Taking advantage of teachable moments is an important part of parenting, teaching, and, in general, being in the same world with children. We’re alert to those moments when we have an opportunity to help a child see the world in a different way—to help a child grow in understanding and in ability to live with others in our world. Sometimes those moments leave us grateful for the experience. Sometimes—not so much.
We can see a classic example of a teachable moment in a current television commercial for peanut butter. A mother is making a peanut butter sandwich for two children to share. Anyone who’s ever been there has to wonder why in the world she’s setting up this situation, but that’s what she does. Then she invites one of the children to cut the sandwich in two. With a gleam in his eye, the child cuts the sandwich into less-than-equal parts. Then the mother tells the children that the one who didn’t cut the sandwich gets to choose from the two pieces. The suddenly gleeful sibling grabs the larger piece, leaving the sandwich cutter to think about what went wrong. We can imagine that the mother hoped this moment would teach both children the importance of dealing fairly with each other. But as we look at the shock on the sandwich cutter’s face, it seems more likely that this incident taught him to be more careful about checking out the rules before he takes action.
In a variation on this story, two children—through no greedy fault of their own—find themselves in a situation where one has a significantly larger cookie than the other. The parent, seeing one of those teachable moments right in front of him, leaps into action and tells the child with the smaller cookie that if Jesus had found himself in such a situation, he would have shown his loving kindness by choosing the smaller cookie. The child takes in the message, thinks about it for a second or two, then tells his sibling: “Next time, you get to be Jesus.”
I think if we were able to ask either the sandwich cutter or the child with the smaller cookie whether they were treated fairly in these situations, we would get a resounding “NO!” “No way!” On the face of it, each of these stories—as well as the stories of the Hebrews in the wilderness and of the laborers in the vineyard—could be titled “The Day I Wasn’t Treated Fairly.” And each of these stories could be subtitled “If I Had Only Known….”. Whenever we experience a situation as unfair, there is almost always a context of unmet expectation. In just about every situation of our lives, we have some sense of how things are going to play out. We may have no idea what will happen, but we do have an expectation that certain rules will be followed. The child who cut the sandwich thought the rule was that the person who cut was also in charge of distribution. The child with the smaller cookie expected that the parent would make some attempt to distribute goodness equally. The Hebrews wandering in the wilderness left Egypt expecting that things would be somehow “better” when they were no longer slaves. And the folks who showed up for work in the vineyard at the crack of dawn expected that a full day’s pay required a full day’s work. If they had only known, maybe they could have managed things differently. The sandwich cutter might have made those triangles exactly equal. The kid with the smaller cookie might have suggested breaking each cookie in half and sharing both the small and large cookies. The Hebrews might have done a cost-benefit analysis on the alternatives of remaining in slavery or striking out into the uncertainty of freedom and Moses might have decided to leave all these whiny folks behind. The laborers who went to the vineyard at first light might have chosen to sleep in a bit longer.
It’s easy for us to imagine different choices that might have been made in these stories because we usually seem to gravitate to the perspective of righteousness. We tend to identify with the person whom we see as having been treated unfairly. We want justice to be done to the person who seems to have profited to a greater degree than we have, but we want mercy for ourselves. We spend a large amount of time working out the rules so that we can predict exactly who will have what. Despite our efforts to control the world, we get some surprises. We call some of these surprises—like the current financial situation—disasters. We call some of the surprises miracles. Sometimes God’s mercy shines on us in ways that take our breath away. Like the Hebrews who found meat and bread in the wilderness, like the laborers who received more that they could expect to have earned, God’s grace sometimes showers us with blessings beyond our understanding. It’s not fair. We haven’t earned it. We can’t earn it. But it happens.
Last night, ten of us from St. Mark’s joined with about 500 other folks from the deanery and beyond to celebrate a U2charist in support of the Millenium Development Goals, Episcopal Relief and Development, and Mama Maria Kenya, a hospital that gives life-saving care to 10,000 people every year. During the worship we sang the thought-provoking music of Bono and U2, and we saw the faces of poverty projected on the wall behind the altar at St. Andrew’s. The preacher was Peter Kithene, the CEO of Mama Maria Kenya. He told us his story of poverty—of the deaths of six of his nine siblings while he was a child—of being orphaned at age 12—of struggling to attain an education while supporting his remaining family—of the miracles of kindness that helped him along the way.
Poverty is a fact of life for one quarter of the people of the world. During the time I’ve been speaking, 300 children in our world have died from preventable causes. During the hour of our worship service, 57 women will die in childbirth from preventable causes. These deaths are the direct result of poverty that’s beyond anything most of us have ever seen. This poverty is where all the rules of our lives break down. This poverty is where hope has ceased to be the birthright of any child. It’s not fair. They haven’t earned it. But it happens. The Millenium Development Goals are a promise to the world—a promise to eradicate poverty by the year 2015. That’s only seven years from now. It’ll take a miracle to keep that promise.
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Fortunately, God has the ability to perform miracles. Fortunately, God has the resources in hand to do what needs to be done. The resources are right here—in this church, filling the church last night, filling the corners of our diocese and the greater Church, filling all the places where people go to bed at night without worrying how they’ll feed their children in the morning.
God works miracles, and ours are the hands he uses to bring those miracles to pass. This is a teachable moment for us and for the part of the world that lives in abundance. We can end poverty by 2015. All we have to do is open our hearts to God’s will. All we have to do is open our hearts to God’s love. Thanks be to God.