Sermons

Dec 31 - The Rev. Christopher McLaren - God, Shoe Repair, and the Incarnation

Listen to audio version of this sermon.

I Christmas
Title: God, Shoe Repair, and the Incarnation
Text: John 1: 1-18

One of the perennial challenges of Christmas is to try to wrap our hearts and minds around the mystery of the incarnation-- the scandal of God taking on human flesh in order to heal his won beloved creatures. The challenge is that each of us needs to be able to tell that story in our own way. For I believe that Incarnation is in the very structure of the universe. It is how God works and so hints of it can be found all around us. So here is my rather strange attempt at doing so which I hope will tease your mind into active thought concerning that glorious mystery of the incarnation. My story/sermon is entitled: God, Shoe Repair and the Incarnation.

If you’re a bit thrifty like I am, or if your wife happens to be quite fond of footwear you may have had cause to visit a shoe repair shop. Normally I find my trips to these establishments rather routine. Shoe repair shops are quite often rather dull and efficient places, busy with the tasks of putting on new buckles, re-soling, refinishing, and sometimes doing related work like fixing purses or luggage. However, when we lived in Austin, Texas for a few years I discovered a most unusual shoe repair shop -- a shoe repair shop so exasperatingly interesting that it led me to reflect upon the nature of Incarnation and what in fact was going on there. Let me tell you about my experience at Rowell’s Shoe Repair.

As I was in the market for a shoe repair shop, I was thrilled when I noticed that there was one in our neighborhood. So one day late in the summer, I loaded 3 pairs of my wife’s shoes into the car and headed out on what has become more of an adventure than I ever imagined. When I entered the house turned shoe repair shop, I knew that this was no ordinary shoe repair business. On the counter in front of me there was a mound, a mountain, a heaping pile of all kinds of shoes stacked like a winter’s supply of wood, tier upon tier of sandals, boots, sneakers, dress shoes, loafers, flip flops, pumps, flats, and more. I was amazed at the jumble of footwear on the counter. I had never seen this kind of organizational method used before in any of the shoe repair shops I had visited. When I managed to take my eyes off the huge pile of shoes, I began to look around the room. There were shoes everywhere one looked of all sizes, shapes and colors simply strewn about the room in front of the counter and behind it. Odd pieces of luggage were piled in one corner of the room, while another was filled with all manner of boots. There was also the familiar heady smell of old leather, shoe polish, and foot odor. The place was a mess with shoes everywhere, odd bits of merchandise crammed into corners, and a noticeable layer of dust. The thought crossed my mind that this place would send Martha Stewart screaming to her therapist’s office.

Behind the counter overflowing with shoes sat a stocky anxious looking man who, despite the chaos that surrounded him, smiled and focused intently on each customer as if memorizing their face. And while he was certainly a busy person, he appeared kind, attentive and had a certain brightness in his eyes.

Having entered the shop, I began to have qualms about whether I should actually leave the shoes for repair. Would I ever see them again? What kind of a shoe repair shop was this? Where were the neat little numbered slots or shelves making order out of the conglomeration of so many people’s beloved modes of mobility? There were no signs in sight, no prices posted, no neat displays of shoelaces and no polishing brushes. Setting the shoes reluctantly on the counter, the anxious man looked intently at both me and the shoes themselves as if peering into the depths of both, looking for the connection between the two.

Of course, there was the usual ordinariness about the exchange. He asking me what I wanted done to each pair, telling me the price of the repair, and giving advice about the wisdom of the work requested. He put a tag on one of the shoes in each pair on which he wrote, or scribbled I should say, my name and phone number. He then gave me an approximate time when the work would be complete and I left, wondering what would happen. I had no claim check in my hand and wondered about the prudence of entrusting my wife’s shoes to the mysterious man in the midst of this chaos.

I returned a week later to pick up the shoes. The counter was, once again, piled high with shoes. The chaos had not noticeably changed, but I saw a man pick up and pay for his boots. That gave me hope. It came as no surprise to me that the shoes were not ready. The friendly and openly apologetic proprietor assured me that they would be ready in a few days. I left the shop wondering again whether I would really ever see those shoes again or whether he really ever repaired any. Who did the repair work if he was at the counter all day long? Had I willingly given my wife’s shoes over to oblivion?

