September 25, 2016
I come to you fairly terrified but have been trying to calm myself by calling upon my experience of surviving speaking with you about four years ago as well as speaking with Seekers Church last month. With good reason, people often think I am a teacher because I lead a little school. Alas, I am trained as a social worker so I am more naturally inclined to sit with you individually and listen deeply, rather than expound on my own thoughts. I often speak to groups about Jubilee JumpStart and find that quite easy, joyful actually, since it is all about our beautiful children and inspiring parents. So today, along with that, it is my intent here to dive a bit into vulnerability and share some about myself and how I found myself in God’s kingdom in a basement on Ontario Road.
From its first words, the scripture from Luke today brought up many things that felt familiar to me. Here in Adams Morgan, it is not uncommon to see folks of means walking past the sick and poor. Lazarus is practically invisible to the rich man, even right at the entrance to his home. I must confess that I struggle with this myself sometimes as I walk up and down Columbia Road. Secondly, the perception that people “deserve” the life circumstances they find themselves in is painfully common now. First-century listeners of this parable would not have assumed that the rich man was evil and that the poor man was righteous. On the contrary, wealth in the ancient world was often viewed as a sign of divine favor, while poverty was viewed as evidence of sin. I’m sorry to say, it’s not so different today when immediate judgments are often passed on single mothers with low-incomes and black men with car trouble.
Thanks to my life lived among fifty children under five, another familiar concept I saw here was that of consequences. Heavens, it’s so natural that children understand it! When the story finds the rich man in Hades, paying eternally for his sin of not seeing Lazarus during his time on Earth, he is experiencing the ultimate in consequences. Blessedly, when a three-year-old JumpStarter hits a friend and then sees that his friend is hurt and doesn’t want to play with him for some time, he gets to learn about consequences in a less final way. (Thank goodness forgiveness is so abundant in early childhood.) In fact, the developmentally appropriate process of experimenting and growing through experience leads to one more familiar part of our scripture reading. Neither the rich man nor Abraham had much hope for the man’s brothers learning and changing their ways because of what happened to him. People of a certain age, by which I mean grown-ups, can have a tendency to fall into a combo-platter of habit and hopelessness. Sometimes we have a habit we see no problem with and don’t understand why we would change it. And other times we have a habit we would like to change but have fallen into a hopelessness of doing things differently. The rich man believes his brothers need a dramatic intervention to avoid his fate, and Abraham seems cynical about their openness if they won’t listen to Moses. This feels familiar in so many ways, particularly with people making pronouncements about what others need and how they are likely to respond. The Bible is constantly amazing to me in the timelessness of its stories.
As many or all of you may know, Jubilee JumpStart (JJS) is a special little place born of the love and vision of the Church of the Saviour community. Joe Collier, Ann Barnet, Gail Arnall and Nona Beth Cresswell, with the support of 8th Day and other churches, founded Jubilee JumpStart to be a beloved learning community for the youngest children and most vulnerable families. Our vision is clearly aligned with 8th Day’s as, at JJS, we envision a just and compassionate society in which children of all social and economic backgrounds receive the loving care and diverse social experiences they need to reach their highest potential and contribute to the common good. So now, for over seven years, we have been living into our mission to prepare low-income children for success in school and life with a high-quality, evidence-based program focused on social and emotional well-being in partnership with families and the community. Those are a whole lot of words but I generally use just a few to really describe us: “JJS – Where everybody learns.” Today’s scripture has me thinking about how we live, love and learn at Jubilee JumpStart as part of God’s kingdom.
We recognize that our neighborhood is changing around us. When we were founded, Adams Morgan was quite different. While we are committed to children with the greatest need receiving the highest quality of care and education, we also see opportunities in serving the full community. One element that makes a classroom extra-powerful is having children from different backgrounds. Multiple languages, different family structures, and even varying household incomes and parental education levels make our classrooms richer for children. But diversity isn’t only good for children; it’s good for parents, too! We’ve long known that children create classroom communities, but our Parent Coffee Hour, parent meetings, and center celebrations literally create a community among our families that continues outside our center’s walls and beyond the years children are enrolled. The universal challenge and growth that all families experience with young children is fertile ground for life-altering and lifelong relationships. And because there is no walking past the poor or sick in our center and there is no perception of who deserves great care and who doesn’t, we are proud to be one of the rare places where everyone is seen and welcomed and loved. Our children learn that they are beloved and they learn how to be loving to others. And their parents learn it too, slower of course, but they learn it, for grown-ups are really only tall children.
