"Go(o)dwork: See, Judge, Act, Reflect"
Thanks for the Health and School kits! We collected
over 260 pounds of supplies! Thanks for letting kids of Iraq, and the
world, know we are mindful and prayerful of them. Thanks to
Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie for preaching here last Sunday! What a
breath of fresh honest compassionate air.
We have invited a friend from the labor movement this
Sunday to prepare us for the "Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride"
coming through Reno next month. As he comes to speak, would others say
more about our own lives as workers? Co-creators with God this Labor Day
weekend? Feel free in time of offering to bring forth more signs of our
work for communion table. I understand next weekend in Reno is all about
"hot air" competition: Where are the preachers to meet?!
I know you know how much I try to pack into sermons.
You may not know how much I leave out! For instance, I am not
going to talk this morning about Fair-Trade Coffee, though it is true,
not all coffees are equal. Small coffee-growers need our support, and
now there are cocoas and chocolates, too. I hope someone will want to
explore this for us! I am not going to quote a long
interview on the need for our kids to learn labor history, by Jesus-type
troubadour, worker with songs stories, his own and others, Utah
Phillips, only he's not from Nazareth, he's from Nevada City!
Except he reminds us, "We need to respect the wage workers. They
contribute more to my quality of life than I do to theirs. . . . I want
people to go out and ask their garbage persons for an autograph!"
Even though Jesus is dealing with a weighty
theological disputation over dirty hands this morning, I am not
going to sing the still-topical song of Sweet Honey in the Rock, lyrics
based on an article, "The Journey of a Blouse: The Global
Assembly," about the exploitation of labor in several pain-filled
places around the Caribbean, just to produce a blouse or shirt for us to
get 20% off in our local department store. The song begins, "I wear
garments touched by hands from all over the world," and ends,
"Are my hands clean?" Are our hands clean.
To my way of seeing the liturgical and the natural
seasons together as a kind of an "Earth Church Year," today is
a turning point. We end the "summer cycle" of the Holy Spirit
as our "sanctifier." We have been discerning with joy the
gifts of each person, what John Wesley calls our "personal
holiness." This is what we celebrate in holy baptism of each person
to be in the image of God! Now we begin the "fall cycle" of
the Holy Spirit as our "sustainer." I consider
"sustainability" for the world to be the most crucial work of
our times! It is time to distribute with justice the resources of all
peoples, Wesley's "social holiness," what we celebrate in holy
communion with all peoples at the one table of God!
(Remind us sometime to look at the hymnal together:
the number of our hymns devoted to the Holy Spirit! That's who we are!
United Methodists radically claim, both personally and socially,
pastorally and politically, the free and generous life and work, gifts
and resources, of the Holy Spirit! Yet so often we seem to end the
church year with Easter, or at best with Pentecost Day, and to leave the
Holy Spirit to those who may tell only half of her presence and power!)
(Let us remember the prophet Buzz Lightyear: "To
the Trinity, and beyond!" Don't you love how the Burning Man
Festival this year is entitled "Beyond Belief?" With streets
named "Real" and "Faith?" With signs that enjoin us,
"Repent!", and "Go with God or go without God?" And
a "Belief Relief Camp" for those who bring "excess
spiritual, religious, or mental baggage?" Can I get a witness?! Why
do apparent pagans and heathens take faith so much more seriously than
the rest of us? And we note Bishop Spong's title for speaking at Trinity
Episcopal next Saturday: "Christ Beyond Incarnation." What a
time for going "beyond" wherever it is we may be in our life
and faith journeys!)
We are really "front-loading" next Sunday,
so to speak. So we are spreading our "Homecoming" theme
throughout the month, a time for active reflection upon our "gifts
and callings," our lives and our works, sanctified and sustained by
the Holy Spirit of God in Christ, the one who take away all our excuses
why we cannot be, with power, both the person and people of God we are
gifted and called to be!
