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Back to Sermon ArchivesJune 21,
2009
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: 1 Samuel
17:32-49, 2 Corinthians 6:2b-10, Mark 4:35-41
“Making Waves, Backing Losers, Risking Failures,
Taming Giants”
About the very moment (4:49 PM) we were receiving this retirement medal on stage
at Annual Conference Thursday, our third grandchild, Matthew John, was being
born to Jacob and Sonya in Los Angeles. I would like to dedicate this shy and
retiring sermon to new fathers, and fathers who would be new -- and to our
grandchildren, Alexandra Tatem Castile, Aden Diego Avila, Matthew John Auer, and
to all of our children and youth, of this congregation, and far, far beyond.
When it came to preparing for a last sermon under fulltime appointment I
realized all I know how to do is keeping preaching as I have tried to do every
Sunday.
I
want to thank this congregation and community for going the distance with us –
and for letting us go the distance. We identify our work with Rocky Balboa’s
unlikely championship fight: We just want to go the distance. We’ve gone as far
as we could. We endured many storms and fears, many rainbows and hopes.
We woke up Jesus in the back of our boat again and again. We always said
about our preaching and worship, at least you can’t sleep through it – not even
Jesus! Paul says, “The race is not to the swift but to those who endure to the
end.” We never know exactly what the end’s going to be, what the distance
is, till we get there. We also know with God in Christ, every ending is
new beginning.
This title I will attempt to unpack in a moment reflects the peculiar natures of
our calls to ministry and of our formations into the social-spiritual
citizen-disciples we are still becoming. Each calling is precious and needed --
to whatever our ministries, clergy or lay – and we are delighted to rejoin the
subversive ranks of the laity! – and each of our formations into whatever our
practices of discipleship. Our practice always has been toward a ministry of the
public realm – of what is called thinking globally and acting locally, of
solidarity with the struggling masses, and of organization within our
communities – ecumenical, interfaith as possible.
A big part of that ministry as I see it is responsible but risky sharing our
building.
We
fell in love with a small mostly white proletarian congregation after we went to
seminary in Chicago. We loved its joyful and disciplined life of worship,
covenant, (It was called Parish of the Holy Covenant!), study, prayer, mission,
and tithe. They believed with Wesley the whole world was their parish! They
adopted a congregational goal in 1971 to elect a black mayor of Chicago. They
were 12 years ahead of their time – but they knew congregations could do that!
They could speak their truths to the powers, and they could act on those
truths. Sometimes they spoke and acted on one truth together. Other times it
seemed everyone went their own way. But everyone was accountable for something!
Probably from the beginning of my call and my vocation, I have been asked why
not a social worker? Why not even a politician? All I knew was I
loved Jesus and confessed him my Lord and Savior, Liberator and Leader, on
then-stronger knees on the hardwood floor of that church building – and did so
because I loved that congregation for how it named and followed Jesus and the
Holy Spirit alive and well and at work in all the world! All I wanted to be was
a local church pastor. All I ever wanted to be was a local church pastor!
I had to believe that for all the persons the one we call “God” has called to
ministry in all faith traditions of all times and places, surely one, just one,
of those persons could be a “John Auer.”
Surely one, just one, of those persons would be a “Jim Reed,” my mentor there.
Surely one could be a Gerry Forshey (a portion of whose ashes we just buried in
the Truckee since he grew up in Reno), who served self-offering inner-city
congregations against all the odds of their own survivals. Surely one could be
a Phyllis Athey, who committed suicide after her district committee on which I
served would not recommend her despite every other qualification to pastor
because of her sexual identity. Surely one could be a Lee Williamson who just
got the Bishop Talbert Award for work against racism and who gets arrested for
social justice about as often as some of us pray. Surely one of God’s calls
could be a spitfire Rev. Terry McCray Hill, or an Imam Abdul Barghouti, or a
Father Chuck Durante, or a Rabbi Myra Soifer! How about a John Emerson? Art
Griffen? George Bennett? Curt Fonken? Let’s hear it for a Rev. Judith Bither!
Julie and I were called by Dr. King’s death – We are unrepentant products of 60s
idealism! – and formed in the Chicago of the reign of the first Mayor Daley –
who famously instructed all his subjects “Don’t make no waves! Don’t back no
losers!” So of course we did. We made waves – even as the disciples face. We
backed losers. Until finally we got enough losers together as to elect Harold
Washington mayor – and to help shape the life’s work of a young organizer named
Obama. Who is God backing but wave-makers and losers? Who end up abandoned on
crosses between revolutionaries? Who take on full-armored giants with nothing
but slingshots? Who find ourselves wracked with all the mixed blessings of Paul?
