Loading...I’m in an online book club. We met last Sunday afternoon to discuss Madeline L’Engle’s book A Wrinkle in Time. When we were done, I decided to read the next in the four-book series, A Wind in the Door, and read it all by the end of the afternoon on Monday. I didn’t think it would become sermon prep for me, but as I was reading the climactic moments where lives were in the balance, with tears in my eyes I recognized the depth of Jesus’ words, “Blessed are you.”
If you aren’t familiar with this little series of four books, or you haven’t read them in a very long time, let me remind you a bit about them.
The stories are about the Murry family. Mom and Dad are scientists. They have four children. At the beginning of the series, the twins, Dennys and Sandy, are in high school. Meg, the main character in the book, is in middle school. And Charles Wallace is a brilliant preschooler who possesses unique abilities that allow him to hear and feel what his mother and sister, and sometimes others, are experiencing, thinking, and feeling. You might consider him an empath on steroids.
L’Engle wrote these books for children and young adults, providing a bit of fantasy and science fiction blended with spirituality that focuses on the depth of love, which she identifies as the healer of what is broken.
In A Wind in the Door, Charles Wallace is now in elementary school and he becomes dangerously, and mysteriously ill. Their mother has found the existence of an organism smaller than mitochondria that she identifies as farandolae, which seems to have something to do with Charles Wallace’s illness.
To be clear, this is a science fiction book and L’Engle took some liberties when she created the farandolae, which isn’t a scientific name for anything, but their presence in the story is important.
I’m not going to go into much more of the book’s story, instead I want to talk about the interdependence, the symbiotic nature of mitochondria and the fictitious farandolae—and eventually share how I perceive them to be pertinent to our readings from Micah and the Gospel today.
I first heard of mitochondria in Star Wars movies. I didn’t know then that these are real things. I did a little research this week and learned that according to the National Human Genome Research Institute, mitochondria are “membrane-bound cell organelles (…) that generate most of the chemical energy needed to power the cell's biochemical reactions.”[1]
And while farandolae are not real, there is another cell, identified as Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which, according to the National Library of Medicine “is the source of energy for use and storage at the cellular level.”[2] These two cells, mitochondria and ATP need one another to help our bodies do what they need to do.
She may not have known about ATP at the time, but L’Engle was aware that there was something smaller than mitochondria that was necessary for energy in our bodies.
Curiously, L’Engle’s choice of the word farandolae may have been more about the physical behavior of the cell than the purpose of it. You see, while it isn’t a word for anything in science, it is a lot like another word that describes what could evolve into a frenetic dance. According to Merriam Webster, the farandole is “a lively Provençal dance in which men and women hold hands, form a chain, and follow a leader through a serpentine course,” which is just the way she described the organism’s collective nature in her story. <But I digress.>
Our reading from Micah ends with one of the most quoted verses of the Old Testament: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8) The choir will be singing an anthem with this verse as its message this morning.
Our Gospel is one of the most beloved of Jesus’s speeches where he lists the blessed are you or blessed are they who (dot, dot, dot) for they shall (dot, dot, dot).
It seems to me that it is much easier to follow the Lord’s requirements found in Micah, when we recognize the truth in the beatitudes we find in Matthew.
In the book, Meg struggled with loving one of the other characters because he was kind of a pain in her side. Even though Mr. Jenkins was now the elementary school principal, he had been her principal the previous year. He didn’t seem to have a lot of compassion for her in A Wrinkle in Time and was impatient with her as she tried to protect Charles Wallace in this second book.
As a result, it took a lot of effort for her to find something in him she could respect, something that gave her the ability to see his dignity, that would give her a reason to believe he had worth and value in her life.
It took her letting go of her own “self,” to become less self-centered and self-absorbed (even though she is a teenager) to see that someone else’s existence was integral to her own. It was hard for her to comprehend that they held a symbiotic relationship and needed one another—needed to be interdependent upon one another—for their own survival.
This is the part of the book that made me tear up. Maybe it was because of all the news coming from Minnesota. Maybe it is about seeing how easy it is for some to treat people poorly when they are afraid, unfamiliar, or uncomfortable with what they do not know or understand. Maybe it was that there are times even I have a hard time recognizing the value, worth, and dignity of someone when they have hurt me.
Maybe it is human nature to want to see what we want to see when what we need to see could change our opinion. Could change us.
Meg felt Mr. Jenkins had treated her poorly when he refused to recognize her for who she was or for what she was going through. She was a young teenager, and we all know how hard those years can be, but even Meg’s life was more complicated than many other kids her age. She had felt judged and shunned by him and her peers. She knew she was different, that her family was different, but she believed each person in her family deserved to be respected.
Yet she didn’t quite see that she was doing the same thing to him. Judging him without knowing him. It was hard for her to acknowledge that this man who misunderstood her and, it felt to her, who was trying to make her life miserable, that he could have done anything good or nice enough for him to matter to someone else.
Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to find the good, the value, the beloved-ness in someone else when our own experiences or the media create a specific frame of reference about them.
Sometimes we need to suspend our own vision and expectation that the way others behave or believe or live or belong—and allow their experiences, their cultures, their pain, their joy, and their stories to be just as true as our own.
Sometimes, we need to allow God to show us what it means to seek justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly. Especially when we can see that all of us can fit into Jesus’s list of who needs to be blessed when they, and we, are feeling poor in spirit, or are in mourning; when we may feel meek, or when we hunger and thirst for righteousness. Especially when we, and they, are pure in heart, are peacemakers, and are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.
Jesus reminds us that we need each other. That our purpose is to love each other. That our job is to see the blessedness in everyone.
Meg had to work hard to understand that Mr. Jenkins was integral, and like the farandolae to the mitochondria, could be part of the symbiotic nature of her personal universe.
She had to learn how to love him for simply being him: a man, trying to do his best for the children in his care. He, too, she came to understand, is a beloved child of God, faults and all. Once she could see that, once she understood that love encompasses respect and dignity and justice and intrinsic value, only then could she see the bigger picture. Only then could she recognize the importance and relevance of his presence in her life.
It was that recognition that helped to save her beloved brother Charles Wallace from death. She figured out that we need each other and, though this is my interpretation, when we have that realization, we might understand what it means to love God and to love one another as God loves us.
When Jesus gives the disciples this list of blessed are they or blessed are you, he is telling them, and we are reminded thousands of years later that through this list of unexpected characteristics, that God created each of us and we are all a part of a bigger picture. Even and especially when we might not understand it, or we may feel hurt or afraid or confused, we are part of one another. We need one another.
Sometimes we need to be the helper and other times we are the ones who need to be helped. Our purpose, just like everyone’s purpose, creates a symbiotic world of organisms and cells, like farandolae to the mitochondria, that rely on one another for energy to make sure we stay alive. That feels a lot like love.
Blessed are they who recognize the value, dignity, and inherent worth, especially in others who are different than they are, for they will find the value, dignity, and inherent worth within themselves and help to heal the world. Amen.
[1] https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Mitochondria
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK553175/
