I love the Lord, because he has heard the voice of my supplication,
Because he has inclined his ear to me whenever I called upon him.
How shall I repay the Lord…
…How shall I repay the Lord?
How do you repay someone? If they have been kind enough to loan you enough money so you can buy your own home, say? Well, you pay them back –you make your payments on time, you keep the home insured, you make sure the property taxes are paid…
Several years ago, we had an older lady neighbor. She wanted to stay in her own home but it was a challenge for her even to walk to the road to get her mail. When we learned of her situation we began going by every day and getting her mail for her. From time to time, we would get a message on our telephone voicemail, “Next time you come by I’ve got a pecan pie for you. If you don’t like it, you can return it and I’ll refund what you give for it.”
Again, many years ago – it seems many of my stories begin that way nowadays – I went through a course which used to be offered from time to time at Camp Mitchell. The course was called Cursillio – little course in Spanish. It’s a little short course, retreat maybe, on how to live the Christian life.
These days one of the few places I know of where this course is still taught is in prison. A version called “Kairos” is taught in many prisons through an organization which exists for just that purpose.
Again – going back to that phrase I’m using a lot today – many years ago but maybe only a few weeks after I had completed that Cursillio course at Camp Mitchell, our leader at that retreat, Jim Dalton, a good friend and later priest at St. Stephen’s called me one day. He wanted to talk about that Cursillio retreat: ‘How do we put it into practice – how do we live the Christian life – and share the Christian life – that we talked about in that retreat? ‘And then he talked to me about a program in the prisons called Kairos. Would you like to help in that? He asked. But then he quickly added, ‘Don’t give me an answer right now – just pray about it.”
Of course, the real question – the bigger question – he was asking that day was the one asked by the Psalmist in our psalm today: “How shall I repay the Lord…”
Over the years I have helped out in a number of Kairos retreats at Tucker Prison. During Covid there were no Kairos retreats at Tucker. A lot of things were shut down during Covid.
More recently, the Kairos program has started back up at Tucker – and many other prisons where it had been active. One day an old friend who had worked some Kairos walks with me called. He asked if he and some other members of his church in northwest Arkansas who were coming down to Tucker to work a Kairos walk could stay a few nights at our old house. “Of course!”
When he called again later – maybe a few months later I knew immediately what he was calling about. But this time I had a request of him – I would like to go back with them into the prison as part of a Kairos team again. And to that he replied, “Of course.”
The Kairos talks are pretty much all written out – yet in many there is a place in which the volunteer speaker is encouraged to share a personal recollection – a personal testimony. And over the years it has been these personal words that I have remembered the most. Usually, they recall a time in the speaker’s life when maybe he made a bad choice, did something that he is not proud of now, something he sincerely regrets…Or it could have been a time when it was difficult to forgive someone. It is a baring of the soul that is uncomfortable for the one sharing his experience. And it can be uncomfortable for those of us hearing it.
Yet maybe it is a freeing moment – now I’ve said it, now I can go on with other things. I can put that behind me.
It is an honest sharing, an opening of a wound that the person would as soon have forgotten – and has long since atoned for. Yet they share it.
I don’t know what it is about feet. Unless we are young and attractive and can give our feet the attention maybe of a Hollywood starlet – we probably think – our feet are the most unattractive part of our body. And that thought, that concern, seems to increase the older we get.
I don’t think this is anything new. I think we can hear it in Simon Peter’s voice: “Lord, are you going to wash my feet? And when Jesus responds:” …later you will understand.” Peter reacts with, “You will never wash my feet.”
It was very uncomfortable then….and it’s very uncomfortable now.
I think Jesus meant it to be uncomfortable.
And the more I think about it maybe asking his disciples to wash each other’s feet – exposing a part of us that we consider embarrassing, something we would rather not do – much like sharing something we’ve done, or something that has been done to us, that is embarrassing to us. Sometimes he is saying to us – maybe we need to show the real us, the honest us, the us that sometimes has done some really stupid things in life, things we would rather forget, the us that is really us and not the carefully constructed façade we’ve carefully constructed over the years of our life.
I am who I am.
I am a sinner.
I ask you for your forgiveness if I have hurt, mistreated, or been unkind to any of you. And I forgive you – maybe the one who nodded during one of my maybe too long sermons, or thought I was a tad too loud, or failed to laugh at my jokes or whatever you’ve done…
This night He gives us a new commandment…
On this night the One who loves us gave us a new commandment, that we love one another. Just as I have loved you, He said to us, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that we are His disciples, if we have love for one another.
Amen.
Richard Robertson