First United Methodist Church of Reno, Nevada
Rev. John Auer
July 20, 2003
"2-4-1: Assessing the Damage, Sharing the
Cost"
Do we love this place, or what? Sparks/Reno is wearing us out, and we
have hardly got to Sparks yet! We commend to you the dramatic exchange
of "Letters of Friendship and Exile" between two Chilean
women, now playing as "Amigas" by the Nevada Shakespeare
Company at the Nevada Art Museum.
As to this text about walls that divide us and conquer us, separate
us and set us against one another, my motto for this morning is, No
Walls but Leo! And Betty! And maybe a few of their close relations! Let
us remember great walls we have known. Remember Jim Reeves? Or is it
George Jones? "Hello, Walls! How'd things go for you today?"
The Western Wall of the temple in Jerusalem, left standing after the
sack by the Roman Empire in the year 68 CE. We know it today as the
Wailing Wall, where written prayers are inserted in cracks and crevices
of the stone at the heart of the holy city bearing the hopes of the
world.
The Great Wall of China, whose stones broken down and laid side by
side might reach around the earth! Such walled cities as Diyarbakir,
southeastern Turkey, where Julie and I served in the Peace Corps, and
Quebec, only walled city in North America. Hadrian's Wall to protect
Roman Britain. The Berlin Wall, so miraculously dismantled by nonviolent
witness and action, the church "behind" that wall playing a
leading part. The "Wall of Respect" Black History mural on the
southside of Chicago, and many other such walls of both public and
personal art. "The Walls of the Toreadors" and "The
Tennessee Walls!" Which means we have to include Marcus and Shelby
(Waltz!) now among our favorites "Walls."
Then there is the wall that most sharply focuses for our time and
place the systemic work Ephesians calls for here, the work of
"truth and reconciliation." This work has been taken up and
completed by the official Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South
Africa! It is underway in Central and South America. It is barely begun
in the Balkans and in Central Africa. There is this remarkable wall of
healing, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, designed by an equally
remarkable then 21-year-old college senior and Asian woman named Maya
Lin. This is the wall of hard work yet to be done by our own nation,
too.
Julie and I encountered those 140 slabs of black granite fitted into
such a slash and gash of a wall when we gathered for the 25th
anniversary celebration of the Peace Corps in 1986. We are not veterans
of the war but of the Peace Corps during the war. We know veterans of
all persuasions who have spent their lives since that war trying to tell
the truth about it, the truth about us. Why is it so hard for us, for
our government, to tell the truth? Not only about the past, but again,
and again, in the present? When will we ever learn? Denial is not just a
river in Egypt. Denial is a whole way of life with us! Anyone else
wonder why?
Julie and I met the wall while processing from Lincoln Memorial to
Arlington Cemetery to honor those who died in Peace Corps service. When
will we spend as much time and attention on those who serve in the
making of peace? The wall reveals the names of the just dead in the
reflected faces of the yet living. Little wonder it brings out the best
in us! As we focus on the particular names in whom we find our own
faces, in whom we remember the passingness and the preciousness of our
own lives, we are invited to imagine all 58,220 names at once of those
American veterans killed in Vietnam.
And not only that. We are invited to imagine all the names of those
American veterans who fought but did not die there, and all the names of
the families and friends of both the living and the dead. And not only
that. We are invited to imagine all the names of the Vietnamese, North
and South, who died there, who fought there, with no fewer family, no
fewer friends. And not only that. We are invited to imagine the names of
all American veterans killed in every war. And not only that, but the
names of all veterans of any nation ever killed in any war. And not only
that, but the names of every civilian, every old person, every woman,
every child, killed in Vietnam and in every war of our time. I think
there are forty wars going on now in the world. And not only that. And
not only that. . .
In Jesus, all who were aliens, all who were strangers, even all who
were enemies to one another, and more so, those without hope, those
"without God in the world," - Now we are all in this together!
Now my salvation, my assurance of right relationship with my God, is
connected with that of everyone else! In Jesus we are related to
everyone else. All those outlaws are our in-laws, as we say. And we are
even related to all the parts of our own selves.
All of us who were so "far off," as Ephesians puts it, and
I know how "far off" I can be - Can I get a witness? A little
help from my friends? Anyone here ever been so "far off?" Ever
been so far off, so "out of it," we thought we might never
find any way back? Anyone here still "out there" somewhere?
Floating, drifting, spinning, lost somewhere in your own space? You're
all right! Hang in there! You're coming back! God can find you! For
Jesus Christ is our peace! Our justice! Our jubilee! Our shalom! Our
truth and our reconciliation!
