Words for Meditation

January 11, 2004
John Auer, Pastor

Scripture

        Isaiah 43:1-4, Acts 8:14-17, Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

"What’s in a Name? Whose Name Are We In?"

So what is it with all this extra stuff we are being asked to do in such a new way this morning?

1) On this Sunday of Jesus’ baptism, we acknowledge those who step forth with Jesus today to offer themselves for leadership in the congregation, and, by implication and extension, in the church, the community, and the world!

2) We acknowledge our own baptisms as rich and ripe sources of gifts and callings, identities and vocations, for each and for all of us, wherever we are on our journeys of life into faith and works!

3) We acknowledge by covenant prayer for this year our shared awareness and acceptance that, with Jesus through the Holy Spirit, God alone has the first and last word about our lives and our life together!

In all these ways we step forth anew today on the promise of God to our ancestors, by the presence, the passion, the power of Jesus still "epiphanizing," still alive and well and at work in the world, fanciful, footloose, and free to show up wherever, whenever, in and to and for and with whomever, and however the Spirit may lead. God makes the promise to Isaiah in the chapter before this one, the first of the four "Servant Songs" in which Jesus hears elements of the gifts and callings announced in his baptism, as we do in ours –

"Here is my servant, whom I uphold, / my chosen in whom my soul delights; / I have put my spirit upon you; / you will bring forth justice to the nations." "I am the LORD. . . I have taken you by the hand. . . . I have given you as a covenant to the people, / a light to the nations." We are to be, truly, "de light" of the world! Leadership, of any kind, in any way, by faith, is to "let our little lights shine!" Just the best ways we can. To illuminate whatever the darkness we find ourselves in, not that we take all the darkness away, for it is a part of us, a part of who all of us are, -- but that we live with the darkness itself, because we bring light to it, we make the invisible visible, and do not give in to our fear of the darkness, our need to strike out against it.

Isaiah speaks so directly, so gently, so intimately of the delight, the joy, God takes in each one of us washed anew by water and by the Spirit to offer ourselves, our lives, our faiths, our words, our names, -- all we are and all we have – again in this new year, in this time and space of our lives made new again in the pure and preemptive promise of God! Our baptisms say, God loves us! As our kids might say, "What part of that do we not understand?! God loves us! God longs for us in God’s life and God’s work! Because God loves us, we are be-loved of God! Because God longs for us, we are be-longing to God! We have a time and a place with God, now and forever, -- with this very same One who is Source of us all and all that is! This very One Who Creates, planets, galaxies, universes, -- earth and sky, mountains and seas. This very One Who Redeems, who breaks into history with mighty acts to deliver us, with much parting and passing through waters, out of bondage and exile, violence and war, oppression and occupation, injustice and incarceration.

This very One has a time and a place for you, and for you, and for you and for you and for you, and even for me! Even a place for us all, for all of God’s children in all of God’s times and places. This is what the novelist Morris West says of all the chance and challenge, the ambiguity and incongruity of such covenants as we are, such covenants as we make, in baptism, in communion, in marriage, in holy union, in membership, in leadership, and beyond, --

What we cannot cope with is the untidiness of the universe, the lunatic aspect of a cosmos with no known beginnings, no visible end, and no apparent meaning to all its bustling dynamics. . . . We cannot tolerate its monstrous indifference in the face of all of our fears and agonies. . . . The prophets offer us hope; but only the man-god [the human-divine] can make the paradox tolerable. This is why the coming of Jesus is a healing and a saving event. He is not what we should have created for ourselves. He is truly the sign of peace because he is the sign of contradiction. His career is a brief tragic failure. [Please think Dr. King this week.] He dies in dishonor; but then most strangely, he lives. He is not only yesterday. He is today and tomorrow. He is available to the humblest and to the highest.

Sisters and brothers, living in covenant, living by covenant, is the art of "making the paradox tolerable!" It is the art of living faithfully with multiple covenants, often making conflicting and contradicting demands on our life and our work. That is the journey of faith into life and works today, not so much a journey of "orthodoxy," as if there were one correct and adequate system of belief into which everything and everyone might fit, neatly or not, -- but a journey of "paradoxy," a journey of multiple choices, multiple truths, multiple ways of seeing and hearing, thinking and feeling, speaking and acting on things.

That is why "covenant" is not, cannot be, "contract." "The former things have come to pass," says Isaiah 42. We are not "dissing" or dismissing the past. We are just letting it be the past! "And new things I now declare." I who "created you" now "have redeemed you; / I have called you by name, / you are mine!" I know and love each and all, -- from "Jacob" to "Israel," from the most personal to the most public, the most individual to the most corporate, -- from John the prophet, to Jesus the Christ, -- from "baptism with water" of joy in each separate part, to "baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire" of justice for the whole body, which is, from Epiphany to Pentecost. The Spirit of Judgment to the Spirit of Jubilee!

Covenant is the act of exchanging our promises, giving and receiving our words, giving and receiving our very names. What’s in our names? The names we bring to the waters this morning? The names by whom the Universe knows us, and loves us, and calls us? Everything is in our names! All that we are, all that we have, is our names! We do not live by "contract," by some unbreakable set of rules for all times and places. We live by "covenant," which may become very broken, very damaged, very conflicted, and very confused. But covenant never ends! The promises, words, and names, between us and among us, are infinitely renewable! They are forgiveable, negotiable, com-promise-able, workable.

Remember what a disaster it was just a few short years ago to think there could be a "Contract with America"? That we as a people, with our great mix of cultures, could be locked and fixed into some kind of once-and-for-all stale and static definition of who we are and of what and of how we believe? At its best a nation, any nation, lives and works by covenant with and among all its peoples. That’s the real challenge and opportunity, to bring all the peoples in! We are permeable, if not perfectible. We are vulnerable, open to learning, to changing, to growing, to making new! And now there is a strong move, generated from the same sources, to make some similar sort of "Contract with the United Methodist Church!" Some of us locked and fixed on the inside, some of us on the outside.

All we are asking, and being asked of, this morning, brothers and sisters, is to walk our talk, this journey, this new year, by faith! It is to let the same God who creates us and redeems us, who loves us and knows us each one of us by our names, -- to let that same God, once again, take us by the hand and lead us where we may well fear to go! Our former Bishop, Leontine T. C. Kelly, who likes to say she never finishes a sermon but she does stop preaching once in a while, has ended countless sermons with the words of the hymn that echo Isaiah here, for such times and places as ours on this day – only she would have these words memorized, and really preach them, not just read them! --

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,

is laid for your faith in his excellent word!

What more can he say than to you he hath said,

to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?

 

"Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,

for I am thy God and will still give thee aid;

I’ll strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand

upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.

 

"When through the deep waters I call thee to go,

the rivers of woe shall not thee overflow;

for I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,

and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.

 

"When through fiery trials they pathways shall lie,

my grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;

the flame shall not hurt thee; I only design

thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.

 

"The soul that on Jesus still leans for respose,

I will not, I will not desert to its foes;

That soul though all hell should endeavor to shake,

I’ll never, no, never, no never forsake."

Now let the saints, our hands held in God’s all-loving, all-longing hands, go marching into the waters again! And let the church say, amen!

(As an Act of Offering we joined in "Celebration of Baptism: Going through the Waters," with liturgy adapted from "The Covenant of Peace: A Liberation Prayer Book," coming forward to touch, and be touched by, the waters, while saying or shouting out our full names. The piano, bass, sax, and trombone played "When the Saints Go Marching In!" Words of invitation and blessing were offered for each – "Wash in the waters come down from Heaven for you!" "The Universe loves you ands calls you by name!")

John Auer, Pastor

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