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July 20, 2008
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Genesis 28:10-17, Psalm 139:1-12, Romans 8:22-25,
Matthew 13:24-30
Bearing Witness: Powerful promise, Passionate Presence”
We bear witness to God the One-in-Three -- and counting – Creator, Connector, Completer
of our lives – the powerful promise going before and beyond us, the passionate presence
in our midst and at our side. We receive in Adult Class and 10 am worship
the unbearable witness of Ela Weissberger, Holocaust Survivor, and original cast
member of “Brundibar,” children’s opera of the death camp at Terezen, which plays
in Artown this week. We confess direct attacks on Jews and others and
complicity with the huge apparatus of Nazi death-dealing owe much to historic
Christian ignorance and fear, perceived vengeance and practiced violence.
Consequences still plague the Jewish and Muslim worlds.
Contrasting biblical images of Jacob’s ladder and Sarah’s Circle, as we do in the
opening hymn, invites us to acknowledge the challenge of moving from “soldiers of
the cross” to “sisters, brothers all.” We can no longer afford to pursue a
straight and narrow climb of escape from the earth we share with all others by way
of a ladder. On a ladder there is room only for one at a time – and the only
arrangement is one person over, one person higher than, another. Scholars
suggest this image of Jacob’s ladder became in Christian devotional tradition an
image of “the eternal quest” – the climb for perfection, for a heavenly state of
mostly personal glory. The image, in turn, in our culture, leads to a quest
for “success” – for upward mobility leading through stiff competition to a place
of personal/family wealth and power at the top of that quaking corporate ladder!
Even in worship we practice a certain “upward journey” toward abstraction – a kind
of “head trip” away from or out of our bodies (bodies we think we checked at the
door) – away from our earthiness, our groundedness, our rootedness.
That is also away from our femininity, our motherliness, our sensuality – our desire
to make more love than war – where sexuality and spirituality may embrace and engage
one another – not fear and flee one another. According to Matthew Fox, author
of A Spirituality Named Compassion, the original Hebrew promise of the ladder
in Jacob’s dream is meant to lead us to birth! Birth as compassion
for life, concern for life, care and commitment for life – not escape or
avoidance from life.
Jacob’s dream leads to children! To offspring, to progeny – to future
generations of descendants too numerous to count – of every description, of every
people all over the earth. And Jacob’s dream leads to the land!
Part of the powerful promise of God. God cares little for “heaven” – some
dreamy realm of perfection God inhabits in lonely protection and self-preservation.
Rather, God cares so much for “earth” as to become completely “earthen” – incarnate
in Jesus of Nazareth, so we say – the particular one in whom powerful promise becomes
passionate presence of God – who suffers, mercilessly yet mercifully, in radical
love for all the earth. Jesus in whose body the Christ we pray, “Thy kingdom
come, thy will be done, where?” “On earth! As it is in
heaven” Jacob’s ladder is not so much a ladder for us up to God as it is a
ladder for God down to us!
Fox says we tend to spell “worshup” with a “u-p” at the end. We “look up,”
literally, to worship leaders – at the pulpit, the lectern, the raised steps of
the chancel. We gaze over the backs of the heads of our fellow worshipers
– almost as if they were not even there! Or maybe as if we were not
even here! As if we somehow could worship alone – unencumbered by all
the clutter and clumsiness of community – though we break out to celebrate that
in passing the peace! And our children help keep us honest – as do our uses
of chancel for concerts, etc.
I have always seen myself first in my ministry as a believer in and a lover of congregations.
Tomorrow night in our own life and work as Church Council, and Tuesday night in
the public life of our cities and county, we lift up congregations!
Please do not look “up” to others (especially in corporate and government life)
and “down” on ourselves. Congregations of all kinds are some of the very last
weekly gatherings of voluntary associations anywhere in our society.
If we become one more dying species of community organization, what will they do
without us? Congregations, in all our craziness, remind us of the saying about
democracy: the very worst form of governance, except for every other! We are
not about “pedestal piety” – idealizing some holy heroic few of us – even as many
true saints feared was being done to them -- leaving the rest of us feeling inadequate,
unimportant, powerless – even, in time, resentful and hostile toward those whose
very images we venerate! This congregation is about saying in this community,
city, nation, and world -- God has “come down” in favor of us all!
Remember Sarah of recent stories? Our first mother – laughing at angels telling
her she will give birth in old age! Sarah, able to be surprised –to allow
something new and different to break into her life forever! Showing us all
it is never too late to give birth to ourselves. As we say on our signboard
out front this month – “Be the ‘art’ in Artown! Create the beauty you are!”
Imagine Sarah laughing, Sarah crying, Sarah singing, Sarah dancing – Sarah carrying
on in every which way. Sarah invites us to creativity and to community.
From “either/or” exclusiveness of the ladder, her circle invites us to “both/and”
inclusiveness. Where ladder-life only moves “up and down,” circle-life moves
“in and out” – like lapping of waves.
