the day's wind, who could not even look at her and see that she was sick. If she had not been too miserable, she would have cried."
Dejected and exhausted, Mary fell asleep.

Have you ever felt like this? Homebound and bedridden, unwilling if not unable to move, curtains drawn, your world shrunk to the confines of your bed, your night table, and the nearest bathroom. Perhaps there have been times when your isolation has been less a place than a frame of mind, a sense that no one could know how you were feeling, how isolated you were, like Mary Penn, too miserable even to cry. We've felt like this. We may have been going on with our lives, mingling with the crowd, but we didn't much care, and we certainly didn't know why God didn't seem to care. Whether or not we were running a fever, our times of personal isolation have been times of real doubt. In these times Christianity has seemed like a religion for others, for real believers but not for us.

What has helped you when this was your world? What brought you back? Who brought you back?

In the closing scene of "A Jonquil for Mary Penn" Mary wakes up from her sleep. Her room is warm. "A teakettle on the …stove (is) muttering and steaming. The wind (is) blowing hard, (yet) the room (is) full of sunlight." It was not a dream. Josie Tom was there, sitting in the rocker by the window, as Wendell Berry describes, "sunlight flowing in on the unfinished long embroidery she had draped over her lap. She was bowed over her work, filling in with her needle and a length of yellow thread the bright (color) of a jonquil -- or 'Easter lily,' as she would have called it…" The yellow flower was nearly complete.

All because Elton, in the half-light of the early morning, had stopped by Josie Tom's house on his way to the neighbor's field he was to help plow. He had told Josie tom that Mary was sick -- and she had wasted no time. Now Mary was waking up and noticing that she was being looked at. Josie Tom raised her head from her needlework and asked her, "are you all right?" Mary replied, "oh, I'm wonderful," and fell back to sleep.

The flower is what the story is about. Resurrection. Because resurrection is not something we celebrate once a year at Easter. Resurrection is the power of grace, God's life-giving, life-renewing love in Jesus Christ.
The yellow jonquil in Josie tom's embroidery was also a sign of faith and faithfulness, a symbol of being and believing, a beautiful reminder that when people are at their best they are helping their neighbors to heal.

I wonder if that is not what the church is about? A community that finds its purpose in Jesus Christ, in his healing power, in the invitation he extends to care for the sick in body, mind, and spirit? I wonder if faith, faithfulness, and friendship don't all fit together way more closely than we imagine?

I've not mentioned the 7th commandment, the commandment about adultery. Because we know a lot about it. We know about temptation.
We know all about our society's fascination with sex, about the carelessness and confusion it breeds. We know that many don't choose to honor the limits God gives, which are for our own well-being. We know that these boundaries are not a repudiation of the gift of our sexuality, of how we are made, they are an honoring of how wonderfully we are made.

Yet with this commandment, as with others, there is another side: the side that is turned toward the sun, God's gracious invitation to us.
It is his calling us to lifelong love, lifelong friendship, lifelong affection, lifelong devotion, lifelong discovery, lifelong companionship.
The commandment has to do with faithfulness in the covenant of marriage, the kind of noticing that Elton Penn did when, absorbed in his thoughts and plans for his day's work, he put his wife first and made sure that she would not spend the day alone. It was part of his marriage vow, his way of thanking God for finding her for him.

But the beautiful side of the commandment is also the light we see in the face of Josie Tom, in her friendship and kindness. It may have been simply what good neighbors did, and without fanfare, yet it was a deeply Christian thing to do.

It is what good neighbors do; it's also what churches do. Jesus, who regularly shared table fellowship with people who were unwell and outcast, was asked "Why?" It made no sense; good people keep to themselves. Why did he eat with those who were weak, with those who had failed, with those who had broken commandments? "Those who are well have no need of a physician," he replied, "but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners."

Jesus is anything but predictable. Maybe because God's ways aren't our ways, and God's grace never quite fits our categories. What then does it mean for us to be a church in his name?

We're about to bring our pledges forward -- a very personal thing to do. Why are we doing it? We have many reasons; hope and excitement, I believe, are among them: hope and excitement about the difference Christ makes in the lives of people. The difference the community of the church makes in our lives and those of our neighbors.

For us the future is today; it is now. Our future, our coming forward this morning, is our way of saying Yes to Jesus. And in saying Yes to Jesus we are saying Yes to one another -- to our spouse, our wife or husband; to our friends; to our neighbors -- to all our neighbors, whoever they may be.

We rest in the promise: "The one who calls (us) is faithful, and he will do this." We trust the promises of the One who calls us, and live each day in faithfulness.