"Untieds Uniting: Living ‘Kingfully’ with
all the Giftedness of Our Lives"
The ritual for "A Service of Christian Marriage" in our
United Methodist Hymnal reminds us each time, in this place of so many
weddings: "With his presence and power / Jesus graced a wedding at
Cana of Galilee, / and in his sacrificial love / gave us the example for
the love of husband and wife." We want to focus this morning of
celebrating the Birthday of Dr. King and Human Relations Day on the
absolute abandon of the abundance of the "good wine" Jesus
offers here to relieve the embarrassment of this host, to respond to the
impatient urgency of his mother, and to keep this party going, dude!
Julie, Val, John Emerson, and I joined many others in Sacramento
yesterday for the "Fifth Anniversary Celebration of the Holy Union
of Jeanne Barnett and Ellie Charlton." ( www.umaffirm.org ) Jeanne was sicker
than anyone but Ellie knew last fall. They were planning this
anniversary party, "not so much for ourselves," they said,
"but for the movement of which we are part." We learned
yesterday Jeanne’s health had suffered for years. The holy union, the
going from private to public with, the blessing of the church upon,
their committed relationship of 20 years, had revived Jeanne as nothing
else could have. She lived on with such committed courage. Then came her
heart attack in October, and, literally, from her death bed Jeanne urged
Ellie, "Go ahead with the party!" Keep this party going! Keep
hope alive.
Yes, I said "the abandon of the abundance!" That’s Jesus.
"The Untied Way."
In the context of the wedding feast, and of this wondrous new naming
of us by Isaiah: No longer "Forsaken" or "Desolate,"
we shall be called "My Delight Is in Her," and
"Married!" For God pure-delights in us! "As the
bridegroom rejoices over the bride!" – I could not help but
relate some of a recent column by Jon Carroll (www.sfgate.com/columnists/carroll/
) in the Chronicle, a call to proverbially "untied"
United Methodists, and others who would live by faith. "Each of us
plays many roles," he says. "Two of those roles are social
citizen trying to work within the community and individual human being
trying to rediscover kindness and compassion and love everyday."
He says the homeless, even the hard-to-reach, would be somewhere if
not here. "They are all still human beings, and we are bound to
them by the mysterious spark of consciousness that makes us such
peculiar beasts." Why not, as good United Methodists, act upon our
intrinsic connectedness? Carroll says we need to become as
"untied" as we are "united!" "The Untied Way
has no officers, headquarters, business places, pie charts, benefit
dances, celebrity endorsers or national poster children." We won’t
get our names on a plaque or receive "letters signed by Kofi Annan!"
We’re just to take some money out of our ATMs, "a tiny bit more
than we can afford," and walk along giving 20s to people who ask
us!
Carroll urges us, as with Jesus’ instructions on almsgiving,
"The right hand is not to know what the left hand is doing!"
We are not to worry too much about where the money goes. The gift lies
in the giving itself. We’re all in this together. "All just
trying to figure it out as we go along," Carroll observes,
"and our fine home or apartment does not place us closer to
enlightenment!" "There are the worthy homeless and the
unworthy homeless," as we like to say. Carroll says, "We may
concentrate on the adjective, or we may concentrate on the noun."
As for him, he’ll take the noun! "Some of our Untied Way clients
may not show gratitude for our gift, while others may show too much
gratitude. Some of them may do something embarrassing like praying
loudly or complaining about malign energy rays. What they’re really
saying is ‘Thank you,’ and what we’re really saying is ‘You’re
welcome!’" You’re welcome. You’re welcome!
You want more wine? I’ll show you more wine, says Jesus! Five
hundred and sixty-eight liters, one hundred and fifty gallons, to be
exact, of the highest quality! "Good wine!" Pure Napa Valley!
What wine do we make around here? And saved for last! When any good
self-respecting party-thrower knows, you always put on your best front
first! Start with the top wine you got! ‘Cause some folks are bound
not to make it far past that first wine, much less to the end of the
party. But with Jesus, and with the God Jesus makes new, we got to go
the distance! In the words of Sweet Honey, we got to "stick around
and see what the end’s going to be!" We got to live with a faith
that endures! As soon as we think it’s over, and God has run out of
wine, out of tricks, then God has got NEWS for us! God always has one
more move. This God is never quite done with us yet.
First, I want to give thanks once again for Sue Roberts and for this
ministry of weddings and marriages -- for Jacquie, and John, and Karla
Bowman, for Cheryl – all making it possible for so many folks, filled
with faith, hope, and love, and committed to work on them, to invest,
and often to re-invest, in a future based upon equal worth and mutual
respect. Weddings are meant for moments, marriages for lifetimes. Out of
the moments, we pray, may arise, and rise again, whole lifetimes of the
promise, the presence, the passion, the power of this Jesus to make
things new, -- from water to wine, from private to public, -- which
really is, from personal to political, too, from individual to
institutional -- from baptism to communion, from purification to
participation (or is that "party-fication" dude?), from givens
to graces, from fears to forgivenesses. And now we face the delightful
dilemma of trying to time our weddings around our "wine walks"
with the Riverfront Merchants every third Saturday! Thank you, Kay
Greene, for your leadership there and all who take part, -- serving
"Methodist wine," of course!
