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Back to Sermon ArchivesMay 24,
2009
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Acts 1:1-11, Psalm 47, Luke 24:44-53
“Bringing God Home: R2W Jesus in All the World!”
You know how we say, if we think this or that, we got another “think” coming?
That’s how it is with Jesus this week. We think Jesus is just going to
pull off this cosmic “disappearing act” on Ascension last Thursday. We
think all the trouble he went to for us in life and in death and in rising from
death is just all about getting himself a seat beside God forever. We
think this same Jesus who re-presents himself -- makes himself fully and freely
present again -- these past forty days – This Jesus who stays with us, who
orders us to remain in Jerusalem – very scene of the crimes against him – and
seat of our fears for ourselves! We think this Jesus is somehow content
for us to spend the rest of the life of this world gazing up at him in some kind
of rapturous expectation he will save us – in a way that lifts us safely
out of the world, not leaves us more vulnerably to it!
Well, we got another “think” coming! Hold the line -- we got another
call coming! Heaven is not “wassUP” for us! Worship is not spelled
“worshUP!” If anything, it’s “worshDOWN!” No more pretending we live
in a “3-story universe” – though the Hubble takes us “up” and “out” a lot further
than we ever thought we could go – and beyond! We need such an ever-expanding,
ever-including cosmology. We live in a world more awesomely inconceivable
then ever. We “occupy” such an infinitesimal part of it. “Creative chaos”
is our new “heavenly home!” We think life on earth is exhausting?! No
wonder “kingdoms of earth” cannot keep “UP!”
Our stories hook up with “the Story!” Just as in Jesus, God is not with us yet,
so in the Holy Spirit, Jesus is not done with us, either! Each one of us gets
that “baptism with water,” from John. Like Maximilian this morning, we are
guaranteed God’s radical love for our lives – once and forever! All we can
is say “thank you” for this perpetual gift of life. But at the same time we
are setting Maximilian up – all the rest of us -- to be baptized with Holy Spirit!
The Holy Spirit is never “once and forever” but over and over again! The Holy
Spirit is our worst nightmare if we think it’s all and only about us and our own
personal salvation and place in some heavenly realm forever. If we think it’s
all about restoring whatever “the kingdom” – Israel’s, ours or any one nation’s
– to some former glory – we got another “think” coming. We got another “call”
coming!
The Holy Spirit is bringing God home – bringing God back to the world – over
and over again – in the lives, the faiths, the works of each one and all of us –
beginning right where we are and with whom we are – in the dangers of Jerusalem,
in the struggles of Judea and Samaria, in Tonga and the Americas. “And to
the ends of the earth!” And just because we may know today where every last
place on the globe is, does not mean that we have reached “the ends of the earth!”
The ends of the earth have to do not only with places, not only with resources we
go there to get. The ends of the earth have to do with peoples, with cultures
– with the richness of all the diversity, all the complexity of who we are.
The ends of the earth have to do with the unfulfilled purposes of this “God” who
creates it all – This God who must love differences so much, God creates so many
of them! The Holy Spirit is bringing God home. Wherever we are, God
is! And God is forever, like Jesus here – and others! – “opening our minds”
– our hearts, our doors, our arms – our orders and our borders! – to something NEW!
Without Jesus present, who else but us will “wrestle” the mysteries together?
Ask the hard questions? Carry out the mission faithfully to our beginnings in him?
That is the new “think,” the new call we have coming – as we wait and watch these
remaining “not many days from now” – until we will receive power! Uh-oh!
Who are we to be powerful? Is not power another worst nightmare for us?
We who thought it was going to be easy to be left alone by Jesus? Who got
himself helplessly and hopelessly messed up in the “politics” of his own time –
even as Moses in his time, each of the prophets in their times? Getting himself
sent to death on a cross as a revolutionary and threat to the “powers” of both “church
and state?” Do we not much prefer purity of our pretensions to remain “above”
all the petty political passions of power? The illusion that we can avoid the cross?
Yet what is Jesus saying, repeatedly, to us right here? Riveting our
attention again and again by the Holy Spirit to “everything written about me” –
by Moses, the prophets, the psalms – that everything might be fulfilled –
according to God’s intentions, God’s purposes, God’s very “ends of the earth!”
Then one last time, Jesus himself opens our minds to grasp what he knows is the
hardest of texts – “that the Messiah is to suffer and rise from the dead!”
“That repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all
nations” – “all” meaning ALL nations! “Beginning from Jerusalem,” wherever
we are most afraid for ourselves. And we ourselves – we our poor and
perpetually misunderstanding and misunderstood selves! – WE are “witnesses of
these things!” So we are to “stay here in the city!” “Until we have
been clothed with power from on high!”
And so we do! It says here, we give up our fears to worship him!
