May I introduce you to my neighborhood? For two months now I have been burning up the Beltway and 270 coming up to your place two or three times a week. It would seem only fair that you should come down to where I live, if only in your mind’s eye. Let me introduce you to Four Corners.
Four Corners is a rather complex intersection in Silver Spring, where Colesville Road and University Boulevard meet, just north of the Beltway. When you stand there and watch the traffic flowing back and forth, you can see where the name Four Corners comes from. University Boulevard splits into eastbound and westbound lanes, with two islands full of buildings in between, so that there are two sets of corners, all very close to one another. Four Corners.
What you see at Four Corners, where I have lived for almost thirty-seven years, is a metaphor for our world; and a symbol, too, for what the Kingdom of God is about. Imagine it with me.
On one of the four corners is an older shopping center. Built in 1948, it has a mix of chain stores like CVS and Starbucks along with local shops like Woodmoor Pastry (if you want to visit the neighborhood, I will gladly meet you there!).
On another corner is the new Montgomery Blair High School. Once in downtown Silver Spring, this school is built on a tract of land that had nearly been forgotten. It is a gleaming example of public education at its best, even though it became overcrowded as soon as it was built.
On still another corner you will find a row of medical offices. They hide behind lovely plantings and make a subtle but attractive addition to Four Corners, marred only by a service station and a crowded Post Office nearby.
On the fourth of the Four Corners you see a strange hodge-podge of small businesses, ranging from a deli that used to be a storage shed; a mattress store that used to be a pet shop after it was a dairy after it was a service station; a Tex-Mex restaurant that used to be a seafood house so famous that we actually met a man at Oxford University in England who asked us about it; then a pupuseria that used to be a breakfast nook, a kosher meat market that used to be an old-style pharmacy – do you get the picture? Everything on this corner is a usedtobea.
Now remember, I said that the distinguishing mark of Four Corners was that the road split down the middle, creating islands on which there were a number of things – a fast food restaurant, a pizza place that used to be a fire station, a convenience store that used to be a glass shop (there’s that usedtobea theme again!) – and the island also contains a church. A large church sits right in the middle of the road, with traffic whizzing by on all sides, parking lots tucked into tight spaces. Being church in the midst of all this activity and all these diverse things.
I wonder: is this church, located at Four Corners, on an island of isolation? Or is it right where the church must always be, in the center of the world’s life, making a difference? Is this church hiding behind its stained glass, trying to shut out all that is going on around it; or is this church in the center, not only of a busy intersection, but also in the center of the will of God?
I have no information about that United Methodist congregation. But I have tremendous interest in our church on this day that celebrates what God is doing. The Scripture says to us, by the prophet Isaiah, that “the Lord will extend his hand … to recover the remnant that is left of his people … and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” And then the seer of Revelation cries out, as he envisioned what God would finally do, when time shall be no more, “four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds … saying, ‘Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have marked the servants of our God with a seal …’ ”
These prophetic visions, one from Isaiah more than seven hundred years before Christ and the other from John late in the century after Christ, point us to the four corners of the earth and remind us what God is about. He is about gathering the dispersed that belong to Him; He is about holding back the end until the redeemed are sealed. He is about being in the midst of the world, saving and healing. Our God is about redemption. And that is what His people must be about as well.
Now that I have introduced you to my Four Corners neighborhood and have pointed you to those Scriptures that pose our God’s will as gathering and protecting His people from the four corners of the earth, let me use my little metaphor to think with you about Christians in the world, and what God wants to do through us.
I
You will remember that one of my four corners was filled with shops. Businesses of all kinds, from fast food to banking, from dry cleaning to flowers, from pastry to pharmacy, coffee to Chinese, lined up for commerce. Making money is the story of this corner. Businesses that have operated for many years, creating a good living for their owners. If, as Calvin Coolidge once said, “The business of America is business”, you need only go to this one spot to see it in action. Making money is a very large part of the human story.
