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June 1, 2008
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Genesis 6:11-13, 18-22, Romans 1:16-17,
3:27-28, Matthew 7:21-29
Third Rock, Third World: Standing for God in Falling
Times
I am speaking to and through those about to leave high school, those about to enter,
and those a step closer to it. I exchanged e-mails lately with Lindsay Anderson
-- completing her first year out of college as a physical therapist in Portland.
She writes, “Life after college has been exciting and challenging and terrifying
all at the same time. It seems that every new phase of my life exceeds the
previous in its ability to shape my views and dreams.” I remembered lunch
with Lindsay and Virginia Smith, our high school graduates of the first year I was
here. Lindsay rushed through University of Puget Sound in three years.
Ginny enrolled in a six-year double-degree program at UNR – diversity from the start!
The next year’s graduates were Sarah McCormick and Reese Olander. Then Kristen
Anderson, Tim Brown, Natalie Earl, and Kyle Ray. Last year Mary Helmreich
and Zephyr McCormick. This year Jack, Jamie, Katie, and Maggie. What
a wondrous assortment of dreamers and ark-builders saving our species from ourselves!
What a tribute to the powers of building on the rock of our own identities, our
own truest loyalties to ourselves, the trust of our own experience, the truth of
our experiment – not just talking our faith and hiding behind it, but acting our
faith and stepping out boldly on it in response to God’s unknowns.
I don’t know how high school graduates do it today, but I always put off writing
my papers until the very last minute. I never felt I had studied or
prepared enough, for papers or for tests. I always lacked something.
There was always some other external source to site, some other expert opinion.
Julie tries gallantly to keep me from doing the same with sermons – to speak in
my own words, to use my own “first person” (My first college composition teacher
said we could not do that!) – to share my own unique (God-given?) perspective on
things.
I did not trust myself like the woman writing a check who was asked to show some
ID. She reached in her purse, pulled out a mirror, and shouted, “That’s me
all right!” I know who I am. I know whose I am. I may not know
what the future holds. But I know who holds the future. Seniors, I hope
you will shout in your heart when you hear your name called at graduation: “That’s
me all right!”
Finally, in the end of things, we have to live with ourselves. Nobody else
can live our lives for us. Nobody else can name who we are. Well, maybe
Jesus can. There’s a gospel song, “I told Jesus it would be all right if he
changed my name.” And Jesus said to Simon -- perhaps the most singular disciple,
most identifiable, most in touch with his own (often chaotic) experience -- I name
you “Petra,” Peter, the Rock – for on you I will build my church. Jesus calls
upon us to be rock-solid – and in rock-solidarity with others – struggling for their
own identities – their own rights to be who they are – especially in the “third
world” of this “third rock” from the sun! Black women of South Africa under
the system of apartheid said of their solidarity and their resistance to
every injustice and ever oppression: “In us you have struck a rock.”
We are indigenous to this place. We belong here. We must be dealt with.
Which we can always say about Nevada -- No matter where we go into the ground,
we strike rock! Rock is so indigenous to us.
Many of us study and practice geology – the exploration and evaluation of what
lies in our ground, beneath our surface – what gets at the heart of who we are.
Sometimes I worry Nevada is built on such industries – like mining itself and
gaming – that invite our own exploitation through extraction, exportation and
eventually exhaustion of our resources. Is our state economy not running
on empty – on emptied -- even now? Nevada is a metaphor for Earth herself.
So is Noah’s ark. Noah is literally called to save every species on Earth!
Part of God’s own covenant promise to save Noah and his family is that Noah save
the earth. High school graduates, God is laying that call upon us again
today. Children, grandchildren of our generations can only be saved as we save
Earth herself.
Our Words for Meditation remind us, we and the earth are as one –
What are you? What am I? Intersecting cycles of water, earth, air
and fire, that’s what I am, that’s what you are. . . . Earth – matter made from
rock and soil. . . . Earth pours through us, replacing each cell of the body every
seven years. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, we ingest, incorporate and excrete
the earth, are made from the earth. I am that. You are that.
We better believe after all that time together in the ark, Noah and family newly
appreciated, up close and personal, just how “earthy” all of God’s creatures
are!
As with our condition today, in the end Noah’s children have to “cover” for him.
Remember? His sons find Noah lying drunk and naked face-down in his tent.
Each new generation decides how to bury the sins of our parents and move on.
The promise to and of each generation helps God to decide what new thing to do.
After the flood, God promises, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind,
nor will I again destroy every living creature.” God has to accept what an
impossible species we are – just because we are so much “like God!” And we
know it. We test our limits all the time. We get away with whatever
we can. But why should the rest of creation suffer because of us? God
wants us to learn yet today, we are just one species among countless others!
One color, one creed, one age, one language, one nation – one anything among others.
We have no choice but like those on the ark to get along closely -- or not at all.
Graduates, we implore you to keep believing and acting as if there is no end to
God’s creative fullness and richness, God’s imaginative diversity and
complexity. There need be no end to yours, to ours either – if only we
will let it be with us as it is with God. We humans corrupt the goodness
and violate the life of all other creatures -- even against one another.
Are we not the only species that murders our own kind? Corruption and
violence lead to the threats of destruction among us – then and now.
Especially we of northern and western hemispheres may be as “earning” and
“deserving” of such disasters as Noah’s compatriots ever were. Maybe we
are as “needing” of such cleansing and purifying powers. For we, too, have
exploited – extracted, exported, exhausted, and emptied the earth. It will
be only for your sakes, you children and you grandchildren, that we are spared.
God speaks through the indigenous rock on which we are built – to the indigenous
core of ourselves. God speaks through those indigenous -- been here the longest,
seen and endured the most – yet lived to tell about it! To bear witness to
their value and meaning with their very being. Seniors, look to the strength,
the courage, of those who have gone before you in your own lives – as well as in
the lives of the church and the world. Find your own rock to build on – the
rock of resistance to corruption and violence, injustice and oppression.
It will not be easy. We do not promise or ask of you “easy.”
Remember Noah, hearing God speak when nobody else even listens. Remember
him dreaming and visioning, creating and imagining so far outside the box!
What’s an ark, everyone wants to know? He’s a scandal to all around him.
And according to Bill Cosby’s version, he builds the ark in his garage and can’t
get it out! Our dreams are for the whole world, our whole species, and
Earth herself.
Photographer of indigenous peoples, and of peoples displaced by disasters all over
our world -- Sebastian Salgado -- urges us to believe there is a frontier for everything
but our dreams! Our dreams exceed every border, every boundary, every barrier
– within and between and among us. Salgado states, “In history, there are
no solitary dreams; one dreamer breathes life into the next.” Please hear
that again. Is that not what church is all about? Is that not the Spirit
of Jesus – in us and with us and through us? Breathing life? No solitary,
no selfish, self-centered or self-limited dreams? But one dreamer breathing
life into the next! Seniors, we pray that we who go before you today have
some live dreams left in us to breathe life into you. Amen.
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