Out of respect for LaVonne and for the difference in our ages, I have tried to change, to be a more contemporary husband, a Third Millennium kind of guy. You’ll have to ask LaVonne how successful I have been. But I have been trying. And that is why, if you come by 10407 Skyflower Drive, you may find me — a sensitive and attentive kind of guy — cooking dinner, vacuuming the living room carpet, or, on rare occasions, sewing on a button.

I’m not great at cooking and cleaning, but basically I know what to do. Many years ago, my mother decided that she would teach her sons as well as her daughters how to feed and clothe a family and keep a house neat and clean. As I worked around the house under her close supervision, she used to say, "You never know what might happen, Wayne, and you had better learn how to manage."

But I was the last of five children, born when she was 42 years old, and maybe that is why she taught my older brothers to sew, but she didn’t teach me. Her family had unexpectedly spread out over 21 years. When I came along — a surprise to everyone — she may have been getting too tired to teach a tag-end child everything he needed to know. That’s a possibility.

As a result, I am a self-taught sewer, and any kind of mending is difficult for me. I don’t know what finger the thimble goes on. I have a lot of trouble putting the thread through the eye of the needle. My stitches are large, and they weave a drunken path across the fabric. When I sew on a button I have no idea which hole the needle will come through — that’s one of those mysteries known only to women and God. I like to have at least one or two threads coming out of every little hole in the button, and it takes me about a yard of thread to accomplish that feat. When I mend anything, I have to say a lot of prayers.

In my office at the university not long ago, I found that my favorite maroon sweater had developed a hole on the shoulder. I recognized the seriousness of the situation and decided to fix it on the spot. In my desk I found one of those sewing kits they used to give away at hotels. The closest match to maroon thread I could find was a fluorescent pink. I threaded the needle with the pink thread and with large and wavering stitches managed to pull the hole into a kind of puckered patch. But that pink thread really stood out on the maroon sweater — it looked as if I had a rose pinned on my shoulder.

With only minutes to go before class, I found a blue Magic Marker in my desk drawer, and turned the pink rose into a purplish, blackish spot. I hoped my students would attribute it to the ordinary messiness of a man my age. Later, I told LaVonne’s mother this story. She laughed and said, "Did you sew that sweater with thread? You should have used yarn. Thread will cut the sweater, and you’ll have a bigger hole than you started out with."

Her words were almost biblical in their directness and vividness.

I thought of a teaching of Jesus that appears in all the synoptic gospels:

Mark 2:21. "No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak: if he does, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and the tear gets worse."

That’s just what happened to the patch on my maroon sweater. One day — zip — the hole just expanded. LaVonne won’t let me wear it in public any more. Its status has been lowered to that of weekend sweater. My mother should have taught me. I should have read my Bible more carefully. I’m not a very good mender.

Any kind of mending is difficult for me.

When I had to start taking care of a house again 11 years ago — just as my mother predicted I might have to do one day — I had a lot of trouble mending or making do in a variety of fields. When I ran out of laundry detergent, I thought I could mend things by substituting dish washing detergent. Soap is soap, right? I poured a cup of lemon Dawn into the washing machine and retired to the study to read a book. About 15 minutes later, I heard something funny, and I went into the laundry room. The washing machine looked like Mount St. Helens in full eruption. The room was covered two feet deep in soap suds, and it was still pouring out.

Any kind of mending is difficult for me

Judge Homer Thornberry and I both became widowed about the same time. I used to run into him at Rylanders. He was an intelligent man, a justice of the 5th District Court of Appeals. But we usually found each other wandering around the store searching for products that hadn’t been made in 30 years, or, if they were still being made, were now relegated to the bottom shelves, out of the way of serious shoppers.

"Where’s the Ovaltine?" I asked Homer.

"Beats me," the judge of the 5th District court of Appeals said. "Do you know whether they make Pepsodent any more?"

"I’m not sure, " I replied. "Maybe they keep it on the same shelf with the Ovaltine."

Tending is difficult. You have to think about it. You have to match things up right. You have to consider the consequences. I’m not good at doing that. Sometimes I’m not sure what a Third Millennium kind of guy should do. Oh, I’ll sew on a button now or then or patch a sweater in an emergency, but otherwise, when things begin to wear out, I just throw them away and don’t tell LaVonne. She’ll ask me where my nice brown socks are, and I’ll say, "Gee, honey, I have no idea."

I wonder what Jesus would have said about that? He wasn’t much in favor of throwing things away. If one sheep out of a hundred got lost, he was in favor of the shepherd’s going looking for it. And if one traveler was left dying on the side of the road, Jesus was in favor of the Good Samaritan’s stopping to pick him up. And if one prodigal son took his inheritance early from his father and wasted it living it up in a distant land, Jesus was in favor of the father’s taking the boy back into the family when he repented and appeared once again at his door.

When you think about it, Jesus was always in favor of saving things, of mending them. That may be why we call him our savior and our redeemer. It seems to me that as followers of Jesus, we ought to emulate him in every way that we can. We ought to be in the saving and mending business too. Lots of the things we throw away could be mended. More people could be mended too, I think. More relationships could be repaired. More spirits could be healed. But how do we do that? How do we mend the fabric of life when it becomes filled with so many holes it looks like a lace tablecloth?

Jesus may have given us some of the answers in our texts today.

One thing that the healing miracles have in common is that Jesus usually asked the person who needed to be healed — the person who needed to be mended — to do something for himself.

In Matthew we read that Jesus said to a paralyzed man carried in on a bed :

"Get up, pick up your bed, and go off home." And the man got up and went home.

