February 19, 2012 | 8:00 a.m.

The Faith of Friends

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 41
Isaiah 43:18–25
Mark 2:1–12

We belong to Christ by belonging to each other. We have no choice in the matter. Some of our brothers and sisters we may like; others we may dislike. But they belong to us and we belong to them. Through them we move closer to him.

Robert Raines

Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple is set in the first half of the twentieth century, before the civil rights movement. It features a strong friendship between two African American women, Celie and Shug. Celie has had a rough life as a Southern black woman virtually sold into a life of servitude to her brutal husband. She had an image of God as an old white man with a long white beard and blue eyes.

At one point Celie said to Shug, “What God do for me?”

Shug responded as if shocked, “Celie! . . . He gave you life, good health, and a good woman that love you to death.”

“Yeah,” Celie said, “and he give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won’t ever see again. Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like any other mens I know. Trifling, forgetful, and lowdown. . . . All my life I never care what people thought ’bout nothing I did. . . . But deep in my heart I care about God. What he going to think. And come to find out, he don’t think. Just sit up there glorifying in being deef, I reckon. But it ain’t easy, trying to do without God. Even if you know he ain’t there, trying to do without him is a strain.”

Shug says, “I is a sinner . . . ’cause I was born. I don’t deny it. But once you find out what’s out there waiting for us, what else can you be?”

Celie responds, “Sinners have more good times.”

“You know why?” Shug asks.

“’Cause you ain’t all the time worrying bout God,” Celie said.

“Naw, that ain’t it. Us worry ’bout God a lot. But once us feel loved by God, us do the best us can to please him with what us like.”

Celie says, “You telling me God love you, and you ain’t never done anything for him? I mean, not go to church, sing in the choir, feed the preacher and all like that?”

“But if God love me, Celie, I don’t have to do all that. Unless I want to. There’s a lot of other things I can do that I speck God likes.”

“Like what?” Celie asks.

“Oh,” says Shug, “I can lay back and just admire stuff. Be happy. Have a good time. . . . Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God. . . .

“Here’s the thing . . . I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even when you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for.”

Celie asks, “But what do it look like?”

Shug answers, “Don’t look like nothing. It ain’t a picture show. It ain’t something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything. . . . Everything that ever is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found it. . . . My first step away from [seeing God as] the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was.”

Celie reflected, “Well, us talk and talk bout God, but I’m still adrift. Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?). Not the little wildflowers. Nothing.”

Shug says, “You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything at all. . . . Whenever you try to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost. . . . Conjure up flowers, wind, water, a big rock.” (Alice Walker, The Color Purple, pp. 164–168)

This exchange between two friends is one of the best depictions I know of one person nurturing another in the faith. Shug not only challenged Celie’s image of God as an old white man, but taught her about God’s grace, what it feels like to be close to God, and how to pray and please God. It wasn’t easy for Celie to imagine and relate to God in such new ways. Celie reports, “This hard work, let me tell you. He been there so long, he don’t want to budge. He threaten lightening, floods, and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock. I throw it. Amen” (Alice Walker, The Color Purple, pp. 164–168).

We all struggle sometimes with who God is really and how do I pray when I’m not sure anyone is even listening and does God really forgive me or have the power to heal or shape how history unfolds? We need friends in times of doubt and confusion to carry us in faith.

In the story we read from Mark, that’s literally what we find: four friends are carrying a paralyzed man on a stretcher, in faith that Jesus will heal him. They are incredibly persistent. The house where Jesus is speaking is so crowded with people that folks are spilling out on the street, and they can’t get in through the door. Undeterred, the four friends climb on top of the house, remove the roof, dig through the adobe, and lower down their friend into the room where Jesus is. Hopefully that roof was not too difficult to repair! Jesus is impressed with the faith of these four friends. He does indeed heal the paralytic, but not because of anything obvious about the man himself. Jesus is impressed with the belief and effort and ultimate commitment of the friends who carried and brought the man to him. The Bible says Jesus healed the man when he saw the faith of the four friends.

Conviction is contagious. We can get caught up and carried by the power of others’ faith and determination. We see this in the world of sports. Watch the Chicago Bulls and see how Derrick Rose’s resolve to win not only energizes his own playing, but that of the whole team. We find this in the arena of health and healing. Much research has verified that when someone who is struggling with an illness or recovering from surgery focuses the mind on positive thoughts, visualizing oneself whole, it contributes to the healing process. And there have been studies done that showed that patients who were prayed for, regardless of whether they knew it or not, healed better than patients for whom there was no intentional specific prayer for them by others.

I’m grateful that this is true. In my own life, the times I have been least inclined to pray are when I myself am ill, discouraged, or tired. In such seasons, most of my energy goes toward coping physically and mentally. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, it was such a boost to me spiritually to receive cards and emails from many of you with promises that you would pray for me. We need others to pray for us when we cannot find the words or will to pray for ourselves. God hears the faith of our friends who lift up intercessions on our behalf. We need to come to worship where, as Shug said to Celie, we can share God with each other. When our own mouths are mute, we are carried by others who sing hymns of praise and say the words of the creeds and pray for our world.

I was recently introduced to an amazing Christian organization called International Justice Mission. One of our members, Pamela Gifford, works for them. International Justice Mission is a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation, and other forms of violent oppression. Their lawyers, investigators, and aftercare professionals work with local governments to ensure victim rescue, to prosecute perpetrators, and to promote functioning public justice systems.

Three hundred Christian lawyers, criminal investigators, social workers, and advocates in this organization now work with local law-enforcement officials in twelve countries on behalf of individuals in need: bonded laborers, children who have been sold into prostitution, widows who have had their land seized, and poor people who languish in jail for crimes they did not commit.

Few law firms act like this one, however, for it begins each workday by assembling for thirty minutes of silence and “prayerful preparation.” Another prayer session is held at eleven. Gary Haugen, the founder of International Justice Mission, wanted the organization to be explicitly Christian. One of the reasons was that the prayers offered by the church community had proven to “make a difference in human history.”

Haugen knows that the mission’s religious identity is discomfiting to non-Christians, but he says that he doesn’t have the strength to do this work without a religious foundation. “I don’t know how to do it another way,” he said. “The circumstances afford no generosity for those who bring only good intentions, the best of motives, or the most tender of hearts. . . Without a fierce commitment to the sharpest standards in operational and tactical excellence, we do not honor God” (Samantha Power, “The Enforcer: A Christian Lawyer’s Global Crusade,” New Yorker, 19 January 2009).

Serving God is more than just praying for the victims of cruelty; they have to use the law to help rescue people. “This is not a God who offers sympathy, best wishes,” he wrote. “This is a God who wants evildoers brought to account and vulnerable people protected—here and now!”

In a recent speech, Gary Haugen quoted a song by Peter Gabriel with the lyric “The Book of Love Is Long and Boring.” He described how tedious and drawn out the efforts of lawyers were in countries where one might travel a long distance to get to the nearest courtroom, only to discover upon arrival that the hearing was canceled that day and not rescheduled until many months later. This can go on for years. It takes an extended period of time and much stick-to-itiveness to finally shut down an operation that is sexually exploiting children or enslaving the poor in hard labor. The efforts of International Justice Mission show how much resolve these Christians have. His staff are indeed bringing healing and justice to people who had given up hope of ever being freed from inhumane treatment. Jesus would be impressed with the faith of these friends. Their commitment, their prayers, their persistent action is unleashing the power of the Holy Spirit.

So let us be good friends to one another, sharing God with one another, offering the gift of our faithful prayers and persistent actions. We are, indeed, instruments of Christ’s healing presence. Amen.