Each one of us, even our youngest of children, faces these “moments of David”
and “choices of weapons” at some point, in life. We have to choose the
tools and designs, the instruments and devices, the ways and means by which we
will live our lives and practice our faiths. Even our youngest does not
take long to exercise God-given Spirit-powers to get and to keep parental
attention through the night! David is the shepherd boy, youngest of
Jesse’s eight sons. Three of David’s brothers already serve in Saul’s army.
David is already exposed as many children are in today’s world to the horrors of
violence and war. He runs back and forth between home and war with
messages and supplies.
When nobody else is ready, or willing, or able to take on the giant Goliath –
who volunteers but David! His ruggedly outdoor and lonely experience tending
the sheep, defending them from attack, teaches David the help and support he
needs in every emergency comes from God. Learning to trust God so strongly in
any one situation may lead us to trust in all situations. But systems of
violence and war want us to play on their terms. Saul tries to burden David
with Saul’s own huge, heavy, kingly armor. No sooner does David strap on Saul’s
sword over the armor, than he cannot even take a step for all the weight and
awkwardness. “I cannot walk with these,” David complains, “because I am not
used to them!” These are not the weapons, the tools, of my own experience!
And of course we know who the expert is on our experience – right? The woman
who wants to pay for her shopping with a check? And is asked for
identification? She thinks a moment, then reaches in her purse for mirror. She
glances into it and proclaims, “Yep! That’s me all right!” The only story I
ever preach! That we are the experts on our experience, the authorities on our
own lives! As Jeremiah foresees, God will write no longer on stone but on the
heart of every believer – so each of us has the chance to know God for
ourselves. David realizes of Saul’s weapons, this stuff will not permit me to
be who I am! To do what I do the best!
David tells himself, as we have occasion to do, I must get down to the gifts and
graces I myself have been given! I cannot pretend to those I have borrowed from
anyone else, for whatever reason – just because they are bigger and better than
mine! The work of the Spirit of Jesus now leading each one of our lives and our
life together is about revealing alternatives to us! Showing us there is
another way! A way unexpected, perhaps a way unimagined. A third way, at
least, to all the convenient, conventional choices. When it comes to violence
and war, the Spirit and those who practice nonviolent resistance assure us, it
is not just a choice between fighting and fleeing, killing and capitulating.
There is a whole host of more creative, imaginative, effective, and even fun
ways of responding to conflict –even to violent attack! Jesus shows and says
that to us again and again.
The question to all of our lives, whatever we struggle with, is can we tame the
giant without killing? Can we get rid of an enemy by making them our friend?
Not if they’re dead, we can’t. Killing is so convenient, so conventional in our
world. We love to claim guns don’t kill, people do. But guns sure make it
convenient to kill! And conventional – uncreative and unimaginative! Surely we
know by now, almost any of us can kill! Not only is killing so deadly, it is so
dull, so boring! So relentless, so routine – the lead story on every night’s
news!
I’m afraid we have given up on ourselves, and the guns have won. We are in
total denial. We cling to illusions that guns do not do precisely the one and
only thing guns are created to do – the only thing guns ever know how to do.
At least David turns from the sword and the spear to the sling and the stones.
He finds “wadi weapons” in the wading waters. He draws upon who he is and
what he knows for himself how to do – his own experience, his own authority.
Let us like David believe, when we are sure we have run out of choices -- when
systems of violence and war, injustice and oppression, tempt us to play by their
rules with their tools – we are and always will be given by God all we need for
whatever we meet in our lives. May I say that again? God will meet
whatever our needs! God and we together make, as we say, a majority of
opinion! Even when we stand alone! Even when all of the odds stand
against us! As the odds clearly stand against David. So they stand
against each of the prophets. They stand against Jesus. They stand
against Paul and the earliest church. They stand against us – insofar as
we try to stand with those who need God the most.
So much depends upon our “choice of weapons,” the tools, the instruments, -- the
ways and means of our everyday lives – and upon how we help and support our
children and children everywhere in the world – to see that we all have real
choices. But we cannot allow ourselves – we cannot allow those who govern
and act in our names – to go on making all the worst possible decisions about
the present and future well-being of all our children – and expect children to
make any different and better decisions. How do we promote real
alternatives, as Jesus says, to a people so fearful and of such little faith as
we appear to be?
We
can change the world if we start with ourselves. Carter Heyward defies all the
odds to proclaim that this story of David – as well as our stories and story
together – need not be stories of killing but can be stories of taming instead!
Of befriending and thus of disarming the giant. Let any who argue show us,
really show us, any other ways that ever work – without sowing seeds of the very
next cycles of death and destruction. We are called “to participate in taming
giants!” Carter Heyward urges us – “In healing and liberating the world around
and within us!” What, and who, are the giants we need yet to tame on this
Fathers Day? Within us as well as around us? When we see through the eyes of
the new Mathew Johns of the world, giants are everywhere! So let all these
giants say, Amen!
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