Ladder-life sees a “flat earth” to escape, circle-life a “global village” to embrace.
Ladders are for “climbing.” They become “Sisyphian,” like trying to a huge
stone uphill – never quite reaching the top. The life and work of the church
often feel that way. The Chappels and we know this old reprobate preacher/teacher,
Jerry Forshey, raised in Reno, worked and lately died in Chicago. His memorial
bulletin cover reads, “The image of Sisyphus pushing his personal boulder up the
eternal mountain grips me as I push, transforms my labor into consciousness, reshapes
my grasp on destiny.” Amen! And I do mean “men!” Circles are more
for “dancing, celebrating” – thus ultimately more “satisfying.” Whereas ladders
thrive on “competition” and become “restrictive, elitist: survival of the fittest,”
circles thrive on “shared ecstasies” (How’s that for a worship goal!) and
become “welcoming, non-elitist: survival of all.” Survival of all!
Is that not the witness we bear on this day? Always room for one more
in a circle, not for long on a ladder!
Ladders tend to be, continuing in Fox’s terms, “hierarchical,” “violent,” “ruthlessly
independent” -- circles “democratic,” “strong and gentle,” “interdependent.”
Ladders “jealous and judgment-oriented,” “abstract and distant-making,” “linear
and ladder-like” – circles “pride-producing and non-judgmental,” “nurturing and
sensual,” “curved and circle-like.” Theologically, ladders tend to be “theistic.”
God is either “imminent or transcendent,” and “love of neighbor is separate from
love of what is at the top.” Circles tend to be “panentheistic” – neither
“God in everything” nor “everything in God” – but rather, both!
“God in everything,” and “Everything in God!” God is “transparent;”
“love of neighbor is love of God.”
Back to Jacob – his whole ladder-like life he tries to “get up” or “get over” on
Esau, his twin brother – with whom he was at odds even in the womb! He trades
a bowl of porridge for Esau’s birthright – remember? His mother helps Jacob
deceive the boys’ father Isaac on his deathbed – in order to steal from him Esau’s
blessing! Talk about dysfunctional families. So Jacob spends his whole
life on the lam – fleeing in fear from Esau, dreading forever their meeting again.
Is that not a lot of what life is about? Letting the “Jacobs” within and between
and among us to embrace, accept, support, upbuild the “Esaus” within and between
and among us? Isn’t each one of us Jacob? Each one of us Esau?
Don’t we all stem from the same source? No wonder Jesus in this parable
warns us not to judge prematurely! Maybe not judge at all – for God may
not be done with any of us yet! We are to let the wheat and weeds grow
together! Leave the judgment, at last, to God! For Jesus also says,
nothing outside of us can defile us. We are defiled by what we carry –
even unconscious -- within and project onto others. Be honest now –
knowing ourselves as we do, would we trust ourselves not to react prematurely,
precipitously, impatiently and impetuously? Leave it alone! Give it
some time! Cut it some slack! Let God be God.
Isn’t life in faith about becoming more creative and less destructive, more appreciative
and less defensive, of all the differences and the tensions, the conflicts and contradictions
– Within any one of us? Between any two of us? Among any three or more
of us? Jesus or no Jesus, wherever two or three gather – especially Methodists!
– there are bound to be more opinions than people. Personal relations, families,
congregations, communities – nations and worlds –it’s true: all of one origin, all
of one source – yet scattered to every wind. Let us go about trying to live
-- in our own distinct and different, difficult and even desperate ways – the God-given
gifts and callings of and to each of us. Jacob’s whole life becomes movement
toward accepting the Esau in him – the inescapable and irrefutable connection
there is – within, between, and among us.
Confronting Holocaust, genocide, racism, militarism, Hiroshima and Nagasaki – all
because of broken connection, unfinished circle – and I think of one of the first
poems I ever discovered for myself, in high school – Kenneth Patchen’s “Nice Day
for a Lynching” –
The bloodhounds look like sad old judges / In a strange court. They point
their noses / At the Negro jerking in the tight noose; / His feet spread crow-like
above these / Honorable me who laugh as he chokes.
I don’t know this black man. . I don’t know these white men.
But I know one of my hands / Is black, and one white. I know that / One
part of me is being strangled, / While another part horribly laughs.
Until it changes, / I shall be forever killing, and be killed.
One of my hands is black, one of my hands is white. One of my hands is male,
one of my hands is female. One of my hands is young, one of my hands is old.
One of my hands is gay, one of my hands is straight. One of my hands is Israeli,
one of my hands is Palestinian. One of my hands speaks English, one of my
hands speaks any number of other languages. One of my hands is born in the
USA, one of my hands is born some place I call “foreign.” One of my hands
is victim, one of my hands is executioner. Where can I go from your spirit,
O Lord? Or where can I flee from your presence? Amen.
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