Matthew tells us that "a feeling of awe came over the crowd when they saw this, and they praised God for giving such power to men."

The man’s family had brought him to Jesus for help. He needed mending. He wanted to be mended. But Jesus told the man he had to do something himself. Pick up your bed, and go off home. How frightening that must have sounded to the paralyzed man! How could he possibly do that? But he did. In a matter of fact way, the text says — "And the man got up and went home."

A miracle happened, no doubt of that. But in some way the man himself was part of the miracle. He overcame his fears, his pain, his doubts as he acted in concert with the Lord.

In Luke, we read that Jesus said to a man with a withered hand, "Stand up! Come out into the middle." And he came out and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, "I put it to you: is it against the law on the sabbath to do good, or to do evil: to save life, or to destroy it?" Then he looked around at them all and said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He did so, and his hand was better.

Again, the man had to do something for himself. He had to stretch out his withered hand. What courage it took to do that! What pain he must have felt! But when he acted together with the Lord, the power of God came streaming through him, and his hand was better.

In John an entire chapter is devoted to a story about the healing of a man blind from birth. In the story, Jesus touches the man’s eyes with earth and says to him, "Go and wash in the Pool of Siloam." The blind man does the bidding of the Master, and comes away with his sight restored. God did the healing, no doubt about that, but he did it for a man who took the first steps himself.

These stories teach us that when the fabric of life is torn, we can say, "Savior, heal me, mend me." That’s certainly important. But more may be required. The chances are the Lord will ask us to do something for ourselves. That’s part of every miracle of healing. And the question then becomes: Are we ready to make the effort? Are we ready to take the first step?

In these stories Jesus did not say, "Go home and think about things for a while, and if you feel like it check back with me later."

He did not say, "Let’s have lunch on that next week."

Jesus was a now kind of person. He wanted people to commit themselves, he wanted them to act, and he wanted them to act now. When a young man asked to follow Jesus, but said he needed to go home and say goodbye to his family, Jesus sent him on his way and didn’t ask him to come back. When Jesus asked Andrew and Peter to leave their nets and become fishers of men, he didn’t ask them to think it over and keep in touch.. He asked them to join him now.

I don’t know about you, but I have always found this urgency and immediacy in the teachings of Jesus to be a stumbling block.

I know I need to begin my diet again, but not today, Lord, not today.

I know I need to exercise more, but please Lord not right now.

I know I have classes to prepare, books to write, students to encourage, but dear Lord can’t these things wait until I am in a better mood?

I’m afraid they can’t.

When Jesus asks us to get up and walk, or stretch out our hand, or wash away the blindness from our eyes, he wants us to do it now. Somehow now is part of the healing, part of the mending.

Just as important as doing something for ourselves and doing it now, I think, is emulating Jesus in helping others to mend.

My mother strongly believed that when you did something for someone else who needed help it made you feel better. It helped you mend. I had rheumatic fever as a child, and after that, I couldn’t play the strenuous games I had played before. Leading a more restricted life made me cross and grumpy a lot of the time. When my self pity got especially tiresome, my mother sent me to play with Carl, a boy down the street who had had polio and could barely walk, even with the aid of iron braces. When I came home from Carl’s house, I always felt — I don’t know — glad that I had gone to see him, and more content with my own life.

When I broke my knee some years back, my children moved my bed downstairs so I could get around faster and better on my crutches. Nevertheless, it still took time for me to get up and start walking. Sometimes I would hear a knock at the door, but by the time I got there, no one was in sight. Often on the door step I found a little something — a bouquet of flowers, a loaf of bread still warm from the oven, and once a tuna casserole and a brass candlestick. I think those mystery gifts came from some members of this congregation who were in about as bad shape as I was at the time. I can tell you that eating a tuna casserole by the light of a candle in a brass candlestick helped me heal. And I hope that my mysterious benefactors were healed in return.

Jesus himself didn’t need mending. He was whole and complete as no person has ever been or ever will be. But I think he got tired. I think he felt pressed upon by the crowds. I’m sure he needed rest and restoration. But when he was asked to mend someone, he always responded. He gave and gave again. Did he also receive? I think he did. I hope he did.

Helping others mend is a good way to help ourselves.

But sooner or later something happens that can’t be mended. It just happens, and it may be with us as long as we live. The disciples asked:

"Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, for him to have been born blind?" "Neither he nor his parents sinned," Jesus answered. " He was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him."

In other words, the blind man was no different from any of us. His purpose was the same as our purpose, to live so that the works of God might be displayed in us. How do we mend what can’t be mended? How do we live in spite of our troubles? How do we live so that the works of God can be displayed in us?

I’ve thought about these questions in quiet moments, and while I don’t know what the answers may be for you, for me the best answer is prayer. In my darkest times I remember the words of Jesus in his final sermon:

If ye love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever: Even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: But ye know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more, but ye see me: Because I live ye shall live also. At that day, ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.

When I can’t thread a needle or sew on a button ...

When I have put the last possible patch on the maroon sweater...

When I can’t find the Ovaltine at the supermarket...

When my laundry room is under water...

When I finally quit putting things off and begin doing what I know I should do...

When I finally take the first steps toward healing and nothing much seems to happen...

When I help others and I still feel bad...

When nothing seems right and nothing seems to heal or mend...

I go off by myself and pray.

And when I do, something happens. It may not be a miracle. But acceptance comes. Peace comes. Comfort comes. Jesus promised: I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you. He keeps his word. And I arise from my solitude with renewed strength and renewed faith. I arise ready to live again — mended or unmended — in God’s world. I arise as ready as any ordinary Third Millennium guy can be to let the works of God be displayed in him.