Anoint My Head With Oil

REFLECTION

ON

MINISTRY

Anoint My Head with Oil By N. Thomas Johnson-Medland

old. Now he was stretched out Adam lived to He be 930 years on hishad deathbed. called his family together, that they might pray for him and that he might give them his final blessing. The family was dismayed to see Adam in such pain. Surely the Lord would provide for his son. Surely God would spare his helper. If only they could return to the garden, God would give them fruit from the tree of life that Adam might recover and not see death. Adam had not explained the curse to his children. Now he told them of his disobedience and of the punishment visited on all his kin. He sobbed as he told of the pain and death that would come to all his descendants. His family joined him in his anguish and sought relief for the dying elder. Seth and Eve decided to go to the garden and demand healing for Adam. Adam knew it was no use. But perhaps they could beg God for a drop of oil from the tree of mercy. This oil could give him rest and ease his devouring pain. At the gates of Eden, Eve and Seth fervently implored the Lord to hear their cry for mercy, and to relieve Adam. Hour after hour they cried for compassion. Finally, the archangel Michael appeared, saying, "The Lord has heard your cry and has said that Adam must die. The curse he brought on your kin will not be lifted until the day of resurrection.But on that day, all your children will be anointed with the oil of the tree of mercy, and they shall live." Seth and Eve returned, lamenting Mr. Johnson-Medland is a childcare worker at Bethanna Children's Home in Southampton, Pennsylvania. 6

Adam's certain death, but also carrying the hope that had been given their race. Though they must put up with pain and travail now, the time would come when they would no longer know death. This tale from the Legends of the Jews (Louis Ginzberg, Jewish Publication Society, 1956) is filled with hope for healing. It not only gives us a ray of light, but it calls us to live faithfully in that light. Forthe followers of Jesus, the day

home, I often cry for mercy. The children have been wounded and scarred by family conflict and dysfunction. Actions that would call forth affection from children raised in a stable environment may trigger anger in these children. For them, violence is a common expression of anger. Since I have worked with these wounded children, I have begun to hear the words, "Lord, have mercy," in a different way. I have heard them as "Go gently with us, Lord." Gentleness is needed in dealing with the children's wounds and with the anger those wounds produce. Adam and his family were promised mercy. We, his descendants, have received that mercy. Christ has anointed us with oil, ana it is healing our lives. But I often forget this when I am begging for gentleness. God has gone gently with me; I need him to teach me to go gently with myself. One form of violence I encounter of resurrection began in the day of his resurrection. Christ brought us daily is hitting. The children lash the first drop of oil when he burst out in anger. Sometimes they hit from the tomb of death. He sent us me, sometimes another child. I have the next drop in the Holy Spirit's cried out for God to change them descent into our lives. As we meet and make them kind, as ifhe would~ him along our way, mercy is poured magically and instantly transform out on us, and will flow ever more them. This doesn't happen, so I yell, freely as we move closer to the day "Stop that!" "Don't you hit him of Christ's coming. But we often fail again!" But my prayer has been to acknowledge our anointing. We answered. I have received the gift ofpatience are unmerciful toward ourselves, and do not allow ourselves to be that allows me to turn to the children healed. and hold them until their anger goes away. This patience reminds me The liturgy of any Christian church is filled with pleas for mer- that their wounds have festered for cy. "Lord, have mercy," we cry years, and only gentle care over because we are longing for time can heal them. God's love gentleness and compassion in our makes possible the small changes in lives. Like Eve and Seth, we call out the way we deal with each other. for understanding and strength The seed of mercy planted in me from our Creator. grows slowly to fruition. God says, As a group worker at a children's "If you believe I exist, act on what THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY

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you know of me, as small as that may be. Don't wait until you see all of n1e." Asking for immediate results from God or from a child is demanding too much. Saying "Stop that" may be asking the impossible of a wounded child. "Don't hit people" is calling for the abandonment of a life-long habit. Adam was not so hold as to ask for fruit from the tree of life; but he would accept a drop of oil from the tree of mercy.

