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July 6, 2008
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Romans 7:15-25a, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Rest of the Story: Getting from Sabbath to Jubilee
It was pointed out in our Lay Members’ report from Annual Conference that
retired clergy well outnumber active ones. We are trying to do our part to
stay active! Today marks the first Sunday of our sixth year under
appointment to this charge. I am scheduled to reach traditional retirement
age this month. Of course I don’t know if I can do anything traditional.
I won’t say with the gospel song that “I don’t feel no ways tired.”
Because I do. I do feel many ways tired. But that song goes on,
“I’ve come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me that the road
would be easy, I don’t believe He brought me this far just to leave me.”
I welcomed my impending maturity by riding “shotgun” for the Molly Ivins Brigade
in the Fourth of July Parade – banging my pots and pans for peace, and wearing a
pink flamingo cap on my head! The wings on the cap were supposed to flap up
and down. Only my right wing worked. So there I was, a right-winger
for peace, flapping away in the hot smoky breeze. I’m afraid there are pictures
to prove it. People I know saw me along the way. Truly an image only my mother
could love!
What we won’t do for our love of this country, this Promised Land and ALL the people
who suffer and struggle to share in the promise of this land: When we are right
(and we have been, we know how to be right), to be willing to change (not to kill
but to die) for our reputation. When we are wrong (and we are now, in a number
of ways -- too risky, it seems, for us to face) to be willing to change (not to
kill but to die) for our redemption. We have to choose one direction or another
this Independence Sunday: Will we flourish as red, white, and blue? Or will
we perish as red, white, and black with oil? How might we change for redemption?
Jesus addresses some of it here. It amounts to the dangers of a market mentality
– a love of accumulative affluence and conspicuous consumption. A worship
of wealth and the wealthy. We shop till we drop. But do we at last find
anything we really like or trust enough to commit ourselves to in any enduring and
demanding kind of a way? And may that not become as true of real people and
real relations as it is of our toys and cars, fashions and appliances, weapons and
security systems? May we not be tempted by our consumptive culture to find
one another and our shared commitments also dispensable, also disposable?
As we look for the next best bargain? Next best symbol of status?
So, says Jesus, John the Baptizer comes along. We dismiss him because he abstains
from eating and drinking. Then Jesus himself comes along. We dismiss him
because he eats and drinks! And because of who he does it with!
A friend even to tax collectors! What is the equivalent to this
congregation raising taxes? To see that our mission is witnessed and
served? Could we inspire our state!
The most endangered word in our culture today is the most common word – the word
“common” itself! It is the very root word of community, communication, communion.
It speaks of common life, common ground, common interest, common good, common purpose,
common place, common wealth, even common defense. Now according the Supreme
Court each of us has an almost unqualified right to our own defense! We do
not trust the common defense of the Constitution. In fact, we do not trust
one another much at all any more. Nor do we trust the government which our
foreparents fought by this Declaration of Independence to establish as a beacon
of life, love, and liberty for all! Government of, by, and for (Who?) -- US!
The people! The common people!
I do imagine -- as many do, I’m sure – in retirement I will write that book I never
have time to write. And I would call it “The Jubilee Canon.” (Please
note the spelling of “canon.”) It would be about all the ways scriptures affirm
building into our common life a common responsibility for the common good of the
common people. The Jubilee that Jesus comes in Luke 4 to announce and to fulfill
is the perennial day of forgiveness of both sin and debt, the proclamation of new
beginnings – fresh starts on level footings – built into our systems and structures
of life together! Such scriptures run from the creation of equals in the garden
in Genesis (through the promise of “promised land” – for land is the renewable and
redistributable resource of all times and places – Leviticus 25 and the prophets,
Jesus in all that he says and does, Paul on confronting powers and principalities
both within and beyond our selves, the spiritual and material sharing of gifts and
life on Pentecost and in the early church) to the dwelling at last of God in the
New City for all in Revelation. I would subtitle it, “From Dominion to Communion.”
We become so hard to please, we might as well not shop, or church-hop, at all.
The religion of shopping, the worship of wealth, requires that we never become so
committed to any one choice or option that we cannot drop it, forget it, go right
on to the next, more attractive, or less expensive, less costly, demanding one.
The assumption behind our consumption is, There’s always a better deal coming!
Or as United Methodist pot-luckers put it: Save your fork; the best is yet to come!