So next Sunday, as Sunday School reopens, and choir
returns, and we remember 9/11/01, and we commission Annie Mixon to Las
Vegas, and we join in holy communion together, we take special note of
First Corinthians chapter 12 (Feel free to look at it ahead of time!),
the gifts and callings of each part of and the whole body of us! We do
so both in worship and in table conversation, with refreshment, after
worship, as we move toward making commitments of time and talent in and
through the church this next year. "Sharing God's Gifts" forms
will be in our bulletins each of the next three Sundays - Take your
time, but take it!
What a month! What a "home" to come back to!
Remind a friend or family member to come! Invite a neighbor or stranger!
Come on home! Make it our own! In new and differing ways all the time.
All beginning with the "Lack of Talent Show" and pot luck this
Saturday evening. It's not fair that some of us get to flaunt our lack
of talent every Sunday! Julie and I got to the historic first night
football game at U. of N., thanks to Art Kess. After some consideration,
we are not inviting the team for "lack of talent!" We're
giving them one more game. We all have nights like that! So come on!
Take a chance! Let it all out! Celebrate the connection between our
gifts and our talents! Any questions? Comments?
Speaking of Labor Sunday, folksinger Charlie King
gives us this refrain to reflect upon: "Our life is more than our
work, and our work is more than our job!" Hard words to appreciate,
specially if we are without a job and looking for one, or working at
more than one job just to make ends meet. Nonetheless, as our baptisms
might put it, our life is much more than our work! We are a gift, more
than anything else about us! And, as our communions might add, our work
is much more than our job. It is a calling, more than anything we could
be paid for!
Some of our young people spent a week on a mission
project with "Gleanings for the Hungry" in Sultana,
California, near Fresno, salvaging, prepping, drying and packing fruit
to be sent to many nations of hungry people around the world. They got
back late Sunday night, just in time to start school Monday morning,
right? We are so proud and thankful for you! (Let's hear it for them!
And for Vicky Anderson and Michael Stephenson who accompanied them!) I
know it was tempting for you to feel that your life had been reduced to
your work, and your work had been reduced to a job. For which you were
not being paid! Paid even what little so many others are paid for such
work all over the world.
What I want to know is, did you find Jesus in the
peaches? In the apples? In the "pluots?" What's a "pluot?"
Did you find Jesus gritty under your fingernails? And sticky all over
your hands? Did Jesus find his way into the relentless routine of your
job on the line? Or was it your work on the line? Or was it your life on
the line? Did the aching of Jesus invade your biceps? Settle into the
small of your backs? Groan out from the balls of your feet? Did you find
Jesus in the peaches? Which is where and how so many have to find Jesus,
or whomever they name as savior, whatever crops they are working for us,
here and around the world, if they are to find Jesus at all. (Michael
adds, one of the young people found Elvis in the peaches!)
An older woman was asked how her feet were doing
during the Montgomery Bus Boycott for civil rights. She responded,
"My feets is tired. But my soul is rested!" My soul is rested.
I hope you will say you know what she meant. I hope you will say of your
week in the gleaning: We are tired all over! We question whether we
could, or would, or anyone should, do those jobs, that work, that so
many do for so little all over the world today. A typical worker in
Mexico, for instance, earns about 26 pesos, $3.60 a day. That means they
work more than two hours to buy a dozen eggs. They work four hours to
afford a kilogram of beans! Eight hours for a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of
beef! Nearly 12 hours for a box of 30 diapers! We get the picture.
I hope you will say, we ache all over! Every part of
us is tired! But our spirits are strangely moved and renewed. We see
jobs, we see work, we see life in new and emerging ways. We will not
quite be, at least, the same people we were before we went gleaning. And
it may well make a difference as to who and how we want to be in the
ministry and the mission of the church. We may bring new passions, new
questions, and new suggestions. That's what I hope you will say. I trust
you to say what you will. We thank you again. And I want to invite you,
if you have not thought of it already, to look at hymn number 133 and
rewrite it for your report back, if you want, "Gleaning on the
Everlasting Arms!"
