In 1962 British author Christianna Brand published the first of a series of children’s books celebrating the peculiar gifts of Nurse Mathilda. The nurse came highly recommended to the Brand family given their unruly and conniving gaggle of children who had already driven off a long line of aspiring caregivers from their domestic battlefield. With Nurse Mathilda, however, the misbehaving offspring finally met their match. Much to their surprise she shaped them into fairly decent prides and joys, brooking no backtalk at all in the process. Their occasional lapses back into miscreant activities prompted new installments in Ms. Brand’s popular series. While it is likely that none of us has ever heard of Nurse Mathilda and her hoodlum charges, it is more likely that we have encountered and enjoyed British actress Emma Thompson’s recasting of those books into a box office success, the 2005 movie Nannie McPhee – disappearing warts, dental imperfections, and all. An all-star cast (Ms. Thompson is very well connected, indeed!) insured its sequel.
While the intrepid Nannie McPhee and Nurse Mathilda seem an odd duo to ponder as we move toward the close of the Easter Season with the third, major festival of the Christian Year, Pentecost, there really are some quite striking parallels. Over the last year or so, particularly during the weeks after Pentecost, we have considered the unrelenting bootcamp Jesus has conducted for his disciples, and by extension (that’s how mission and outreach work) for us, too. Jesus has carefully outlined the life of faith in quite practical ways. Matthew’s gospel on which the Church focused last year includes the “Sermon on the Mount”, a three-chapter exposé on the Christian life. To the enormous crowds who followed Jesus, he outlined the blessings of a life lived with the God and the people we encounter day by day. It is the familiar gospel account of loving consideration for others, the avoidance of spite, envy, anger, and grasping, galling stinginess. Feeding others, caring for them, showing them mercy, being people who actively work to establish peace are the hallmarks of people who live in blessed relationship with God. Jesus already is setting the bounds of his bootcamp. Such gracious consideration is to be extended not only to our Facebook® “likes,” “our kind of people” rather than “those people,” and even to our enemies however we define and identify them. Such hospitable behavior is exactly what the good Nurse Mathilda and Nanny McPhee insisted upon as well, rather blatantly we might add.
Jesus’ mountaintop presentation on life among the blessed in Matthew’s gospel continues with an outline of ways of communicating with others, especially God. Prayer, Jesus tells us, is not some formalistic utterance to show off our piety, but a modest, sincere, and quite honest conversation with the living God, recognizing as well that such prayer is not one’s own, personal checklist of “wants.” God is no vending machine, and neither should our parents, families, nor friends be, either. Instead, such prayerful conversation eventually becomes our daily “habit of being.” Prayer really is a bracing give-and-take with God like any relationship with very close, dear friends. It reflects a ready openness to be God’s children obviously and intentionally in public as well as in the privacy of our chambers. [One wise individual once remarked that good manners are what you willingly practice even when your mom, Nurse Mathilda, or Nanny McPhee are not in the vicinity listening.] As we already heard on the seventh Sunday of Easter, we “complete” Jesus’ joy by our own godly behavior. As Jesus concludes his sermonic reflection on his hopes and aspirations for the crowds who gather to hear him, he presents the famous “Golden Rule:” In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the law and the prophets [Matthew 7:12]. Nanny McPhee couldn’t have said it any better!
The Great Fifty Days of Easter now draw to a close with the Spirit’s holy windstorm of grace, the red-clad Festival of Pentecost. The Church already has been counting out the days and weeks, although we might overlook the fortieth day after Jesus’ resurrection. In Luke’s gospel account, it is the day of Jesus’ ascension, falling always on Thursday. However, we think we know what to expect of Pentecost: the Spirit’s raucous outpouring of gifts and charisms, dancing tongues of fire on the disciples’ heads, the ability to speak and be understood in other languages and tongues. Nevertheless, there is another significant event happening we likely fail to consider as the Pentecost texts are read: [Jesus said,] “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning. “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you [John 15:26-27; 16:4b-7].
Jesus unfolds a sad truth to his disciples who finally understand him to be the long-awaited Messiah, Son of God, and the incarnate Word of Truth who was from the beginning. That is a lot to consider. Yet as incarnate Lord, his possibilities for sharing the Good News of God of which he is the full embodiment are limited by his own personhood. As the Jesus they have known, he is unable to “go into all the world. Psalm 145:13 already set the bounds of God’s kingdom of love in Christ centuries before: Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations. It has taken a long time in discipleship bootcamp to be able to hear, understand, and embrace Jesus’ announcement. Furthermore, Christ’s disciples in every age have been given gifts and charisms to use in their own ministries and mission for the sake of God’s in-breaking kingdom. Their [and our!] witness will not always be well received. Some will face rejection; others might even face martyrdom. Nevertheless, the Spirit’s guidance and support, unfettered by incarnate place, will see God’s children complete their journey of faith, no matter where or when they might be living – even folks living in the greater metropolitan megaplex of Chapin, SC.
As Nanny McPhee begins to have a salutary impact on her miscreant charges, they begin to discard their suspicions and audacious behaviors, finding a joy in relationships they didn’t realize could exist. Marking that growth in character of those children, Nanny McPhee herself begins to recover from her warts, bad teeth, and generally off-putting self. She tells them a truth that is an eerie echo of Jesus’ own words this Pentecost. Nanny relates: “There is something you should understand about the way I work. When you need me but do not want me, then I may stay. When you want me but no longer need me, then I have to go. It’s really rather sad, but there it is…” As the children’s strength of character and capacity to love grow, they discover that it is a transformation occurring in each of them, not simply a magic trick or spell the good Nanny is casting on them. They have become “faithful disciples” rather than kicking and screaming miscreants begrudgingly doing what they should. That is exactly what Jesus has been accomplishing by the Spirit’s power over the centuries in his bootcamp of faithful living.
Presidents, monarchs, and premiers appoint ambassadors to represent their governments and hopefully extend the courtesies of peaceful coexistence to the rest of the global community because a country’s ruler cannot physically be in all places at once nor over time. In the same way, St. Paul explains that we become Christ’s own ambassadors to extend God’s reconciling work into all the world, baptizing, preaching, ministering to, befriending, and healing the needy and forgotten. Paul writes: All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God. For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God [II Corinthians 5:18-21]. Moreover, as we confront the bewildering challenges of ambassadorship, we give thanks for God the Holy Spirit. This promised Advocate not only has gifted us for the challenge, but leads us into all truth. Sunday’s second reading makes this abundantly clear: Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 2And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God [Romans 8:26-27]. Not much more to say than: Come, Holy Spirit, God and Lord [ELW 395]!