But therein lies our problem as well. When we make money, we want more. When we prosper, it never seems to be enough. I have done my banking at Four Corners for nigh on to thirty-seven years, and never have I entered that bank building and told them, “I have too much in my account. Take some out and throw it away.” No, for too many years there was almost always more month than money, and I thought I had not a dime to spare.
But I spent my money on the things that I considered to be priority. I took my dollars out of that bank and carried them across the street to the grocery or around the corner to one of the service stations. I expended my hard-earned at the doctor’s office when a child was sick, and I confess that on occasion I indulged a few coins on a Danish at the Woodmoor Pastry Shop. We spend our money on that which is priority.
But when I stand at Four Corners and see the world racing by; when I stand at Four Corners and see that church standing proudly in its midst, I have to wonder whether that church or my church or I myself have our financial priorities straight. Are we spending hugely on ourselves and our creature comforts, so that we can sit on an island of isolation amidst the world’s needs? Or are we giving and spending on mission so that the Lord’s intent to gather the dispersed from the four corners of the earth will become real?
Living at Four Corners makes me realize how easy it is to become obsessed with making money and how little we really do for God’s priorities.
II
But now recall with me that on the second of the four corners at my crowded intersection there is a huge high school. Something like three thousand young people under that roof, getting an education. Young people – children and youth – what an important part of the human story! Is there anything we want more than a good, productive life for our children? Is there anything that demands more of our resources, our love and our energy, than they do?
And yet, I must ask whether we are failing our children. Are we letting them down, are we sending them to self-destruction? Church of Jesus Christ, what are we really doing in mission for young people?
A tale of two high schools and of two churches may make my point. Only a few days ago The Washington Post carried stories about a young man at Coolidge High School in the District. Using his story as a peg on which to hang its conclusions, the newspaper reported not only on this young man’s very slow progress toward graduation; it also reported on the dismal climate within the school. It spoke of gambling in the stairwells, chronic truancy, total disrespect for the teachers, and misuse of funds. If you read it, your response was probably something like, “Why doesn’t somebody step in and fix all that?” But my response was, “Great God, that school is only three short blocks from the church I pastored. Why didn’t we get involved with that school? Why didn’t our church create a dynamic witness among those students? Why did we sit on our island, behind our fortress-like stone walls, and stay isolated from these young people? Great God, we failed them! And we failed our Christ, who loves them.
But, I said, a tale of two churches. Back to Four Corners, my neighborhood, and that church that sits in the island, that church whose front door faces Montgomery Blair High School. Do you know what they have done? They have created a program for high schoolers in trouble. They have put together a ministry for students who have been suspended for misconduct. Instead of suspended students sitting home watching TV or roaming the streets, they can come to this church, keep up with their studies, get some counseling, receive tutoring, and hear the good news! Thank God that somebody’s church saw these kids not as problems but as opportunities! Thank God that the church of Jesus Christ in Four Corners knows that our God is always about the business of gathering in the dispersed from the four corners of the earth and our God is always protecting them from damage.
Oh, brothers and sisters, look at the world of young people, and see what our God wants to do in them. If we fail at this, we fail at everything, for they are the future present. It is no accident that in every country where missionaries serve, they gather children and youth into Bible classes and build schools. They understand what the stakes are; they know what the will of God is. So will we Christians at home sit in isolation on an island, or will we find the young people, standing around on the corners, and embrace them as our greatest joy?
III
But we are only half-way around my Four Corners neighborhood. We’ve looked at the shops where there is money to be made; we’ve marveled at the huge high school, where there are young people to be trained and to be rescued. But then there is the corner with the medical offices. A nice, neat row of medical suites, hiding behind green plantings – unobtrusive, quiet, no advertising, no noise. Just healing going on there. Believe me, as I am only two months away from beginning my eighth decade, having fought off cancer and the shingles virus this past year, I am interested in health. Nor do I begrudge the hundreds of dollars my wife and I spend on health insurance to keep us going.