I returned a week or so later to discover once again that the shoes were not yet ready. But, for some reason I was not upset or angry. I was, in fact, expecting the message I received and yet I was somehow strangely reassured, even amused realizing that I had somehow left the technical efficiency of our age behind when I entered this home turned shoe repair shop. The anxious man remembered me and to my surprise the shoes I had left. In what seemed to me a black hole, where shoes disappeared for good, I sensed the beginnings of something relational, something foreign and unknown in the modern efficiency of “normal” shoe repair shops. I left the shop with renewed promises of the shoes being ready the next day and encouragement to call and check on the work. I was a swirl of thoughts and feelings. Why was I not getting angry at this obvious lack of efficiency? What was so amusing about this chaotic shoe repair shop? Why did so many people put up with this obviously flawed system of shoe repair? The ways of this repair shop were certainly not my ways. And to be sure his time schedule was not my time schedule. I would have had those shoes done weeks ago with a message left on the answering machine. I found that the whole experience began to play with my own sense of time and I began to anticipate the day when I would actually receive the repaired shoes. When would the mysterious time of the shoe repair shop connect with my own time? I began to live in a kind of wild hope, talking with my wife about the possibility of the shoes actually being repaired, already waiting for us to retrieve them. In short, despite some evidence to the contrary, I began to believe in the shoe repair shop and in Steve the owner whom I had begun to know. I began to have a strange confidence that my shoes were in good hands -- trustworthy hands.

Several weeks later I returned to the shop. There was a line of people in front of me at the counter going through the ritual of leaving shoes with Steve the owner; the woman in front of me had 20 pairs of sandals (yes 20 in different colors) that needed to be repaired, another entrusted his favorite cowboy boots, and a young man needed taps put on his shoes for a dance class at UT by the end of the week. I silently wondered about the chaos and expectation of the place. When I approached the counter, Steve recognized me and greeted me with the same anxious brightness that I was used to. He remembered the shoes, checked my last name and disappeared into the back of the shop.

In his absence, I began reading a newspaper article about the shop. I was surprised to learn that Steve was no ordinary shoe repairman (excuse the sexist language) but that he was in fact a Master Boot Maker who had purchased this little repair shop planning to make custom boots while doing some repair work on the side for steady income. He was an artist of great skill and accomplishment. However, the demand for shoe repair soon overwhelmed him and he had to hire other employees to keep up. In short, this Master Craftsman had found himself in the repair business and because of the demand had given himself to the task. An artist, he had chosen to dedicate much of his time and from the looks of the counter, more, to the ordinary work of repair. There was something of sacrifice in it. And sacrifice almost always means affection. Steve emerged from the back smiling carrying two pairs of the shoes, explaining the problems with the third. We talked for a while about where I went to school. He knew others at both the seminaries down the road, professors and students. He had talked to them and knew them and the shoes they needed repaired. In the midst of the chaos of the shoe repair shop I was happy about the personal nature of coming to this shop for repairs. There was something wonderful about not being a number in some computer system and of having an actual relationship with the Master Craftsman running the repair shop. Pondering this story, I realized I knew another story about a Master Craftsman – A World Making Artisan:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. John 1:1-4

But what was really strange about the story as I continued to ponder it, was that, just like the Master Boot Maker turned shoe repairman, the World Making Artisan also found himself in the repair business in a very personal way – through incarnation.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. … And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. John 1:11…16

The Incarnation – the holiness of God made available in the here and now, in the flesh of Jesus. The Master Artisan healing and repairing his creation by entering into its chaos in an unexpected, unimaginable, and extremely personal way.

For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven. By the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.(Nicene Creed)

I left the shoe repair shop delighted; happy to have two pairs of shoes fixed and in my own hands, happy not be a number but to know and be known by the Master Artisan; happy that the Master Artisan would bother to lower himself to embrace the repair business; happy about Incarnation, in all of its heady, hilarious, everyday mysteriousness; happy that Salvation continues, that souls are still healed, that the work of the Master Creator is far from finished; happy to find more repair work for the Word made flesh whatever the timetable; happy to discover anew the World Making-soul healing-life-giving face of the Most High God in the infant Jesus.

For this child in the manager is not only Mary’s child but child of God. And this child in the Manger is not only small innocent but also the Maker of Heaven and Earth. For this child in the manger is not only weak and vulnerable but the healer of body and soul of all who embrace him, of all who take him into their arms, into the manger of their souls. For incarnation is not something that happened long ago. It is God’s saving power that continues to happen here and now, in the timeless moment of God’s eternity. Amen