|
Back to Sermon ArchivesMarch 8,
2009
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Amos 1:1, 5:21-24, Mark 8:31-38
“Lifelines”
We pray our New Orleans Hurricane Recovery Team II through the next three weeks.
We pray our Confirmation Class through the next three months. Each candidate
will be meeting weekly with their mentor from whom they are not so much to “learn”
the faith in theory as to “catch” the faith in action. They will make several
trips to worship in other settings and to attend a retreat with the Bishop early
next month. They will take special part in Holy Week. Confirmation will
be Pentecost Sunday, May 31. Holy Spirit, be upon us!
So what a moment this is today! What a hope! A privilege! An
honor! To sing! To pray! To read! To preach! To rejoice,
give thanks, and praise! To baptize! To commission! With water!
With hands! To deploy every last nonviolently triumphal means in our liturgical
arsenal to embrace and empower each other! For our acts of worship, Amos our
brother, a plain and simple sheep breeder from Tekoa, reminds us – our feasts,
our solemn assemblies – are not ends in themselves. Burnt offerings,
oblations, bloody sacrifices, chanting, strumming – none of those matters to
Amos – nor, claims Amos, to God – unless they lead us to doing justice and
righteousness!
As Joan Chittister says in our study book for the season, what the world
needs now is a whole new generation of prophets – Like you! Like me!
Like us!! Every precept, every practice of our life of faith is meant to
sanctify and sustain by the Holy Spirit this vital connection we just acted out
– between our baptism and our mission! Ours is a faith in the mystery we
call “God.” It is a faith through the revelation we call “Jesus Christ,”
“Messiah,” Liberator and Leader – the one who forgives and heals us and sets us
free -- free “to see him more clearly, love him more dearly, follow him more
nearly day by day.” Connection between baptism and mission may also be
seen as connection between baptism and communion – for in a very real and
growing sense, our mission is our communion -- a full communion, with one
another, with all the church and with all the world.
We face with disciples of Jesus in the gospel story this morning Jesus’ call
to the way of the cross -- both discipleship and citizenship – a way that leads
to “Jerusalems” -- to face those who seek our division and conquest of each other.
Baptism marks our response to Jesus’ call to the way of the cross.
Baptism marks us in two directions of the cross -- up and down, and side to
side. Baptism marks us in two connections of the cross – the unconditional
love of God for each one of us, and the similar love we are called to for one
another. Even though it may be surprise and mystery to us, God’s baptismal
love for us just as we are – at whatever age or point in our lives – is no
problem for God! It’s the way God is.
Baptism is once and forever. God’s love never leaves us – no matter how
much and how far we may seem to leave God. God is always, says Jesus, like
that “prodigal parent” who looks down the road every day -- awaiting their lost
child.
God’s love, the love of creation -- the up and down love of the cross -- connects
God with us once and forever. God is the one creator of each and of all.
Nobody else can make us but God. Nobody else can love us like God. Sorry
to break the news to us, but we are eternally loveable! The love of Christ
-- who for us is the very child and offspring of God, the flesh and blood of God
– the side to side love of the cross – is the love of redemption, of re-making the
world when the world denies and betrays itself as God’s creation. Christ’s
love of redemption connects us with every other – in the church and in the world.
The radical message of Jesus in word and deed is, no one is lost to God! No
one lies beyond reach of God’s reclamation and restoration! Everyone can be
forgiven!!
God does not just make us and let us go. As we heard in the story of Noah
last week -- as we know from every quick and complete disaster – hurricane, flood,
earthquake, fire, war, famine, economic depression – everyone needs a lifeline!
Everyone needs a connection to trust in hard times – a person, a family, a congregation
to count on to be there for us – no matter what. A lifeline to keep us from losing
ourselves – keep us afloat, our options open, our chances alive.
Jesus Christ is that lifeline of God. Jesus here tells us a lifeline
must be able to pass through death – must be able to confront and endure the
worst that the world has to offer, and the worst that we often do to ourselves.
