What Difference Does It Make?
November 4, 2007
Holly Vincent Bean

Sometime I would really love to know why we come to church. And I'm not referring to things like Keen Berger's wonderful oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I'd like to know what hope brings all of us to this place? Would there be a common thread? My working assumption is that, at some level, most of us come here hoping to find some meaning, some truth, a little revelation that helps us get both outside of ourselves and beneath the surface of everyday living -- some deeper truth than we have already found. Maybe we seek comfort, maybe challenge, but, in any case, meaning.

I also think that we hope to make a difference in this world, to do something together that we could not do alone -- foster peace, humanize our public life, lift up those who have been unlucky, misunderstood, and discarded by the culture in which we live.

I do know that caution is needed when I venture to say what is true for you, my fellow saints of Judson. Individualism runs strong here, and you may not take kindly to my generalizations about what moves you. Nonetheless, I am convinced that there beats in the hearts of most of us here a passion for a better world -- a world that is demonstrably better. I believe we want to make a difference. And, today, I would like to explore that with you and with the help of two unlikely saints -- Zacchaeus and Larry Trapp.

On October 24, I received one of many, many e-mails from moveon.org. The subject line caught my eye. It said, "Hope is not a method." The message was all about the need to do something, rather than just hope Bush will not invade Iran. In the writer's words, ". . . the progressive movement's main strategy for preventing it is simply to hope that it doesn't happen." Then, paraphrasing her ninth-grade sex-ed teacher, she stated, "Hope is not a method." Though I do appreciate what the writer intended here, and I often share that view, I'd like to question the faith we place in measurable outcomes. Put another way, I'd like us to look beyond measurable results to another dimension of making a difference.

Personally, I put a lot of faith in effective actions -- and I'll bet that many of us here do as well. As a teenager in the pew of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, I found myself not only listening to what the preacher said, but asking myself over and over, "So what are we going to do about it?" And now, working for the Baptist Pension and Benefit Board, I devote lots of energy and time to measuring and objectively describing how we are doing. Our leadership plots organizational goals through carefully selected indicators; we use survey results, financial trends, and account growth. There is no doubt about how important these measures are in the work we do. They matter a great deal to our members, since they indicate something important about their financial security. Our Board's mission is to provide financial security for our members during their working years, as they grow older, and as they retire from full-time ministry. It is simply common sense to try to understand how effectively we are fulfilling that mission.

At Judson, we also try to measure our effectiveness. When we developed our new space use policy, we looked as objectively as we could at the experience we had with some early, tentative rentals, and tested our assumptions with the numbers, the facts. When we were searching for a new minister in 2005, we surveyed the congregation, described ourselves as objectively as we could, and considered our candidates through observable facts and clear criteria. Of course, our most obvious examples of measurement are our budget and financial reports, indicators par excellence of our institutional strength and growth. These measures are very helpful as we try to make decisions about where our church is going and where we think it should go. Measures of progress keep us focused, on track toward our goals.

In our culture and our time, measures, scores, and rankings are so prevalent that we may assign them more meaning than they deserve. We at Judson, like so many others in the human race, may become so invested in our goals and scores that we fail to notice the little revelation, the truth right before our eyes. We are in danger of missing a deeper meaning.

Enter Zacchaeus. He and Larry Trapp are our unlikely saints on this All Saints' Sunday. Zacchaeus could be regarded as a big score for Jesus, if Jesus had been counting. And so could Larry Trapp. Both made dramatic changes based on divinely inspired encounters. Let's consider a different interpretation.

Zacchaeus, we are told, was a tax collector. By implication, he collaborated with the Roman authorities -- the Roman occupiers. We are told -- in the same sentence -- that he was wealthy. That implies that he knew how to line his own pockets even as he did his job. He was clever, to be sure, and probably an opportunist. It appears that he was caught up in greed and not trusted or liked by his fellow Jews.

Larry Trapp had become powerful within his small circle of the Klan, but was powerless in other, crucial ways. As a diabetic, he had lost his legs and eyesight. And, he was caught up in anger and hate.

In both of these stories, a radical shift occurred; these men experienced some kind of conversion. What accounts for the change? Can we find the formula in these stories to tell us how to transform hate to love, greed to giving? Maybe then we could harness that and get the some good results ourselves! But the stories do not reveal a formula so much as a force, and it is one that we cannot harness.

