That Dirty Thing

For my final Amish post and my first Roma post I would like to overlap the two. You might think that to be quite a stretch. But trust me, they have more in common than one might imagine. Especially as it pertains to the Papal State.

The Amish

Church is quickly approaching. Not our Sunday, but the day when the Amish will celebrate church at Melvin and Rachel's. It is a very big deal. Everyone from their district will be coming to their home. (Recall church is not a building to them. As many times as I have stated it I hope we all know, you can't go to church 'cos the church is you!) To avoid the confusion, they do not build structures for church. They celebrate Sabbath within their district at homes. And this is no small gathering. There are likely to be 80-120 people including children. (The children sit with their parents for three hours of service. While the young ones, under three, may walk back and forth once or twice between parents, they are silent. Miraculous!) Every thing must be shipshape for church though. A thorough spring cleaning of sorts, no matter what the season. Neighbors will come by to help clean; ceilings washed, every stitch of laundry must be done, floor scrubbed, cobwebs removed... etc. And I am not just talking about the house. Barns too must be spit polished. The men will greet one another with a Holy Kiss just outside the barns, and horses must be unhitched from buggies and tied in the barns. Melvin is an even more meticulous "housekeeper" than Rachel, so he gives me "Webster" and tells me I should get the cobwebs out of the barn in my free moments. I have not seen one of those since I arrived. Most of us have not grown up on a farm, but I will tell you his request seemed unattainable and I would have been incredulous had anyone but Melvin ask. But...I began to de-web the barn. There were webs in the rafters, webs on the beams, webs in the mangers, and webs in the seems, webs in the grain bins, webs with the cows, webs in the buckets and webs in their chow. Okay, I am done rhyming.  A 10X10 area takes me one hour. I begin to calculate. The barn is 40 by 70. That is 2800 square feet and there were two floors, which equals  5600 Sq. Divided by 100 equals...I will be webbing until Jesus returns. I am singing my own working song under my breath and the words were not happy! I am relieved when Melvin comes in and says he has another job for me that is higher priority. Now we were talking. I will be moving out of the Web Department (not an IT reference) into bigger and better things; stuff more consonant with my character, more structured to my station.

"Keith, I need you to power wash the milking house."

Imagine a place where cows enter each day and splatter the walls with unmentionable things. It's walls are caked with manure. The pipes are crusted with crud. But power wash I will. Inch by inch, section by section. I learn one valuable lesson in the process. You know that thing so many of us do when we stick your tongue out while we are concentrating on a task? Do not do this while power washing a barn full of cow manure. Just sayin'. By the time I am done the place is immaculate.

Then 4:40 comes. The cows are lining up for milking.

Don't miss this! My first thought is, "You are not going to bring those filthy cows in my clean barn!"

The Vatican

Thick walls surround the 110 acres of Vatican City. It is the home of the Pope and it is the smallest independent state. Yes, it is a nation unto itself. Don't get me wrong, I will comment on many wonders and wanders of this place, but the first thing that struck me as we come to this place is that it is a fortress against all things external. It takes a ticket, or an audience to get in. 

The Church

I don't know what you were like before you came to understand the forgiveness that Jesus bought with His Blood on the Cross, But I think Romans 3:23 sums it up. We all come in the same way; filthy, hard core sinners. If you don't believe that, if you think maybe you were not so bad, than maybe you have not yet truly embraced your nature.

But here is the irony. As soon as we come into our relationship with Christ we start to attend church. We "clean up" our act. We cut out the language, the habits, the activities and often times even the people of our past. The manure so to speak. We enter a church building and we start cleaning up the place too; pretty carpet, comfortable seating, clean nurseries, and people just like us - forgiven, but cleaned up. We suddenly forget why it is we exist. We, the redeemed, exist for the filthy not for the clean. We exist to dirty the place up again with sinners who use language foreign to us now, to smells on clothing we have purged, to lifestyles unrepentant and unredeemed. Instead we build fortresses. The church is not ours, it is theirs. It is built to bring Good News to lost people. So why do we ignore them, shun them, buttress our lives against them? 

The Amish

The first cow waddles down the chute, her udders are full. It is milking time. And I realize this place is hers not mine. My work was preparation for her, not a cloister against her.

Matthew 9:37-38

New International Version (NIV)

³⁷ Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. ³⁸ Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers (ME)into his harvest field.”