Preached by Michael Cheuk, May 13, 2007
Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year C
Acts 16:9-15
When I was a kid living in Shreveport, LA, we had a neighbor in her sixties living one street over named Sookie Johnson. When we moved into the neighborhood, she welcomed my whole family with open arms. When we first met her, she told us not to call her “Mrs. Johnson”; she told us to call her “Aunt Sookie.” And she treated us as if we were part of her family. I remember many days of my childhood spending time at her house with my sister eating freshly baked cookies, playing on her piano, and just visiting. In the summer, we would “help” her pick tomatoes from her garden, and she told us to “help” ourselves to those delicious vine-ripened tomatoes. Aunt Sookie would drive me to my doctor’s appointments and choir rehearsals when my parents couldn’t take me. When I was older, and about to enter seminary, Aunt Sookie offered me commentaries and Bible reference books from her library—the ones that she used to consult when she taught Sunday School at Highland Baptist Church for so many years. Aunt Sookie taught me so much about the Christian faith—not through lectures or Bible studies—but through the way she welcomed strangers into her life with the love of Christ. She not only did that with my family and my uncles’ family—the only two Asian families in that whole neighborhood—; she also welcomed many neighborhood kids of all races into her home, and she cared and nurtured many people. Even though Aunt Sookie did not have children of her own, in a very real way, she became a “mother” to my whole family.
Have you ever had anyone like that in your life? Have you ever had a person who was at first a stranger, but extended hospitality to you and welcomed you into her life and nurtured and cared for you like a second mother? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Michael
