The Renaud Street Renegades

A Sermon for Pentecost XIII, Proper 18, Year C

September 8, 2019

Christ Episcopal Church, Milford Welcome Back Sunday

Killen's Pond State Park, Felton, NJ

When I was a kid – oh, maybe about aged seven or eight – I was a member of a group in my Fall River, Massachusetts, neighborhood we called the “Renaud Street Renegades”. 

It was a harmless group – sort of like Spanky and Our Gang. Or, was it Dennis the Menace who had a Club?  Well, anyway, we met in secret, in the far corner of my grandfather’s part-barn, part-garage, way back behind the sacks of dried beans and corn and rolls of hay. 

It was a “members only” club – and only girls could be members. We actually had a sign that said: “No. Boys. Allowed.” Just in case the boys ever found our secret meting location.

We even had our own chant, "Renegade girls, best in the world!"

The boys, of course, had their own club. I don’t remember the name of their club but I think it was something really obvious and uncreative like “The Renaud Street Boys Club”. They had a sign that said, "No. Girls Allowed."

We know because we saw it.

They met in this secret-not-so-secret location in the wooded area across the street where they would sometimes light fires and tell stories in the dark with flashlights under their chins. Which was why their secret location wasn’t so secret. We could see the fire and the flashlights. Duh!

We had an initiation ceremony which involved pricking the top of your pointer finger with a needle to draw blood – everyone had to do it – and then everyone squeezed their bleeding fingers together to share blood. 

This was, of course, before the days when we knew about blood-borne pathogens and AIDS was a horror story on the distant horizon, still waiting to happen.

Message to kids: DO NOT SHARE BLOOD. Ever. Okay?.

The point was, once you were a ‘Renegade Girl’ you were a ‘Renegade Girl’ for life. The small sacrifice of a pinprick on your finger and the sharing of blood sealed the deal. 

If it meant you had to go up against a member of your own family in order to defend sister who was a 'Renegade Girl’, well, that’s just what you had to do. The logic was that you may have the same blood as a family member, but you had SHARED blood with a ‘Renegade Girl’, which made her your sister.

Thankfully, that promise was never tested, but there was this one time when we all grew up and realized that there was something even more important than being a member of a secret neighborhood club - whether you were a boy or a girl.

As I remember, it was early winter and it was cold enough for the water in the pond next to our house to start to freeze. A call went through the neighborhood: "ICE!” and we all knew what that meant. 

We grabbed our ice skates and off we went to The Pond. The ice did groan a few times when one of the older boys stepped out on it, but he said it was fine and well, he was an older boy so he should know, right? We trusted him implictly.

And, just like that, the pond was filled with young children twirling and laughing and having a grand time. This went on for some time – long enough for us to be completely unaware of any danger that might have been lurking about. 

One of the little ones – a young boy of about 5 or so who didn’t have any skates – decided to make his own fun by throwing a stone onto the ice to watch it slip and skid.

Mostly he was annoying to some of the kids who really wanted to skate so no one paid much attention when he pick up a fairly large stone and, with some force, threw it onto the ice. 

That was enough to plunge a hole into the ice and, in a synchronicity that couldn’t have been choreographed, one of the boys skated right over it, his one leg plunging into the icy cold pond water.

I don’t remember his name but I can clearly hear his cries of pain and sheer terror as he screamed and flailed about, his body in a weird split, one leg in the water and one leg on top of the ice. 

At first, some of the kids started to laugh, until we heard the loud “crack” and “groan” of the ice, and saw the crack begin to move out in a slow, dangerous, jagged line from the boys body toward the other skaters.

We all stood still, as frozen in place as the ice beneath our feet. 

No one knew what to do. 

Except Eddie. "Steady Eddie" we called him.

Eddie was the oldest and after a few seconds of immobility, he was the first to snap into action. He skated as close as he dared to the boy on the other side of the crack in the ice, talking to him gently and quietly and then gripped his hand around the kid's forearm. Then, he called to the others to take his forearm in their hand and form a chain.

Within seconds, there we were, everyone - boys and girls - holding tightly onto another kid’s forearm as we formed a human chain back onto the land on the edge of the water. 

Eddie looked down the chain and when he saw there were enough of us, he yelled out, “Okay, now slowly, gently, pull!” And, that’s just what we did, until the kid’s leg emerged from the hole in the ice and we pulled him to the cold, hard, dry earth around the pond.

At that point, we all cheered and clapped and patted each other on the back. Boys and girls. Everyone had worked together, even though we were in different secret clubs and not all of us had shared the Blood Ceremony with each other. 

Eddie gathered us together and got someone to go and get some dry pants and socks for the kid, but before anyone left, he made us all promise never to tell our parents what had happened. If our parents ever knew, Eddie warned, they’d never let us go skating on the pond again.

I can tell you this: My parents went to their graves not knowing of the time a kid’s leg went through the pond off of Renaud Street. 

I’m sure every parent of every kid on Renaud Street never discovered our truth. We were united in the bond of that pledge which, turns out, is even stronger than the bonds of blood. 

I think our individual clubs met a few times after that, but then, well, for some reason, it just wasn’t the same. The Renaud Street Renegades eventually went defunct.

Hearing Jesus tell his disciples that they must put loyalty to him and his mission first, before any family ties, reminded me of that childhood memory. 

“Hate” is a pretty strong word. Jesus said, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

A colleague of mine in UK wrote, "Sometimes, I think, Jesus is not very lovable." 

I don’t know if you’ve noticed it before but sometimes, Jesus exaggerates to make a point, and that can be offensive to some people. 

The point  I think Jesus is making is that being a Christian, following The Way of Jesus, must come first. And, if you do that, if you put Jesus first, you’ll find that all the other things of life don’t matter as much as you once thought they did. 

That's because, once you put Jesus first, everything else matters in a whole new way. It matters a great deal. You begin to know that Jesus lives in you and Jesus lives in me, and so you look for Jesus in others and put Jesus first. 

That's the promise we make at Baptism, "to seek and serve Christ in others". 

When you put the Jesus you meet in another person first, that person matters more than all the things about you that are different.

What matters most is loving life so much that you are willing to put aside all the things you thought separated you from others and work together with others to cherish life – just as St. Paul encouraged the release of the slave Onesimus and his full acceptance into the community as an equal – even if that meant doing something those you love might object to or reject.

As the Lord said to the young prophet, Jeremiah, we can be fashioned into something new, for we are clay in the potter’s hands, for the potter is able to take was is old and spoiled and making it into something new, “as seems good”.

And, if God can do that for a former blood-sworn member of the “Renaud Street Renegades,” God can do that for you, too.    

Amen.