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of oil. Some ofthat means making too requests am learning to ask formeans drops my specific. Some having the patience to wait. Some means recognizing my limitations. One of the children with whom I work had a particularly rough week. Over the years, he had gained a large measure of control over his actions, but this week was too much for him. One of the other boys set him off. I could see the anger building. One insult Pl'oduced anger; another comment, rage. On and on it went. The fellnw hurling the insults had, for some reason,

SEPTEl\IBER·OCTOBER

1988

taken off his shoes. When the insulted child reaching his breaking point, instead of punching the other guy, he picked up the fellow's shoe and threw it 011 the roof. When we least expect it, the Holy Spirit changes our lives, answers our prayers, and teaches us how to act. God gave this boy a gentle nudge and an option for change. God does not call us to what we are unable to do. I recognized the grace in what had just happened. I praised the child for his self-control and creativity in dealing with his anger. "Instead of hitting him, you threw his sneaker on the roof. You got him to stop doing what made you angry, and nobody got hurt," I told him. It was a small action, but it moved us one step closer to healing, to perfection, to the day of resurrection. God had visited us with his gentle mercy. Here was a new goal for our angry child. We didn't have to ask him to stop hitting; we could ask him to throw sneakers when he was an6'1'Y.It would take a long time to harness this child's anger, but

now we could redirect his violence into a safer course. We could ask him to do something he could manage. The Spirit of grace had taught him how to change. We could build on that beginning. The next step would be to have him learn to say, "I am mad at you for what you are doing," before he threw the sneaker. That is how I have been learning to use God's mercy-by taking small steps. But some staff members disagreed with this procedure. They were unwilling to retrieve tossed sneakers, were horrified at any backsliding, and were unwilling to accept anything less than an immediate, total personality change. Too often we demand an all-or-nothing transformation in the lives of the people around us. But God is more merciful. Dying Adam called out for a small drop of mercy. It was granted in time. We beg and plead for mercy, and it too has been granted. The children with whom I work have taught me to see the drops of oil anointing my head, drops that slow=:J ly heal as we wait.

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all and all and by Thomas Johnson-Medland It was not until recently, during a sermon, that I realized "all and all and all set free" was the phrase we were supposed to have been shouting when we kicked the can, freeing all those in the clutches of the person who was IT. 1 was sure the words were "Ollie, Ollie Ottsin's freed!" Given the mental associations of youth, there is little doubt in my mind that only a few children ever grew up knowing the exact phrase. The rest of us, even when we heard, "All and all and all set free," managed to squeeze it into what we believed was the correct phrase. We shaped it into that which we thought we had known from the beginning. Not only did we not know the actual phrase, but we defended the bastard phrase as if we really knew it was the truth. When the pastor opened her sermon with the words "all and all and all set free," a sudden feeling of recognition and freedom rushed in on me and I sank into my pew and slowly relived all of those tag games in which I had mispronounced the magic formula of release. I sup-

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pose it was a way of correcting the ills of the past. I could heal all the injured phrases by reinserting the correct one. The outcome of each game was not changed; the people who had won still won, and the' people who had lost still lost. But now, in my knowing the phrase anew, all present knowings and all future playings would be part of the healing and correcting of.aIl the past failures, I was given a sense of, "Onward." A sense of, "Go on ahead, everything is going to be corrected. Get on with things." And so, because, on some dismal, rainy day, on the front lawn of Georgie Acker, I heard what I thought to be "Ollie, Ollie Ottsin's freed!" I had successfully blocked out all other possible understandings of the phrase until I heard it drop out of the mouth of the pastor, some tWenty years later. It did not matter that my phrase made absolutely no sense. What mattered was that it was my phrase. What is terribly sad about all of this is that we humans have approached much of life this way. We defend ourselves and our perceptions at the expense of the perceptions of those around us. Weare rarely capable of saying "Oops; I have been saying the wrong thing for all