Something happened to Zacchaeus in the encounter with Jesus, to Larry Trapp in the encounter with Michael Weisser. It appears that they encountered a kind of acceptance, sympathy, and love, which broke through their defenses and somehow, powerfully, revealed a different path. In both of these stories, grace appeared and was perceived before the need for it was clear. Each of these men found themselves caught up in the power of grace and responded by renouncing their greed or their hate. Both tried to make restitution.

What, in fact, did they encounter? Well, the fact is we don't really know, do we? Perhaps it was the power of a friendly gesture, a voice of real caring, a refusal to allow their worst selves to have the last word. Each encountered a fellow human being who refused to fight or reject them because of their bad behavior. Rather, they were greeted with recognition, hospitality, and kindness. And in those mysterious encounters, transformation occurred.

I'll bet many of us have tried to offer kindness in the face of hostility. And how did that go? I can tell you from my experience, we don't always get great outcomes. As a technique, a tactic, it may not always be effective, may not make much difference. But I do not think these stories are about techniques. Rather, these stories offer us a vision of God's power in the world; you might say they offer us a vision of God's shalom. The presence of God's spirit of love, peace, and well-being can bring powerful change in the hearts of those it touches. And it is that vision -- albeit not very measurable, more subjective than objective -- that we humans can pursue and allow to transform our work in the world.

Maybe we would do well to identify more with Zacchaeus, and even Larry Trapp, than with Jesus or Michael Weisser. We might consider how open we are to the in-breaking of God's shalom. Maybe someone beckons us to come down off that high branch and make room for them at the table. Or someone offers kindness to meet the anger and hurt that we harbor. The needs arising from hubris or hurt may just be the places where grace will be most powerfully expressed. And we may yet find grace all around us. Rather than try to make this happen, to usher in God's new world through our efforts alone, let us nurture a vision of God's shalom as best we can, reaching out to each other in love and kindness. And let us also, in all humility, recognize our need for grace. Sitting here this morning at these tables, we invite this spirit, this vision.

For centuries humans have had promethean hopes, based on belief in our own efforts. And human beings are amazingly gifted at realizing those hopes. But when it comes to realizing a dream of a better world for all, we have not been so successful. We need to embrace the paradox that we are most successful in these efforts when we reach out for help from a force beyond ourselves, for the spark of divinity, the grace of love.

We must continue to do the best we can, to make the agape we celebrate a reality in this world. Effectiveness matters; you bet it does. But let's not forget the source and vision of our effort. It is not ourselves; it is God and God's shalom.

Ancient Testimony: Luke 19: 1-10
Modern Testimony: adapted from Not by the Sword: How a Cantor and His Family Transformmed a Klansman, by Kathryn Watterson

A cantor, Michael Weisser, was newly installed in a small Reform Jewish congregation in Lincoln [Nebraska] when he and his family began receiving threatening letters and phone calls from the Grand Dragon of the Nebraska KKK. The Klansman, a hateful man named Larry Trapp, was already responsible for provoking attacks on the persons and property of prominent African-American members of the community. He was only able to provoke, because he had lost his legs and his eyesight to diabetes. Fearful and angry, Weisser nevertheless held fast to his belief that love was stronger than hate. He began leaving messages on Trapp's answering machine, after enduring the ten-minute diatribes that were the outgoing messages. He asked, "Larry, what will you say to God when you die?. . . Larry, how does it feel to carry around so much hate?. . . Why do you love Hitler so much?"

Then, one day, while Weisser was leaving a message, Trapp picked up the phone: "Who the hell are you? What do you want?" Weisser was surprised, but answered, "Larry, I saw you on TV and I know you're in a wheelchair. I thought maybe I could help take you shopping for groceries." The edge vanished from Trapp's voice: "No, that's OK. I'm OK. Thanks." Weisser sensed that the resistance was crumbling and said that he and his wife were coming over anyway. They informed the police, just in case, but it wasn't necessary. No sooner had Trapp opened the door than he began sobbing, begging them to forgive him, begging them to help him change. Trapp later explained, "When I heard his voice I knew there was something in the world better than the hate I was living. I knew I needed that thing before I died."

Within a couple of days, Trapp had resigned from the Klan, called people he had tormented and begged their forgiveness, and burned decades of collected white supremacist materials. His change was real and permanent.