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June 15, 2008
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Genesis
18:1-15, Romans 5:1-5, Matthew 9:35—10:8
Chance of a
Lifetime: Things – and People! – Worth Waiting For
The West Indian woman pictured on the cover this
Fathers Day could be Sarah of this story. She could be my 95 year-old
mother/grandmother/ great-grandmother whom we visited quickly in water-stuck
Indiana this week. She could be your mother/grandmother/great-grandmother. She
has a name: Margaret Ovid. She’s pictured in her church. She could be Any
Woman – Any Man -- waiting a lifetime for a promise to come true.
I am asking us all to imagine this morning what
it’s worth waiting a lifetime for – as well as what it’s like to lose a
lifetime’s worth of waiting – thinking not only of our own Midwest this weekend,
but of China, Myanmar, Zimbabwe -- so many places. “Juneteenth” falls this
Thursday – people waiting to hear they are free. Imagine waiting a lifetime to
be released from bondage! No longer defined as property of another! Imagine as
well those who died in slavery – or did not survive “Middle Passage” – or were
killed resisting capture in the first place.
June 19th, 1865 – nearly three years
after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued – word finally spread to Texas.
(Anyone from Texas? My father, a speech teacher, loved to address the subject,
“There’s Always Somebody Who Does Not Get the Word!”) It got there as “Grand
Order Number Three” –
The people of Texas are informed that, in
accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all
slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and
rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection
heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.
The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for
wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military
posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or
elsewhere.
One might have thought a lifetime of slavery
earned at least a little idleness! But maybe only one who had spent a lifetime
waiting in slavery could see it that way.
Imagine this morning a biblical father like
Abraham waiting a lifetime – though not in fidelity—for an heir. We’ll touch on
the story of Hagar and Ishmael next week. Imagine the numbers of children
waiting lifetimes for their fathers to show up at all – or to come back from war
– or to make time from work. Imagine through earthquakes, tornados, cyclones,
floods losses of lifetimes of children – in China, where parents invest
everything in the single child they are allowed to bear! Imagine the losses of
lifetime homes and lifetime communities. Imagine in California this week the
lifetime committed waiting of loved ones excluded from our definitions of
marriage. May all marriages become much the richer for that!
God loves it when, in Frederick Buechner’s
words, it suddenly dawns on us that the wildest dreams we’d ever had hadn’t been
half wild enough! We dare say God is forever making things new – even from our
disasters. God never is done with us yet. God never gives up – on us or on
God’s hopes for us. Sarah is far too advanced in years to be told she is
bearing a son. (Actually, she overhears from the tent as Abraham is told! God
is not speaking directly to women just yet!) Little wonder Sarah laughs! “After
I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” Some of us
very old marrieds still find that amusing! Even as we may still scoff at God’s
promises – to change us and so change our world.
The LORD and the promise are there in this
communion with three sojourning strangers. Brother Jim Ellis, one of our
saltier, life-spicing saints, makes it possible for me to sound like I’ve read
books I haven’t. He reads every newspaper, then he kindly clips book reviews
and author interviews for me. One this week featured William Young, author of
best-seller “The Shack” (anyone know of it?), who meets such a
attention-arresting triune God in the woods as —a sassy black woman called
“Papa,” the Father: a stereotypic big-nosed plaid-shirted carpenter “Jesus,” the
Son; and an Asian sylph called Sarayu, “the Holy Spirit.” They have the effect
of turning the author’s life around. A burden of alienation -- from missionary
parents, sexual abuse, grief for premature deaths in his family, his own
adultery -- turns to a freedom “to live and to love without any agenda.” When
the author asks, “Is that what it means to be a Christian?” Jesus replies, “Who
said anything about being a Christian? I’m not a Christian!”
“Those who love me come from every system that
exists,” Jesus continues. “They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims,
Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote and are not part of any Sunday
morning or religious institutions. I have followers who were murderers and many
who were self-righteous. Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraqis,
Jews and Palestinians. I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want
them to join in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my
brothers and sisters, into my Beloved.”
“Does that mean that all roads will lead to
you?” asks the author. “Not at all,” smiled Jesus . . . “Most roads don’t lead
anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.” Any
road to find us! This is the Jesus who goes freely about – not only teaching
and preaching but curing disease and sickness. This is Jesus so led by
compassion for us who are lost—especially us who may have lost lifetimes! – that
he organizes his disciples by name just as freely to go out to find us – to cure
us, to raise us, to cleanse us, to cast out our demons! In turn, even we are
told to trust in this amazing life-changing power to do likewise.
No wonder such a well-meaning God sounds hurt if
not offended by Sarah’s laughter! “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?”
Sarah then seems horrified to have laughed and denies it. But God is clear – we
are entitled to our laughter, to our delightful fear, our fearful delight at
surprise—especially when there is such a stretch between what we are promised
and what we see for ourselves.
