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Back to Sermon ArchivesOctober
5,
2008
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture:
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-17, Psalm 19, Matthew
21:33-46
Commanded in Chief: For God’s Sake Let’s Keep
Trying!
I want to acknowledge the death of my mother,
Eleanor Bruce Richmond Auer, last Sunday, at age nearly 96, in Bloomington, IN,
of kidney failure – and thank you all for your concern for her and support of
us. My sisters were able to be there. One of them took this picture of a young
woman named Dawn, a nursing assistant, who dropped in nearly every day over the
past ten years to take my mom’s vitals and offer whatever help with showering or
breakfast. She is pictured holding the Obama sign my mom had put on her door –
undoubtedly the only one in her wing of the nursing facility – where many
persons live with Alzheimer’s.
My mother would eat with them, talk with them,
encourage them – as if they were hanging on her every word. She had that kind
of a sense of her own importance – as well as her own independence, her dignity
and respect for self and others – not to mention that kind of interest and
commitment to the world – right to the end of her life. My sister gave Dawn the
poster because Dawn testified that my mom always urged her to return to school
and get her degree, and finally she did. My mom always urged her to quite
smoking, and finally she did. My mom recently urged her to register for the
first time to vote, and finally she did.
I thank Noel for sending Mom a copy of each
sermon I preached here. Of course, she ran out in recent weeks. I don’t think
that was enough for her to give up the ghost. The crusher for her was the
thought of living without Paul Newman! She will be buried in St. Charles, IL,
on my dad’s birthday, May 8, and memorialized in the Unitarian-Universalist
Church of Bloomington Mothers Day.
I also want to acknowledge my foot surgery Labor
Day for more arthritic change and damage in my right foot and an infection
discovered from the surgery. I’m through the worst of the antibiotics. As
always, I owe a lot of recovery to Julie, and to the support of our family and
our congregation, and to the job security and the health insurance of the United
Methodist Church. As always, my mantra remains, we only have to get up in life
one more time than we fall down!
On this World Communion Sunday we embark upon
preaching the heart of Torah, the Law according to Moses. We acknowledge
the context of High Holy Days of the Jewish New Year -- including profound
confession and repentance and the promise of Jubilee, forgiveness of every sin,
every indebtedness – a crucial personal and public issue for our time and
place. We announce and await the occasion of Interfaith Dialogue among Jews,
Christians, and Muslims of our community, Sunday afternoon, October 26, McKinley
Arts Center. Please attend.
Now we can start the clock on this sermon:
COMMANDED! We are the “Commanded in Chief!” We are a commanded people, of a
commanding God – the Holy One, Creator of the Universe, speaker from smoke atop
Mt. Sinai. Jesus – the one who saves us and sets us free, heals us and makes us
whole -- further commands us to love this God, beyond reason and
caution – with heart, with soul, with mind, with strength – loving even our
neighbors as ourselves!
A commanding yet loveable, doable God –
who never gives up on us, never stops trying with us – and asks us to trust God
and do the same! As Jesus teaches us to pray – Keep seeking! Keep knocking!
Keep asking! Never give up! Never stop trying! Like the friend who needs
bread at midnight! Like the importunate widow in front of the stubborn judge!
God is not done with us yet! The trouble with Christianity is that it’s never
been fully, freely tried! 11 year-old Hebrew School student named Tony says of
the Commandments in our Words for Meditation – “Isn’t that what religion is all
about? I think so – to tell you how to behave. . . . Just because we can’t get
all A’s, make a perfect record, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying!” We
are a commanded people.
Who is our truest commander-in-chief? God who
speaks from Sinai? And again from Calvary? Or those who speak like gods from
high places? In governments and other players in the power politics of our
everyday lives? Our sacraments represent pledges of sacred allegiance in holy
baptism and holy communion. The water, the bread, the cup are visible signs of
who and of whose we are – of our origins and of our destinies. We eat of this
bread and drink of this cup on World Communion Sunday. They ask us all over
again, in the body and blood of Jesus for us – Who do we think we are? What do
we think we are doing?