To return to the city even with joy! Julie and I in a life-loving, justice-enjoying
congregation long ago learned this Pentecost song to the tune of “Jamaican Farewell”
– It was the Holy Spirit’s day – sing joyful alleluia! A frightened people
met to pray – sing joyful alleluia! With rushing sound, with heavenly flame,
on them the Holy Spirit came! In city streets they praised Christ’s name –
sing joyful alleluia! (Again!)
Sounds like these words of Joan Chittister at the beginning of our service as
this Easter season comes to fulfillment Pentecost Day – On Easter Sunday prophecy
rises from the grave, eternal and triumphant, unfinished and unrelenting!
Easter is not about the end of anything! It is about the beginning of the
prophetic reign of God! But it cannot happen unless we ourselves leave the
site of the tomb! And go to the streets and the hovels and the powerful of
our own time and say a prophet’s word. And say a prophet’s word!
As we have been trying to put the “unfinished business” of Dr. King’s life and work
in our own minds and hearts, our own words and actions, our own times and places,
throughout this past year.
I just want to thank us this one more time for supporting our four weekends –
for making them, letting them happen for larger community – 1) around our own personal
memories of Dr. King and experiences with nonviolent direct citizen action –
2) around the legacy of Dr. King’s mentor Howard Thurman and the spirituals in the
still-suffering lives of the “disinherited” – 3) around the way corporate globalization
divides and conquers us as nations and peoples and threatens our common resource
the earth – and 4) just last weekend how our own stories are “social biographies”
as well – related to one another and to all peoples, all stories, all experiences,
all events – of every time and place!
Debbie and Michael, Sina and Tufi, told us about, embodied and modeled for us,
the “R2W” – “Represent to Witness” – the youth leadership institute they offer especially
but not exclusively to Pacific and Asian North Americans of the Bay Area at PSR
– Pacific School of Religion – where some of our congregational youth hope to attend
a two-week session in June – is that right? With all our help! And where
even today George Bennett, our former student associate pastor, is graduating!
The same George Bennett and family now officially appointed as of July 1 to Sanger
United Methodist Church – Fresno District!
Where he follows a Tongan pastor – Siosifa Hingano! Small world, or
what??
And “world” here in Jesus’ directions to us, the term “kosmos,” refers not only
to universe or planet, but also to “matrix” of all human existence – ecology, economy,
ecumenicity – every dimension of any sustainable human habitat! We have to
say that “world” is “fallen” today – out of sync with the full promise of God –
like Walter Wink’s image of a “domination system” needing to be transformed!
“Represent to Witness” is precisely the promise of the Holy Spirit of Jesus in
the body of Christ the church – alive and well and at work in, with, and for all
the world! Sisters and brothers, we live to re-present Jesus! To make
Jesus present and real and on fire again -- with life and love, justice and joy
– whoever, however, wherever we are! Whose body does Jesus have now but ours?
Yours and (God help him!) even mine? Whose mind and heart, whose hands and
feet, whose eyes and ears – but ours? Who will put Jesus’ life on the line
again but us? Who will identify with all the people? Bear all the witness?
Run all the risk?
Represent to Witness could be the Spirit’s job description: “Representing one’s
faith, heritage and community. Witnessing to God’s demand for love, peace
and justice.” Some of the questions R2W wrestles with are good for us all
to ask: How can I best represent myself, my community, my culture, and my
principles? How can I best witness as a person of faith in prayer, worship,
and action? Does my cultural heritage matter to my faith experience?
(We who are not “of color,” or of an unrecognized color, are reminded we too have
“cultural heritage!” We came from some other place! We spoke some other
language! We believed some other faiths! We are all in this struggler
together!) Specifically, does Jesus value the experiences and struggles of
Asian-Pacific Islander peoples? Do my people and our experiences bring any
special meaning to our witness as people of faith? To North American society
as a whole? And again for all of us, whatever our “level” now: How will
these questions help me take hold of my leadership skills and go to the next level?!
For God is not done with us yet!!
R2W calls us to critical consciousness – as much awareness of all the world and
of all that is happening to us as we can possibly grasp – and to “critical faith”
– faith not based upon easy assumptions, empty rhetoric, routine answers.
Faith for our times is critical, thoughtful, reflective, questioned, troubled, challenged,
threatened, even doubtful at times – all in the spirit of openness to what Jesus
here describes as his continuing revelation in God’s living word of everyday life!
Think about this: From now on, from the Ascension on, we only “see” Jesus
-- the world only “sees” Jesus -- because our lives make Jesus present again!
We are the vision, we are the voice of Jesus – Jesus who is so much bigger than
all of us, that it takes all of us, every part of the body, to make him known!
Check this out: We may be the only “Bible” some people ever read! We may
be the only church some people ever visit! We may be, God forbid, the only
preacher some people ever hear! Jesus is so much more than a nice thought
or feeling for us. Jesus is our very whole way of life! A life of radical
presence and witness and truth before powers! A life of radical service, of
giving ourselves up for others – the more “other,” left out and rejected, the more
compelling to us. A life that most certainly leads to the cross – and beyond.
Here’s to the beyond! Amen.
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