One of my favorite songs of women’s history begins, “Come on up – I got a
lifeline! Come on up to this train of mine. (2x) She said her name was
Harriet Tubman, and she drove for the Underground Railroad.”
Lifelines lead out of “stuck” places – of our own making or not.
For we can be our own worst enemies, especially in times like these. I
hear persons I know and trust and love and respect blaming themselves for their
own job losses and foreclosures. It is so hard for us to believe the system
we have created needs radical redemption! For the system has always promoted
a myth of self-sufficiency. It tells us everyone ought to be able to pull
ourselves up by our own achievements. It tells us the system itself is benignly
beneficent and nobly neutral about us all. So if the system just happens to
collapse – on any one person, or family, or community, or race, or class – it must
be because they messed it up for themselves. We end up thinking of ourselves
as failures and losers – beyond redemption! Yet the system depends on failures
and losers. And the bigger the system becomes, the bigger the failures and
losers will be. Have we ever known a time like the present crisis? So many
have tried to gain so much – at the cost of their own souls and the one soul we
share together!!
Jesus knows as the “Son of Man,” the “Human One,” he will undergo suffering,
rejection, and death from those who seek our division and conquest of each other
– those both religious and political. And by the way, Jesus slips in as if
with a sly smile – just to drop a slim hint -- after three days the Human One, the
New Life for the world, will rise again! Failure and loss, division and conquest
will not be the last words about life! Peter cannot believe what he hears!
What kind of “Messiah” is that? To call disciples to follow by taking up our
own crosses? Crosses which in that day, we are told, were no mere signs of
faithful feeling but very real means of execution and death for threats to both
church and state!
So as we accept our lifeline the cross on this day – the up and down love of
God for us, and the side to side love of others – our baptisms and our commissions
– what is Jesus saying to us? Lose our lives by trying to save them?
Save our lives by deciding to lose them – for Jesus’ sake and for the gospel?
Jesus says elsewhere each one of us is like a seed falling into the ground.
We die to our own singularity and insularity. We come alive again in the many
fruits brought forth from even one seed. The cross is purely a paradox. It
is a losing kind of saving, a dying kind of a living. Paul says the cross
is a foolish kind of wisdom and a weak kind of strength. But it moves us from
“me-ness” to “we-ness.”
For we are not here to save – to protect, to preserve, to withhold -- our own
lives. We are not here to go it alone. We here to confess we are not
saved by our own efforts or even intentions. We are saved – already saved!
-- by the pure love of God the Creator and Christ the Redeemer for each of us and
for all. Once, as Paul Tillich says, we accept the fantastical fact that we
are accepted! – We are loved, and there is nothing we can do about it! – then we
are free to share our salvation with others. Then we are not only healed in
ourselves but made whole.
Recovery from surgery and infection has become a whole way of life for me lately.
I have had much too much time to reflect on our ministry here together. I
realize how much, how many I have to be thankful for. What I find I care about
and hope for the most is the gradual growing, the careful cultivating of healing
as a ministry in itself and as part of a larger ministry. We have to say the
world system is broken, heartbroken at least. The world system is sick, sin-sick
at least. We desperately need to be healed and made whole. It is not just
about our own souls and well-beings. It is about our connection, our relation
to the soul and well-being we all share in such a small world Again,
in Christ, we believe it is already done! We believe we are one earth, one
world, one household of God – one ecology, one economy, one ecumenicity with all
peoples and faiths.
The most powerful words I have found for this time of crisis and kairos, of danger
and opportunity, are these of poet Denise Levertov to conclude our Responsive Gathering
each Sunday of Lent – “Not yet, not yet – there is too much broken that must be
mended, too much hurt we have done to each other . . . We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join our solitudes in the communion of struggle.”
Joined in communion of struggle – now and forever. Amen.
top of page
Archives
|
