And the Kingdom is Like...

A couple weeks ago I had the privilege to go to a refugee Christmas party at my wife's work.  Refugees, much  like my wife are not very timely.  A good chunk of the guests, did not come until we were an hour and a half into the party.  I really love when I get to join Misty at these events.  The head of the organization invited one person up from each nationality to share what they were thankful for.  They were thankful for a variety of things, but boiled down, most all of them said they were thankful to be in our country, to have work, to have food and they were thankful for Lutheran Family Services the agency that hosted them as refugees.  Towards the end of the party, after all of the children received gifts, something happened that seems to always happen when the groups get together... they danced.  And just about everyone joined.

As I saw Bhutanese, Iraqis, Congolese, American and Burmese children and adults dancing together, I thought to myself, this must be a glimpse of what the kingdom of God looks like.  People, who were at one point in their lives persecuted, terrorized, raped and systematically starved; people from all corners of the world, brought together under such horrific auspices, dancing and laughing together.  Their pains and tragedies, certainly not forgotten, but they are thankful and joyous nonetheless.

And in the same vein, here is a great story from Will Campbell's book 40 Acres and a Goat.  It is a brief story, told by Campbell, of J.R "Bob" Jones, the former Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.

"I appreciate your kindness, Preacher.  Looks like they're gonna take me away this time."  It was the Grand Dragon of the North Carolina Ku Klux Klan J.R. "Bob" Jones.  I'm not sure why he trusted me.  He knew what I believed.  Knew that a great deal of my work was promoting the cause of racial integration and that most of his was opposition to it.  I had befriended him, because when Isaiah and Jesus said that they had come to proclaim release to prisoners, they said nothing of the prisoner's crime.  Nothing was said about this or that ideology allowing for distinctions of our own.  They were to be visited because they were prisoners.  There was no condition set, no limitations fixed.  It was one of the few things T.J. and I argued about.  He said that visiting the Ku Klux Klan was stretching Mr. Jesus a bit too far.  He generally laughed when he said it, though.

Though Jones didn't know where he was going when he left home and wasn't told where he was until he got there, he was sent to Danbury, Connecticut.  I had another friend there at the time, Father Dan Berrigan.  "...and the criminals with Him."  Word circulated among the black prison population that the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan was there.  Further word had it that he wouldn't be there long because he would be dead in the yard.  A mutual friend in New Jersey, Pete Young, knew a black Muslim minister who had members and numerous contacts at Danbury.  the notion of separatism was about the same in both groups.  The word then became that if anything happened to Bob Jones while he was in prison, the one responsible would have to answer to Muslim justice.   Jones continued in good health, his best friend in prison a Black Muslim.  Mysterious ways.

The night before Bob was to report (to prison), there was a party.  Friends and neighbors came and went, came and stayed. We told yarns, cracked jokes, drank a lot of the grape, sang a lot of country songs, and tried to pretend it was just another long winter evening.

Before it ended, the Dragon, who had grown up a Lutheran, said he would like to have Communion.  Some of the men laughed at the thought of something holy in such a setting, but when they saw he was serious, they solemnly filled their glasses one last time.  I unpacked the Gibson guitar, strummed and talked about a country song which was popular at the time called, "Anna, I'm Taking You Home."  It was a song about a wayward woman and the fashion in which her man forgave her.  It was the best summary of the Gospel I could think of at the time.  With the homily over, I began the liturgy....

In a few hours we drove J.R. Jones to the Greensboro courthouse.  With the same tears which are shed when anyone leaves their family to enter the gates of captivity, we bade him good-bye.

A few years later Pete Young's house caught on fire from a faulty television set.  His wife, their three year old daughter, and his wife's mother were killed.  Pete lay in critical condition from burns he received when he tried frantically to save them.  Pete was a Protestant.  They were Catholic.  Because the undertakers would not let the child be buried lying on the bosom of her mother, there were three caskets.  That meant twenty-four pallbearers.  At the front of the line was the former Grand Dragon.  By then he was out of prison and had resigned from the Klan.  Beside him was his Muslim prison-mate. Others included an Australian who was editing a magazine for and organization called Clergy and laity Concerned About the War in Vietnam, a black United Methodist preacher, another Klansman, and others young and old, black and white, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and nothing.  All under the canopy of a Roman Catholic cathedral in Summit, New Jersey.