Summer 1988

that time." Rarely do we hear someone offering us the correct phrase without saying. "Naa na na naa na. You had it all wrong." It seems we grow up playing the same games we did as kids. Sometimes those games are wholesome and bonding; other times they are foul and destructive. I DON'T BEUEVE, for a minute, that Jesus meant for us to act like brats when he said to become as children. He wants us to maintain a sense of purity and acceptance: a childlike innocence. And, I don't think St. Paul meant for us to forget things of childhood when he said he had put them away. He wants us to nurture them and allow them to grow up along with us. He wants our purity and acceptance to grow as we grow, giving it new vocabulary and new parameters as we approach adulthood. I am not sure that I can remember exactly who I thought "Ollie was. The best I can do is imagine some character who had been captured by the IT and then released by some fast-running comrade. I was sure that he had somehow been involved in all of the feelings and actions that we were now going through in the game. It was as if we were playing a game that was modelled after some famous historic event. In shouting his name "Ollie, Ollie Ottsin's freed!" I had supposed we were calling to mind his ancient plight and the feelings which that primal captive would have felt when he was released. The game was an enjoyable way of reenacting a noble piece of folklore. At any rate, when we did get set free, we were ecstatic and had to shout something. So, we shouted old Ollie's name. It was a reminder. It was a cry of victory. I suppose we could have shouted, "I am free," but then we would not have felt the power of the hero whom we emulated. Besides, there was some kind of magical feeling to the name. We could slur it all together and pretend it wasn't a name, but a. secret word in a secret language that gave us power to run away from the prison with more than all our might. THERE EXISTS, SOMEWHERE between the words of Jesus about becoming like a child and those of 5t. Paul about putting away childish things, a pattern of growth that is good not only for the individual, but for the group. There is a way we can grow up and still maintain a connectedness with our childlikeness. A way to allow the wholesome characteristics of our innocence to blossom and flourish on into our adult years. Community is that way. It is living in close proximity with other failing and graced individuals. It is risking and being made to risk, living with people who expose your weakness. It is fmding vulnerability and being made vulnerable, living with people who make you angry. It is by living life with other people, continually, through· good and bad, working things through, that we are rubbed raw enough to remember the purity and the acceptance of the innocent life, and made strong enough, by the presence of God, to live it.

Summer 1988

Without other people and both the lack of control and the accountability that is present because of them, we are left to grow old in palaces of our own design. We mature alone in an unrealistic playground. We waddle through this life with no concern for vital issues. It is because Christ is made present in the gathering together of two or three that we are enabled towards innocence in community. It is because the transcendent One is revealed in community that we sweat and grow. Jesus resides in communities and where he is it is okay to e exposed, vulnerable, accepting, and pure. It is okay because the eternal One does not crush us and sets us free not to crush each other. PEOPLE PIA Y TOGETHER. That's what we do. All our interactions are just playings, games. We can play good games with each other, games that bring us closer together and help each other. Or, we can play bad games with each other, ones that push us farther apart and hurt each other. Games can bring life, games can bring death.

Apart from other people-with the lack of control and accountability that is present because of them-we are left to grow old in palaces of our own design. We mature alone in an unrealistic playground.

Community helps us to realize that our playings, our games, really do have an impact on each other. The things we do do matter. And, as we help and hurt each other in the presence of God we become aware of the seriousness of our play and begin to more tenderly play the games of Jesus. His games are the games that heal. We do hurt each other, and community reveals that we can be cruel at any time. Community reveals that we can be chastened, repentant, and forgiven at any time. What we do in the presence of God, we do to God. What we do in community we do to God. That is community--people gathered together recognizing the presence of God in their midst despite who they are. People living together exposing the uncontainable One contained in frailty. God with us abiding. Not being able to choose and control the ways and areas in which we will find God. God is in the ones we wish to escape, in community; that is pain. IN MY LIFE with Jesus, in my pursuit of spirituality, I have been crying, "Ollie, Ollie Ottsin's freed!" I have been crying, "Isolation! Control! It's me and God in this

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thing together! He dwells in me!" I have been crying a word I did not hear correctly, a word I really did not know. But, recently, I have heard the word more clearly. The word is The word is really "God dwelling in us." "community.)' It is "all of us are in this together." It is the word "all-and-all-and-all-set-free." Weare set free to take care of Christ in the least of these, in those whom we would not choose to have him live in, those who cause us anger, despair, and jealousy. We are set free from trying to have to control where God will dwell. God dwells with us, and because of this we are set free to play with all people in God's presence and to play with God in the presence of all people. For God's presence is hidden among us.

I have been crying a word I did not hear correctly, a word I really did not know. But, recently, I have heard the word more clearly. The word is really "God dwelling in US." The word is "community." It is "all of us are in this together." It is the word "all-andal/-and-a//-set-free." It is within community that we will fmd God. And, when we find God we may not be happy or content with what God asks us to do, but our obedience is the measure of our love. We may not be happy or content with he emotions and actions that flow from our lives within the presence of God, but we need to acknowledge that our response to those we commune with is our response to God. The apostle John said that. "IF ANYONE SAYS 'I love God' but keeps on hating his brother, he is a liar; for if he doesn't love his brother who is right there in front of him, how can he love God whom he has never seen? And God himself has said that a person must love not only God but his brother as well." The words are St. John's, but the message is to us.

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Thomas lohnson-Medland is a group worker at a child~n's home in Pennsylvania. He enjoys hero gardening, running. cooking, backpacking, and reading about the early church and the Hasidic movement.

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