Is that not what we find we have done with Jesus as the one we call “Lord and Savior?”
Leader and Liberator? Do we not keep looking for another one? How does
this whole chapter 11 (Chapter 11? Talk about Jubilee!) of Matthew begin? John the
Baptizer (Where?), in prison, sends his disciples out to ask Jesus, “Are YOU the
one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Many of us, know it or
not, still wait for some other Jesus! Some nicer looking, some
smoother talking, some always smiling, some never pushing, some more reasonable,
less reckless; some more attractive, less expensive, less costly, demanding one.
Or, at least, we are waiting for this Jesus to come again at some other, more
convenient and more comfortable time for us! To give us as many more chances
as we may need to get around to following him. Some “second coming,” as we
call it – as if the “first coming” has not been clear and compelling enough!
Give us more time to get around to committing our lives to him. To becoming
the body in common with him and each other – the hands, the feet, the eyes, the
ears, the vision and voice in whom his spirit dwells! To making the life and
work of Jesus our own. Are we not still shopping for Jesus? Still
waiting to see of someone will offer a better savior, a later model, more modern,
more moderate messiah?
The “rest of the story,” the “rest” Jesus promises here, is no “yoking” matter!
It is a dangerous, defiant, difficult, even a deadly rest! On this
particular Sunday, we might call it “revolutionary rest” -- rest that leads from
so-called “independence” to real liberation! From a personal Sabbath the
seventh day of the week to a general Sabbath every seven years and a JUBILEE
Sabbath every fifty years!
This is the kind of “rest” that may lead to “arrest.” Jesus himself is arrested,
as John has been, and charged with making all kinds of trouble – of subverting established
order, of threatening vested interests, of turning the world as we know it upside-down
and our very own beings inside-out! The “yoke” or the law of Jesus is not
about putting us down, not about casting us out, not about limiting us, or keeping
us in our place. As we say in our bulletin notes today, national independence
is not the same as biblical liberation of peoples and freedom in Christ. Christ
gives us the truth that sets us in all things free! Paul says it is for freedom
itself that we are set free. We as a congregation – even as we struggle to
engage fully and freely with all the lifestyles and life-situations of all of our
downtown community – even as we offer events of Artown – the concerts, the exhibits,
the dramas, the weekends – and events of feeding and sheltering, welcoming and befriending
– even sinners! -- Jesus is setting us freer to be!
Jesus is all about freeing us up! His spirit is leading where we never planned
or intended to go! So that we may end up in unexpected places, at unexpected
times, doing unexpected things, with unexpected people. That’s why Jesus warns
us here about becoming to “wise,” too “intelligent,” too legalistic for our own
good. He warns about thinking we have all the answers; that our way, or the
way of the dominant culture, is the only way of seeing and doing things. That
we are always safer and more secure going along with the “experts” of those in power.
Jesus asks us instead to keep ourselves open to that child-like part of ourselves
-- that trusting and choosing, committing and letting go part -- that reimagining
and beginning again part -- that praying but also that playing part. Jesus
asks us to suspend and subordinate our belief in things as they are, and to
dream and envision and elevate things as they never have been!
Even as we celebrate this nation we love -- so wistfully if not well -- as those
who receive Jesus’ gift of “revolutionary rest,” our ultimate loyalties are not
only to nation but to imagine-nation! To our dream and our vision
of how things might be for all of God’s world! All of God’s creation.
For we are God’s “Sabbath rest,” entrusted with God’s seventh day, this Sabbath
-- and beyond! In the very next chapter of Matthew Jesus makes trouble
precisely by breaking the Sabbath laws. The Sabbath, he claims, is meant
to serve us! The needs of all of God’s children.
As Sabbath leads to Jubilee, Jesus calls the whole social order, our whole way of
life, into question: Debts are cancelled! Property is restored! Families
reunited! As debtors are freed from prison and other conditions of servitude
and indenture.
Good news really is preached to the poor – just as Jesus says it is! Cycles
of separation into “haves” and have nots” are broken. The poor and the rich
start over again, as equals -- which is, as we already are, as we always
have been, as we always will be – in the sight of the one God and Source of us all!
This is God’s promise. This is God’s land. We are God’s people.
This is the rest of our story. From Sabbath to Jubilee. Let us get free
and get on with it. “This land is your land, this land is my land, from California
to the New York island, from the redwood forests, to the gulf stream waters – This
land was made for you and me!” Amen.
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