Our son Jacob was born to Julie and me in “old
age,” after we adopted Jeffery and Jane – who forever remind Jacob that they
were chosen, he was at best a complete surprise! Our birth announcements said
in effect, “Sarah and Abraham ride again!” God is just full of the surprises of
a lifetime. Life is just full of new ways to listen and learn, to laugh and
limp (as after the biblical Jacob wrestles with God all night), and in all
things and by all means, to love! God speaks more to our future than to our
past. God promises our connection to many descendants who follow from us – and
may not look anything like us!
We might ask, who are we of this congregation
today – descended from one hundred and forty years of those who have gone before
us?! And who are those descending from us even now – leading us 140 years
longer into the future? Paul promises, “as we throw open our doors to God, we
discover in that same moment that God has already thrown open the door to us!”
We find ourselves “in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing
tall and shouting our praise!” We may well feel – not only as family, as
congregation, as community, but also as state, as nation, as world today –
“hemmed in with troubles,” Paul puts it. Yet like Jeremiah, 32nd
chapter, buying a piece of property in the face of invasion and exile, it is
when we are most aware of our troubles, our liabilities, that we are called to
praise God anyway and to yield all our resources to God! This is our way of
affirming, God alone can do the new thing we need doing.
We are beginning to talk – and I strongly
encourage us! – about adding a worship service of praise and thanksgiving – for
God and for the gifts of persons and peoples we believe God is generously
pouring into our downtown community! We also are talking, so appropriately to
this day, about gatherings of the men among us – to sort out new meanings and
ways of being men and fathers in this changing world. We can learn from Abraham
here – who though he manages to pass the work of being hospitable on to Sarah
and to his servants – has the eyes to see and the ears to hear and tries to give
voice to a vision of God among strangers and refugees. There is a “holy
hospitality” required by the “holy homelessness” of our lives and our life
together with many descendants! Compassion leads to communion with them.
Hospitality leads to solidarity.
We rejoice in the spirit of hospitality so
pervasive in this congregation! From Dinners for 8 to Drop in the Bucket! From
Family Promise to Parsonage Potlucks! We are a congregation trying to practice
with Paul the open doors, open minds, open hearts – open arms, open borders,
open orders! The only Reconciling Congregation in the whole state of Nevada.
Scripture calls us always to welcome the stranger, the different, the other
among us – for we never know (following Abraham!) when we might entertain angels
unaware. Jesus calls us to feed the hungry, nourish the thirsty, clothe the
naked, house the homeless, care for the sick, and visit the prisoner. Christ
(Messiah!) is present in each and all of them.
It is not without risk. Jesus is labeled a
drunkard and glutton who ate with any—and all the “wrong people!” As Paul says
about making us “fit” for God, Jesus does not try to “fix” anybody—so much as he
tries to “fit” with everybody!
It’s all about “table fellowship” -- truly
relating; learning to trust, to enter the world of each other; sharing the
stories, coming to awareness and perspective of one another. The Greek word for
“hospitality” is less about loving the stranger per se than about delighting in
the whole relationship between guest/host, neighbor/ stranger, giver/receiver.
Practices of reciprocity and mutuality are crucial and the only ways to survive
in the world today. True hospitality is subversive of all the gates/walls,
borders/barriers, separations/divisions of one another. It is all about truly
seeing one another – as if for the very first time. It is about coming to honor
the vision and voice, the ability to be seen and heard, in everyone! According
to Jesus the stranger becomes a neighbor when the Samaritan actually sees
the one who is beaten beside the road. Lazarus begging at the rich man’s door
remains a stranger because the rich man never even sees him there!
Thanks to the vision of Joy Meeuwig and the
Trustees, and resources of Vee Davis and others, the Parlor has become as if a
new and inviting space. There, as Henri Nouwen puts it, “the stranger can enter
and become a friend instead of an enemy.” Hospitality,” he goes on to say, “is
not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.” We
all know that is God’s great gift to each of us in need – space, and the time,
where change can take place! We are placed where we are in this city and this
community in order to offer loving relationship with God – by allowing the space
for each to come to God in their own way – to be the person, the people, God
created and still creates them, and us, to be! Another author cautions us,
“Respect for others, of course, means that we must also be ready to be resisted
by them!” Relating to God -- and to others for the God-like, the Christ, in
them -- begins with letting the other freely and fully BE “the other!” It is
not “my way or the highway” with us. Rather, it is OUR way– the way we find, or
make, together -- on the bi-way, the tri-way – and beyond!
Says Nouwen, “hospitality is not a subtle
invitation to adopt the lifestyle of the hosts -- but the gift of the chance for
the guests to find their own!” Which does not mean that “anything goes.” If we
are offering Christ to each other, the only thing certain is change itself.
Change that lasts grows out of relationship for the sake of which we are willing
to do the hard work to remain and to grow, engage and endure – in relationship
together! Change grows out of such investment in each other as may see us
through all kinds of weather. Change confronts whatever it is that keeps us
from changing in the ways of loving relation we keep seeking with one another.
Change acknowledges ALL of us – even like newborns! -- need changing all the
time – if truly God is not done with any of us yet. So come to the changing
table! No matter who we are! No matter who our father may be! No matter how
much we have lost, or how long it has taken us just to get free! This is the
chance of a lifetime! This is the change of a lifetime! This change
takes forever! Starting here, starting now, starting with us. Amen.
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