Speaking of learning, let’s go back to consequences. The rich man certainly had his, and children and grown-ups alike experience our own consequences all the time. At Jubilee JumpStart, we value mistakes and call them learning. (Didn’t Thomas Edison say something brilliant about this, not having failed many times but learning several ways something didn’t work?!) As in all things, children bounce back from mistakes quickly, innately understanding them to be part of the process of living and growing. And while it may feel easier to understand and even forgive mistakes made by children, (after all – they are learning) our parents and staff are accepted, encouraged and supported through mistakes too. For what we know about people is this: You can’t give what you don’t have. If we want our children to be cared for and guided by accepting, patient, supportive people, those folks need to know what that feels like! No mistake, and no learning for that matter, is the end-all, be-all for anyone at JJS, even when mistakes are so frequent they seem like a habit! We are pleased to share this in our Church of the Saviour DNA with other ministries such as Jubilee Jobs, Christ House and Jubilee Housing. Our little piece of the world is lit up with learning and grace, for every person, no matter how tall they are.
Finally, let’s talk about how we love at JJS. I have to tell you I wasn’t surprised that the rich man asked for Lazarus to help his brothers (either because of love or to help them avoid his outcome or both) but then was a little surprised to have Abraham basically say they were hopeless. We at JJS are righteously convinced that growth and change happen through love! We’ve seen it happen too many times to deny it. We are wired for connection to survive and thrive. Children only learn in relationship and grown-ups only change in relationship. Of course, individuals also study and take action and build skills independently. We are simply made to be in community with one another and we are able to try more, know more, and be more with others exposing us to new ideas, cheering us on and catching us when we stumble. God’s love is our deepest relationship and it is nothing if not completely transformative. We at JJS strive to live in God’slight by sharing love and hope with all, not just in our little family but in our wider community. As best I know, kingdom living is living with love, hope, and inclusion. JJS was born and nurtured with these ideals and thanks be to God, the humans involved work and pray every day to make it so.
So let me tell you about how this has transformed me before I found myself in Hades. I came to JJS with a heart for children and families and a yearning for equity and justice. I’ve been like that my whole life but things got deep in that bright little basement. As I often say: God lives on Ontario Road. There has been great need and amazing joy, all because of God being right there with us. During my 5½ years at JJS, I have learned and loved a lot, most of all in my relationship with God. I grew up as a good Methodist girl, determined to serve others and share God’s love. It took meeting our families and becoming part of this community and being forced to face my fears of inadequacy for me to realize I had written myself out of the great story I told others. You could say I had fallen into some hopeless habits. Just like getting older or and parenting, running a small non-profit isn’t for sissies, and there have been many times it has brought me to my knees (if not all the way to curled up in a ball). I struggled through fears about finances and doing the right thing for children and their caregivers long and hard enough to finally reach out for help. I not only found friends and colleagues and our own parents willing to help, but really found God patiently waiting for me and welcoming me more fully into his love. By finally accepting myself as a beloved child of God, I have found new, deeper ways to serve and love the small and tall children all around me.
I was delighted to learn that Lazarus’ name means “God helps.” Jubilee JumpStart was built upon the idea of God helps. And we continue like any good story, finding that radical, transformative ways of bringing God’s kingdom into and out of a basement on Ontario Road requires an endless loop of God’s help and deep faithfulness. Our precious children and their parents are changed and will have different lives because of this. I had no idea that I needed the life saving grace and love as much as anyone else but I am eternally grateful for it. I am strengthened by God’s love as I finally experience it myself and in community with you. God helps. Thanks be to God.