Speaking of gritty, sticky, dirty hands! Jesus does so
this morning. In fact, Jesus and his friends are challenged by other
believers for defiling themselves with such dirty hands! They come to
eat without washing them! Who knows whom or what they have touched. For
Jesus is always touching, and being touched by, someone! The end of the
previous chapter in Mark describes Jesus in all the marketplaces, where
all the most germs would be, going among the sick of every description
all laid out for him there, begging for him to touch them, or even to
let them touch him. And he does! Jesus touches and is touched by anyone
who so asks him. Is it his job? Is it his work? Is it his life? Remember
in the movie "Jesus Christ Superstar," how masses in need of
healing reach out and consume him until Jesus just
"disappears" among them?
Talk about risking defilement, contamination. Talk
about risking honor and reputation. Talking about risking work and life
itself. Jesus lives and works with that all the time! Whereas those who
challenge him cannot go near the marketplace without ritually cleansing
themselves. Doesn't the word "defilement" itself speak to the
fear we feel of it? Say it over: "defilement!" Yuck! So
gritty, so sticky, so dirty, so sweaty, so smelly! Applied to all kinds
of things under the "purity codes" of the time. Under the
"purity codes" of our own time as well. If denial is not just
a river in Egypt, defile is not just a drawer in the desk.
Sometimes we seem as a nation, even as a denomination,
to be caught up in vicious cycles of denial and defile. We refuse to
subject ourselves to the rigorous, regular interior/ exterior discipline
of the words of our title this morning: to see, judge, act, reflect,
deeply and carefully. This is the process that grows out of weekly Bible
study in homes through the basic Christian community movement in what we
call the "Third World." We have so much to learn from those
who learn from their own suffering, who do their own "grief
work," their "heart work" all the time.
Otherwise we find ourselves projecting onto others
what we do not confess about ourselves. We are quick to see in others
what we fail to see in ourselves. We deny our own capacity to do evil.
We mix up our "goodwork" and "Godwork." We begin to
divide up the world into "good" and "evil" parts and
peoples. We assume our own goodness, when Jesus says none but God can be
called "good." We cannot see the defilement of our own hearts.
While our lips profess one thing, says Jesus, our hearts will do
another.
Can it be that Jesus is saying to us, the healthy
church, the working church, the living church, that is doing God, not
just hearing; imitating God, not just invoking, can only be risking
defilement? Can only be getting hands dirty? Finding Jesus in the
peaches? "Clean hands" will not cut it with God. Remember how
our moms would always comfort themselves to say, "Clean desks must
be the signs of dull minds?" Didn't our moms used to say that? So
also, clean hands may be the signs of dull hearts. Can it be that God is
just looking for lively hearts? That the rest of our parts will take
care of themselves? The heart work is the hard work. Everything else, if
not easily, even not purely, flows from that.
Everything else we need we can learn. But having the
heart, the passion, the pain, for this life, for this work, even for
this job, is the pure gift and grace of the God who loves us from the
heart. Reaching our hearts, touching our hearts, moving our hearts,
changing our hearts is God's life, God's work, even God's job, if we
will. Ours is but to offer God hearts to work with. To offer God hearts
to work with. Turn with me please in the hymnal to number 401. Let us
join Howard Thurman in lifting this prayer, "For Holiness of
Heart:"
Lord, I want to be more holy in my
heart.
Here is the citadel of all my desiring,
where my hopes are born
and all the deep resolutions of my spirit take wings.
In this center, my fears are nourished,
and all my hates are nurtured.
Here my loves are cherished,
and all the deep hungers of my spirit are honored
without quivering and without shock.
In my heart, above all else,
let love and integrity envelop me
until my love is perfected and the last vestige
of my desiring is no longer in conflict with thy Spirit.
Lord, I want to be more holy in my heart. Amen.
