The Angel with the Red Mittens

A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Paul Debenport

September 27, 2009

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Hear God’s Word to us from Mark 9: 33-37:

Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?”  But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.  He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.  Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Hear, too, God’s Word from Mark 10: 13—16:

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them.  But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.  Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”  And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

The Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God!

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Whom do you stoop to serve?  Whom do you hold up in high esteem?

Mister Rogers, the late Fred Rogers, is one of those people whom I hold up as a role model, for he really got it, and lived it, that “as such as these children is the kingdom of God.”  Unfortunately, I never got to meet him personally, but a clergy colleague of mine did and later described it this way:  “I was standing with a group of adults and several small children waiting for an elevator at Princeton Seminary.  The doors opened, and to our great surprise, out stepped Fred Rogers.  As the adults all spoke to him, he completely ignored us and stooped down to address the children standing there first.  Only after he had spoken to each one of them did he stand back up and speak to the taller people in the room.  Other folks who knew him well told me that was always his pattern.  A tall man, he regularly stooped down to see the world at the same level as children did, and that is part of what made him the great interpreter of the world to children that he was.”[1]

Jesus’ disciples stood tall, all caught up in deciding who was going to get the corner office and who would have the most power and prestige in Jesus’ kingdom.  But Jesus told them to stoop, to bend their knees and their egos, to get Godly perspective from a child’s level, wheel chair level, sickbed level, welfare line level.  And then he holds up a child as their role model and tells them that to God greatness is for those who see, perceive, welcome, and serve “the least of these,” as Matthew’s gospel puts it.

But then he startles them [and us] even more by proclaiming that the kingdom of God is to be found and experienced from the children and all who seem lower, shorter, less than.  A story proclaims this truth best.  So here’s a true story of the power to heal, and even transform, that children all of “the least of these” can have. There are three people in the story.  First, is the Doctor, my dear friend, who has given me permission to share this, hoping it will be encouraging to all who hear and read it.  The second is the Artist, and the third is the child I’m calling The Angel with the Red Mittens.

The Artist is a woman in her mid twenties, a college graduate from an Ivy League university.  Her mother died just before she graduated from college, and she sank into a deep depression.  Soon thereafter she left her father and home and started wandering the country, eventually landing here.  In her words, “I just wanted to leave all the sadness behind.”  Unable to get work, homeless, sleeping at someone’s bare apartment to survive, eventually her mental state deteriorated into Bi-polar disorder.  The saints at the St. Martin’s center here provided her much needed help, including therapy with the volunteer Doctor, a Psychiatrist.  With medication and months of therapy with the Doctor, she was slowly improving and was at least beginning to think about going home to her father in New England.

When this happened, the Doctor was near or even beyond physical, mental, and spiritual exhaustion.  He was commuting five days a week to the State Hospital in Las Vegas for his full time therapist’s job, which was exhausting enough.  But he was also volunteering on his day off at St. Martin’s center here, seeing 10 to 20 patients a day.

The day this happened was a cold, dreary, drizzly, dark, depressing winter day.  Fatigue had set into the Doctor’s bones, discouragement into his spirit, and he was slipping into the gloom, this day feeling especially helpless, hopeless, even worthless, not really helping anyone heal.  As he put it, quoting an old children’s song, “I just felt like I should ‘eat worms and die.’”

But, still, he grabbed his bag of sample medications and headed down to St. Martin’s anyway.  Now I’ll quote his words:  “I was driving down Second Street and stopped behind a gray car at the light at Osuna.  Looking out the window of the back seat of the car ahead of me was a little girl with a wool cap and red mittens.  She put her hand up and waved at me.  I waved back.  Then she smiled a big smile that burst through the window and spilled into my soul.  It was like the Holy Spirit washed over me and shattered my gloom.  It changed my whole attitude, my whole being!  It was a miracle!”[2]

But the miracle didn’t stop there.  It kept on giving, as I hope it is today.  When the doctor got to St. Martin’s, the first person he saw was the Artist.  Since she, too, struggled with darkness, he told her of this remarkable experience that had just transformed his attitude and spirit.  It brightened her spirit as well, though at the time the Doctor didn’t know how powerful it was for her.  But a month later, when the Doctor came into St. Martin’s, the Artist was waiting for him with a rare smile.  “I’m able to do art again,” she proudly said—her face beaming.  She then unrolled the paper she was holding and said, “I made this for you,” and presented him with her charcoal drawing of The Angel with the Red Mittens waving through a car’s rear window.  Then, more poignantly than any preacher, she said, “It’s just amazing how God’s love comes from one person to another.  We never know how God can use us to lift the heavy soul up.”  Then she gave him—and now us—the hand lettered poem she had written to go with the drawing:

Even on the coldest darkest days

Keep watch for mittens and a child’s wave.

God’s eyes, God’s hands, God’s heart,

God’s voice, God’s light, God’s love

Is never far away.

Amen.

At the Benediction:

There’s actually more to the events of The Angel with the Red Mittens, which neither the Doctor nor I are making up.  A month or two after this all happened, on a bright, clear morning, the Doctor walked to end of his driveway to get the morning paper.  And there, lying by the edge of the road, was, yes, a pair of red mittens.  Make of this what you want, but the Doctor took it to mean that God recognized the power of what happened, and that we shouldn’t forget that God’s love comes from many people.

Therefore, let us go, by God’s grace, knowingly and un-knowingly, to be The Angel with the Red Mittens and, again by God’s grace, to recognize and receive a transforming blessing from some known or unknown Angel with the Red Mittens.

Go in peace and courage and joy with the blessing of

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Amen.