Jesus is what I am calling this morning our "2-4-1." We all
know what a "two-fer" is? Two for the price of one? The
illusion of something for nothing? Jesus picks up the tab. Jesus takes
upon himself our every division and separation. Jesus assesses our every
damage and shares our every cost with us. We are not "out
there" alone any more, no matter how it may feel to us now. Jesus
takes on himself everything that would lock us forever into wherever we
are. Jesus turns every "either/or" thing about us, the ways we
are locked into seeing ourselves, the ways others are locked into seeing
us. And Jesus finds a third way, at least, a way of the Spirit, --
perhaps, as needed, a fourth way, a fifth way, -- as many ways as it
takes for us to get our lives back "together!" As one!
Julie's mother used to say all the time to our daughter Jane, "I
love you to pieces." One day Jane said back to her, "Grandma,
I don't want you to love me to pieces. I want you to love me to one
piece!" To try to live life together again. Right here, right now,
in our closest and most immediate relationships, yes, -- but also to try
to live life together in community, in state, in church, in nation, and
all over this planet Earth! To try to live life together with all
persons! All peoples, all children, all creatures everywhere. We
remember what old President Eisenhower used to say, "One day the
people of the world are going to want peace so much, their governments
are just going to have to get out of their way and let them have
it!" After all, there are two ways to get rid of an enemy, right?
One is to nuke 'em! The other is, what? To make them a friend.
Not to say all differences, all divisions, all conflicts, all
contradictions, all repercussions and all risks suddenly, magically,
disappear. We are not talking some kind of "selfless unity"
here, so much as we are "creative coexistence!" Remember the
prophet Isaiah's vision? When the wolf shall live with the lamb? The
leopard lie down with the goat? And the calf and the lion and the
fatling together? Do they have to stop being the very different
creatures they are? As God makes them to be? The God who must love
differences, God makes so many of them?
No! They just learn to get along. They just learn to get along! What
don't we understand about that? I mean, we just passed a Pentagon budget
of $369 billion! Surely some of that might be used for learning how we
get along! For the other way is not working. Not to "get along by
going along," as we used to say in Chicago. Mayor Daley would
order, "Don't make no waves, don't back no losers." So I
decided to do just the opposite ever since! But to get along by taking
our whole selves along with us. Everything about us! The completely
whole person, whole people, we are!
For we, even we, are "no longer strangers and aliens,"
proclaims Ephesians! But "citizens with the saints!" And also
"members of the household of God." There are so many ways for
us to be households together! Dr. King used to talk about how we all
live in a "world house" now! "A dwelling place for our
God!" "In my Father's house there are many dwelling
places," Jesus promises. One house, so many rooms in it. One table,
so many seats at it. One dance, so many dancers! One baptism, so many
communions! One body, so many parts! One Spirit, so many gifts and
callings! Not that we are interchangeable as persons. Each one is unique
and unrepeatable, thank God! God throws away each of our molds! This is
no cloning God!
But we are "interchangeably human." What happens to one,
can happen to any, can happen to all. So we know it's a matter of
systemic injustice when any bad stuff keeps happening more to some folks
than to others. For we, different as we are, all are parts of one body,
claims Paul. We cannot as a whole get along without what every last part
may contribute! Especially the parts that seem least. When any one part
of us suffers, all suffer. When any one part of us rejoices, all
rejoice. As Tom Joad concludes in my "other Bible," John
Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, "Well, maybe like Casy
says, a fella ain't got a soul of his own, but on'y a piece of a big
one. . . ." Like a quilt? A tossed salad? A "stone soup?"
Each adding their own ingredient? A good old Methodist "pot
luck?!"
There's nobody here but us sinners, writes Mark. Lost sheep. Failures
in the eyes of every beholder but Jesus. Jesus who writes the book on
the appearance of absolute failure. Jesus who goes to his death,
literally, with nothing, with no one, to show for his life. Or should I
say, with no one but us to show for his life?! Good grief! Good luck!
Jesus always comes first to those who are last in the eyes of everyone
else. What is there about this Jesus? What is there about the look in
his eyes? The way his eyes look into ours? That crowds of us rush about
bringing the sick to wherever we hear he is? What, in God's name, do we
see in him? We who beg him that we might just touch the fringe of his
cloak?
I think it comes back to that healing wall, that Vietnam Veterans
Memorial Wall, that place where even the living reach out to the dead,
that place where even the dead give back to the living. Perhaps we do
not really live unless and until, like Jesus, we have seen all the dead,
all the dead, of whatever faith or nation, in our own faces. Until we
have seen, really seen, really confessed, all the death in ourselves.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Page on the internet begins with
these words written by Major Michael Davis O'Donnell, first of January,
1970, from Dak To, Vietnam. He was listed as Killed In Action, February,
1978.
He writes to us, as Jesus might see, as we might see one another and
all others: If you are able, save for them a place inside you and
save one backward glance when you are leaving for the places they can no
longer go. Be not ashamed to say you loved them, though you may or may
not have always. Take what they have taught you with their dying and
keep it with your own. And in that time when all decide and feel safe to
call war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left
behind.
Amen, and amen.