But as a Christian, do I need to care about others’ health? You may know that health care in this nation has long been a province of the churches. Christians have always found it a priority to care for the sick and the dying. I don’t know about you, but I started out right – I was born in Kentucky BAPTIST Hospital. I never even had a chance to be anything other than a Baptist! Christians have always cared about health. Indeed, our Adult Journey group had a very lively series of discussions over several Sunday nights about health and faith.
Does it not trouble us to know that millions upon millions of the world’s poorest people have almost no access to health care? Does it not give us pause to find that thousands of physicians are leaving Africa and Asia, where they are most needed, to practice medicine in Europe and North America, which are more lucrative?
Does it not worry us that every night, hundreds will die of starvation in a world that has ample resources to feed its population? Yes, I ate my turkey and all the fixins’, because it would not have helped anybody for me to have missed that; but I know that my prayer remembered before God the hungry, the sick, and the dying of this tormented world.
Christians bring health. Missionaries offer medical care. From the Baptist Hospital in Yemen, where several missionaries were martyred a few years back, to the heroic efforts of Dr. Daniel Fountain in Congo, to the chronically filled Baptist Medical Center in Ghana, and in scores of other places, missionaries provide healing for those who would otherwise die. I am proud that my missions gifts pay for that.
It may not be that the church in Four Corners can do very much with the pristine medical offices across the street. It may not be that we will do much to increase access to medical care for this community. But it surely can be and must be that you and I would so share our wealth, our knowledge, and our commitment that the world’s great peoples might have life and life abundant. I wonder if today I am speaking to some young person who is going to study medicine or nursing or dentistry or pharmacy. You can practice that in nice quiet places like Four Corners, Maryland, of course. But you can also practice that at the four corners of the earth, where children are dying and the poor are in chronic pain. John the seer says that the Lord is calling out to the “four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds … saying, ‘Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have marked the servants of our God with a seal …’ ” Do no damage; do no harm. Heal.
IV
Money to share, youth to train, health to provide. But to me the most poignant of all the corners at Four Corners is the one I described as full of usetobeas. You remember, the deli that used to be a storage shed, the mattress store that used to be a pet shop that used to be a dairy that used to be a gas station. And all the other usedtobeas on that block. They speak to me of transition. They send me a message about change.
New peoples have come to Four Corners, and so the Maryland seafood place became a Tex-Mex eatery. Different religions have come to Four Corners, and so the old pharmacy now handles kosher meats and Jewish delicacies. Indians operate the gasoline station, and what used to be the country kitchen sells Peruvian pupusas. New peoples, new ways of living, differences.
I wonder about that church across the way, in that island. Do they reach out to the Spanish-speaking cooks and waitresses? Can they connect with the Indian mechanic? Are they able to share Christ with the Jewish merchant? Or are they isolated on that island, just doing church as it has always been done, usedtobea dynamic church, but now reaching only those who are already half-Christian anyway?
I say again, I have no information about what our Methodist brothers and sisters have done in Four Corners. But I have all the interest in the world in probing what we are doing, in our slice of the world. For if we are interested in international missions and sharing the gospel across the world, then surely we must also have an interest in missions in this place. Surely we must also care about those who live in our small corner. Surely we must brighten the corner where we are. It makes no sense to give money to missions and then to ignore the mission field that has come to our very doorstep.
Oh, I pray God today for an impassioned outreach spirit among us. With all that we are doing, with all the fine things that are going on, there is still the issue of how much we reach out and share the good news. With all the money that is being gathered, with all the efforts to support work in Kenya and Liberia and other places, there is still a primary issue: will we stand on an isolated island, making ourselves comfortable? Or will we throw open our arms to embrace those who have come to these corners?
The Scripture says to us, by the prophet Isaiah, that “the Lord will extend his hand … to recover the remnant that is left of his people … and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” If we would honor Christ as King, then we must share in this gathering from the four corners.
The seer of Revelation cries out, as he envisioned what God would finally do, when time shall be no more, “four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds … saying, ‘Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have marked the servants of our God with a seal …’ ” If we are to see our Christ reign forever and ever, we must live at the four corners. We must give and teach and heal and share. Give and teach and heal and share. These are the four corners where we are to live.