These are questions of our covenant, of the
nature and quality of our belonging together. Baptism and communion always
point to that covenant, to be the people of God, the body of Christ, together!
It’s what we have been doing in the past month with “Cycles of Discipleship.”
We have been remembering the 140 years of our life and work as a congregation.
We have been singing a new song, dancing a new dance – as we move from the past
into the future – together! Our deep and abiding thanks to all those who helped
bring “Cycles” thus far. Thanks to them, and to ourselves, we are renewing
covenant and commitment as we sing, “I am the church! You are the church! We
are the church – together!”
Whose commands, whose commandments, do we accept
in our lives? In our loves and our loyalties? Whose authority over us, and
with us, do we recognize and acknowledge? Whose ordination, whose orders, do we
take? For we, both lay and clergy of us, are a people under orders! A people
under God! A people given a charge to keep! A people given a time and place to
take a stand! In the words of Martin Luther, Here we stand! God help us, we
can do no other.
Who has that authority with us? Who earns the
right to turn, and to order, our lives around? Where do we stand? For what do
we stand? With whom do we stand? The tenants in this parable of Jesus
spitefully, violently choose to stand alone. They do not accept covenant --
obedience or obligation, responsibility or accountability. They refuse to
release the fruits of abundance at harvest. They defy the Jubilee opportunity
to see that goodness of God is fully and freely shared among all of God’s
children. The landlord goes looking for other tenants.
The God who commands us reminds us first – I am
the One who brings you out from bondage. I am the one who delivers you! Who
liberates you! Who shows you away (even through raging waters) out of no way!
Who saves you and sets you free! Who heals you and makes you whole! THEREFORE!
For that reason! Therefore, you shall have no other gods but me! God
simply does not command us what we are to do for others. God reminds us what
God has already done, and still is doing, for us! No matter how besieged and
overwhelmed we get with what’s going on in our lives and our world (I confess
these past weeks have felt despairing to one stuck in front the TV set!) – God
asks nothing of us that God has not already supplied us to do. God of covenant
with us goes before us.
Jesus commands us to love our neighbors as we
have been already loved. Congregations exist in large part to assure one
another of how we are loved -- whether we feel it, see it, hear it, or not – and
of how that love liberates us to face with courage, with strength, whatever we
have to face, personally and together.
Why should be allow ourselves to be commanded by
anyone who does not also love and liberate us? Why should we risk death for
anyone who does not also give us life? Why should we take law, which is
justice, from anyone who does not also give us gospel (good news!) and joy? Why
should we confess to anyone who does not also forgive us? Why should we hear NO
from anyone who does not also, and always, say YES to us? God gets what God
earns.
Behold the bulletin cover! Law/gospel,
Moses/Jesus, word/table, baptism/ communion, judgment/mercy, affliction/comfort,
prophecy/poetry – all go together! Parts of one body, one congregation,
partaking one loaf and cup.
All of these commandments are finally about
right relations and moral actions. The first four commandments of Moses (our
Call to Worship this morning) follow from our baptisms. They are like the
vertical length of the cross -- reaching up to God and down to us, so to speak.
The next six commandments of Moses (our Hebrew Lesson) and the two commandments
of Jesus (our Benediction) inform our communion. They are like the horizontal
breadth of the cross -- reaching out to one another and to all others – both
known to us, and far beyond us! Twice as many commandments, it seems, have to
do with us as have to do with God!
The very events of Jesus’ last night with us,
giving us memory, giving us hope, are Jesus’ commands for our life and
work! We call that night Maundy Thursday. It means our mandate
for ministry and for mission: Take! Bless! Break! Eat! Wash! Serve!
Love! Go forth! Go forth, not to kill, but, if need be, to die! Re-member
me! Make me present again – in your life, in my body the church! Forgive as I
forgive! Release the power of Holy Spirit. Follow the Holy Spirit – leading in
ways and to places you never expected to go. Be sustained, be surrounded, be
supported -- in communion with me, in communion with ALL the saints. Who from
their labors rest. Who Thee, by faith, before the world confessed. Thy name, O
Jesus, be forever blessed! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen!
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