Mrs. Turpin's Revelation

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Akansas
December 10, 2006; Second Sunday of Advent, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Baruch 5:1-9) -- Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God. Put on the robe of the righteousness that comes from God; put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting; for God will show your splendor everywhere under heaven. For God will give you evermore the name, "Righteous Peace, Godly Glory."

Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height; look toward the east, and see your children gathered from west and east at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that God has remembered them. For they went out from you on foot, led away by their enemies; but God will bring them back to you, carried in glory, as on a royal throne. For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God. The woods and every fragrant tree have shaded Israel at God's command. For God will lead Israel with joy, in the light of his glory, with the mercy and righteousness that come from him.

(Luke 3:1-6) In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
'Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"
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A reading from Baruch:
Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God. Put on the robe of the righteousness that comes from God; put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting; for God will show your splendor everywhere under heaven. For God will give you evermore the name, "Righteous Peace, Godly Glory."

A reading from Flannery O'Connor:
"If it's one thing I am," Mrs. Turpin said with feeling, "it's grateful. When I think who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got, a little of everything, and a good disposition besides, I just feel like shouting, 'Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!' It could have been different!" ...At the thought of this, she was flooded with gratitude and a terrible pang of joy ran through her. "Oh thank you, Jesus, Jesus, thank you!" (Revelation, from The Complete Stories, p. 488f)

Mrs. Turpin felt especially grateful because she wasn't like other people. "Sometimes Mrs. Turpin occupied herself at night naming the classes of people. On the bottom of the heap were most colored people, not the kind she would have been if she had been one, but most of them; then next to them -- not above, just away from -- were the white-trash; then above them were the home-owners, and above them the home-and-land owners, to which she and Claud belonged. Above she and Claud were people with a lot of money and much bigger houses and much more land. But here the complexity of it would begin to bear in on her, for some of the people with a lot of money were common and ought to be below she and Claud and some of the people who had good blood have lost their money and had to rent and then there were colored people who own their homes and land as well."

In the doctor's waiting room where she had brought Claud because of the ulcer on his leg, it was easy for her to place all the people. There was the "thin leathery old woman in a cotton print dress. She and Claud had three sacks of chicken feed in their pump house that was in the same print. ...(T)he child belonged with the old woman. She could tell by the way they sat -- kind of vacant and white-trashy, as if they would sit there until Doomsday if nobody called and told them to get up."

Mrs. Turpin engaged herself in conversation exclusively with a "well-dressed gray-haired lady" who was obviously a fine woman like herself. They discussed how difficult it is to get good niggers to pick cotton. When the white-trash woman pronounced that they should all be sent back to Africa, Mrs. Turpin allowed as to how that probably wouldn't work. Then she changed the topic to instruct upon the virtue of keeping pigs very clean, spraying them daily, as she does, on the concrete floor of their pen.

Throughout the conversations Mrs. Turpin was troubled by the ugly girl who made ugly faces at her. The girl didn't seem to fit into any of the categories. She was the daughter of the well-dressed gray-haired lady, and she kept staring rudely at Mrs. Turpin apparently because the conversation was interrupting her reading of a textbook titled Human Development. Embarrassed by her daughter's unsocial behavior, the mother explained that she was a student. "'Mary Grace goes to Wellesley College,' she explained... 'In Massachusetts,' she added with a grimace. 'And in the summer she just keep right on studying... I think she ought to get out and have fun.' The girl looked as if she would like to hurl them all through the plate glass window."

A reading from Luke:
The word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiving of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord'"

"'I think the worst thing in the world,' said the girl's mother, 'is an ungrateful person. To have everything and not appreciate it. I know a girl,' she said, 'who has parents who would give her anything, a little brother who loves her dearly, who is getting a good education, who wears the best clothes, but who can never say a kind word to anyone, who never smiles, who just criticizes and complains all day long.'"

That's the beginning of the conversation that led Mrs. Turpin to the exclamation that we opened with. "If it's one thing I am, ...it's grateful. When I think who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got, a little of everything, and a good disposition besides, I just feel like shouting, ...'Oh thank you, Jesus, Jesus, thank you!' she cried aloud.

"The book struck her directly over her left eye. It struck almost at the same instant that she realized the girl was about to hurl it. Before she could utter a sound, the raw face came crashing across the table toward her, howling. The girl's fingers sank like clamps into the soft flesh of her neck. She heard the mother cry out and Claud shout, 'Whoa!' There was an instant when she was certain that she was about to be in an earthquake."

The doctor and nurse intervened, controlling the girl and administering a long needle and syringe to her. But before she yielded to sleep, the girl looked fiercely into Mrs. Turpin's eyes. "There was no doubt in (Mrs. Turpin's) mind that the girl did know her, knew her in some intense and personal way, beyond time and place and condition. 'What you got to say to me?' she asked hoarsely and held her breath, waiting, as for a revelation.

"The girl raised her head. Her gaze locked with Mrs. Turpin's. 'Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog,' she whispered. ...Her eyes burned for a moment as if she saw with pleasure that her message had struck its target."

After Mrs. Turpin had been treated, and Claud had seen the doctor, and they had returned home, she couldn't get it out of her mind. It was like a message from God. Finally alone, spraying off the hogs, she gathered herself. "'What do you send me a message like that for?' she said in a low fierce voice, barely above a whisper but with the force of a shout in its concentrated fury. 'How am I a hog and me both? How am I saved and from hell too?'"

A comment from Lowell:
I think that is one of the best theological questions in all of literature. "How am I a hog and me both? How am I saved and from hell too?"

Mrs. Turpin continues:
"'How am I a hog?' she demanded. 'Exactly how am I like them?' and she jabbed the stream of water at the (hogs). ...'if you like trash better, go get yourself some trash then,' she railed. 'You could have made me trash, or a nigger. If trash is what you wanted why didn't you make me trash?'

"...She braced herself for a final assault and this time her voice rolled out over the pasture. 'Go on,' she yelled, call me a hog! ...From hell. Call me a wart hog from hell..."

"A garbled echo returned to her.

"A final surge of fury shook her and she roared, 'Who do you think you are?'

"...She bent her head slowly and gazed, as if through the very heart of mystery, down into the pig parlor at the hogs. ...At last she lifted her head. There was only a purple streak in the sky, cutting through a field of crimson and leading, like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk... She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast hoard of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right... They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away."

A reading from Baruch:
Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height; look toward the east, and see your children gathered from west and east at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that God has remembered them. ...For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God... For God will lead Israel with joy, in the light of his glory, with the mercy and righteousness that come from him."
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