So what to give Dr. King for his seventy-fifth birthday?! 75! Any
prophet should live so long. Remember how young-and-old both he was when
he was shot down? 39 hard-aged, hard-edged years. 36 years ago, I know,
because in the turbulent wake of his death, it arose to me, as it never
had done before, to follow him in some uncertain way, and to begin with
going to seminary! I admit have looked back since, have not quite been
turned into salt, but never with regret. All things staying the same,
Dr. King would have lived and we stayed lost in the backwoods of
northern Michigan. We would have preferred that. But all things do not
stay the same. In fact, no things stay quite the same. God sees to that.
So what to give Dr. King? If we were to give him what he deserves,
what he wanted and needed from us, what he lived for, -- giving up his
own relative affluence to die as a man with two dress suits to his name,
-- giving up his educated, in fact, PhDed, and middle-classed job-secure
comfort for a life full of high-seated hassle and holy harassment, -- J.
Edgar Hoover got one thing right: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King., Jr.,
demonstrably was the most pervasive and subversive threat ever to the
"business as usual" of this nation, here "at home,"
so to speak, or anywhere else in this world! Talk about making all
things new/s.
If we were to give Dr. King what he died for, in the streets of
Memphis, among city garbage-workers, on strike, they said, to be treated
like human beings we would give Dr. King a near-total change of the ways
we offer our own so-called "private lives" and our public life
together as nation and world, -- socially, economically, politically,
not to mention culturally and religiously. I remember a banner in a
community center in Nicaragua. It showed a fist with the thumb of
religious repression holding tightly in place the fingers of all the
other systems and structures of our repressions, -- cultural, economic,
political, and social.
It is so important for us, according to Jesus and Dr. King, to seek
our own healing first, -- to end all religious repressions, all
repressions of and for and by ours and by all religions, and to do joy
and justice, peace and freedom, faith, hope, and love ourselves, before
we expect or demand them of anyone else! We hear again Dr. King’s
lament from the Birmingham Jail, in response to the good intentions and
admonitions of safe and surrounding clergy colleagues, "The
contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain
sound. It is [We are!] so often the arch-supporter of the status quo.
Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power
structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent
and often vocal sanction of things as they are." Sanction of things
as they are. We are no longer the headlights, as Dr. King says, but the
taillights of moral authority and of social responsibility!
Dr. King remains first and foremost a person of nearly-invincible
faith, a child not only of God but also of the church, born into it,
raised up by it, a prophet, and as close to a "second savior,"
in the sense of another so "crucified for our sins," as we
like to say, as we may be privileged to see. With "Presidents
Day" coming up, I like to add, we should talk about Washington,
Lincoln, and King as the national trinity, and beyond! Beyond to all the
women needed to undo our mess! Perhaps beginning with activist/pacifist
and first U.S. Congresswoman, Jeanette Rankin, as scripted and played by
"our own" Jeanmarie Simpson and Cameron Crain, opening in
Fallon, February 7 – Sign up now to go all together! We are all so
many gestures, so many motions, in one long Freedom Movement. Dr. King
would say over and over again, Until all of us can be free, none of us
can be free.
"Average community" or not, I am asking us, as pioneer
parts of the organized religious community of Reno/Sparks, to put
ourselves on the line, specifically in support of our city’s creation
of a safe, central, comprehensive, compassionate shelter with full
services for sisters and brothers of ours, all ages and all conditions,
displaced, disowned, disenfranchised, and, yes, often deeply disturbed
by the ruthless ruptures of greed and violence to the fabric of our
social and economic lives and life together! I invite us to
"rehearse" for coming out to full meetings of City Council by
coming out this Tuesday night at seven to show our support for the mayor
insofar as he stays the course in this challenge. I also invite us, in
memory and in the spirit of Ed Hewitt, whose business is just off Fourth
Street on Sage, to invest and to reinvest ourselves in the downtown,
especially in the small and struggling businesses of the downtown. Let
them know they do not stand alone. Let them know we support this
community which is the source of so much richness of goodness, such
giftedness, for us.
I don’t intend to get carried away with putting copies of columns
and commentaries in the bulletin, though Karl Barth advises us to do our
theology with the Bible in one hand, the newspaper in the other. But
this is a third Sunday, on which we have been lifting up the
"capital campaign" to finance the loan we have taken for
heating and air-conditioning, one of our investments in our solidarity
with the downtown. We see it as a down-payment on our hopes to make our
building fully accessible, as fully available, as fully amenable as we
can make it. We are sharing it more even now, with Nevada Shakespeare
Company (www.nevada-shakespeare.org/),
for instance, and with the Conscious Business and Community Network,
which meets again for breakfast here this Friday, 7 am, around the
invitation, "Join Us to Think Globally, Shop Locally-Owned in the
Truckee Meadows." Other ideas for building-use partners always
welcome!
We have the chance to influence such new, emerging constituencies of
our community! But again, we have to start with ourselves. Please look
over this column entitled "Chump Change" about how we are
challenged to think much more carefully and critically, more "Kingfully,"
if we will, about all the investments of all the gifts and resources of
our lives and our life together. We are talking about these very things
in our study group in the Fellowship Hall at 9 am each Sunday. Are we
not called to an overall "ministry of money?" An overall way
of expressing our faith, our commitments, through our riches of gifts
and resources? I suspect our friend Bob Koehler ( www.commonwonders.com/archives/archives_toc.htm),
whose column title "Common
Wonders" is a good translation of "epiphanies,"
writes for many of us at the end of this column enclosed in our
bulletin: "Money talks, after all, and my small stash is screaming
at me. Shut up, I tell it. I’m thinking!" Come, let us reason,
and let us respond, together! Amen.
John Auer, Pastor
