"Water Gate, State of the Union, and Bringing
the Jubilee Home"
Spirit, the newspaper says, lies wounded on the far side of Mars. In
one report, Spirit is said to have "gone into a kind of defensive
crouch to wait for a long-distance rescue." In another, Spirit is
"behaving in some ways with the willfulness of a rebellious
teenager, ignoring its keepers and carrying our operations in its own
good time." I know, I know, it’s just Spirit the robot explorer,
whose first pictures back from Mars sent such thrills of wonder through
us to think we might find signs of life on another planet. Meantime,
from the perspective of this planet and its well-being, our Spirit may
well deserve its times of defensiveness and rebelliousness. Things are
not going well for us all, spiritually and every other derivative way.
The "State of the Union," not only among the so-called
United States of America, but also between this and other so-called
sovereign states of the world, is both broke, broken, and broker all the
time. I mean, I know how seriously this church takes our debts and our
deficits! Is our government in another world? There is such consuming
contempt, for each other and for the earth, among us on a host of
divisive issues, as grandstanded so well by the president Tuesday night,
and broadsided so well by "Sheep Dip" Thursday and Friday –
Kudos to those of the congregation sharing that witness! There is no
consensus, there is hardly a healthy debate, on such open and bleeding
matters as, so-called preventive war, international law, the United
Nations, and the role of the United States in the world. If I were
Spirit from this planet, I, too, might seek to flee as far as I could.
Then I might find myself torn between my desires for rescue and for
respect.
The Water Gate where, according to Nehemiah, Ezra assembles the
people to hear the Torah, the Law and the Way of the people, here read
in public for the very first time, becomes a suggestive symbol to us of
the agonies of our own time and place. We are stuck by a
"Watergate" of our own, that fateful decade between the
assassination of one president, through the crucible of the war in
Vietnam, to the resignation of another president, thirty years ago this
coming summer. We have yet to recover our health and our wholeness as a
people. We have a lot of "re-membering" yet to do. The works
of Nehemiah the prophet and of Ezra the priest and teacher of Torah are
precisely the works of re-membering, of re-forming, regrouping,
reconstituting a people who have been just as scattered, just as scared,
as Spirit is, as we are.
The people of Israel coming back out of exile in Babylon find
Jerusalem, heart of their homeland, devastated and deserted. Nehemiah
begs leave of absence from his service to King Artaxerxes of Persia to
rebuild this place where his ancestors lie. He shepherds the people
through adversity of many kinds, to persist in repairing and restoring
all the walls and all the twelve gates to the city. (I am proud to say I
kept searching until I found the names of all twelve gates! Extra credit
to any who bring in those names next week.) Now Nehemiah needs for the
people to know and believe that only God could have helped them achieve
such an act of Jubilee, such forgiveness of past, such giftedness of
future, -- through recall, repentance, reparation, restoration. He needs
for them to respond anew to the vision of a nation united and led with
integrity! Nehemiah perceives the people will need brand-new ways of
hearing and seeing their God.
First he enrolls the whole nation by genealogy, making sure that
every last woman, man, child and servant among them, no matter how far
left out they had been, gets included, -- along with each horse, mule,
camel, and donkey! Everyone has a place in the new community. Everyone
has a seat at the table. Finally the people are ready to gather for this
milestone moment in sacred history when they all "gathered together
into the square before the Water Gate" to hear the word of God read
in public. Like Moses, like Isaiah, like Jesus, like Francis, like
Luther, like the Wesleys, like Harriet Tubman, like Gandhi, like Dr.
King, like Dorothy Day, like Oscar Romero, -- like so many in our own
time of biblical revolution by historical revelation, -- as the word of
God comes to pass in the midst of our everyday lives, Ezra here leads
the people in bringing forth Life! -- Faith out of no faith, hope out of
no hope, love out of no love, way out of no way.
We can imagine it much like a camp meeting or a street rally, a peace
demo, in our own time. Ezra stands up on a platform built for the
occasion, and reads, and preaches, from early morning to midday, -- and
we think John Auer and a half is long-winded! -- in the presence of all
whose ears can attend to the scriptures, which never before have been
read directly to the people for their own interpretation! It’s like
the "ecclesial base community" movement throughout the world
today, with its trained laypersons risking their lives to offer God’s
word. Ezra has his disciples, his helpers, his organizers, if we will,
on his right and left hands prepared to go out among the people and work
through with them what they are hearing, what they are seeing, of God
for themselves! The people are filled with praise and thanksgiving,
worship and prayer, and the Holy Ghost!
"For," our text tells us, "all the people wept when
they heard the words of the law!" Can we imagine? How overwhelmed
they must have been with the revelation that God’s revolution is meant
for them! God’s word is at work in their lives! The very same God,
says the psalmist, whose glory is told by the heavens! God who sets the
heavens to be as a tent for the sun! The law of this God is as life
itself! Reviving our souls! Making wise the most simple among us!
Rejoicing our hearts! Enlightening our eyes! Enduring forever! Sweeter
to us than drippings of honeycomb! So that each one of us, -- not just
the priest or the prophet, not just the president, not even just the
preacher – but each and every last one of us, by our own eyes and
ears, our own experience and insight, our own reflection and wisdom,
might hear and see, say and do, "God" for ourselves!
Can we imagine? All the people hear and see, and are sent forth to
speak and act upon, witness and serve God, for themselves and for all
others, -- these words are addressed right to us now! -- "Go your
way! Eat the fat and drink sweet wine! Send portions of them to those
for whom nothing is prepared! For this day is holy to our Lord! Do not
be grieved! For the joy of the Lord is your strength!" The joy of
the Lord is our strength. And it says of us in verse 12: "All the
people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make
great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were
declared to them." Because they had understood the words that were
declared for them!
They had experienced for themselves, as we may experience for
ourselves, available at any time in any place to any person and any
people, that most revolutionary promise of all revelation, according to
Jeremiah 31: I will make a new covenant with you! I will put my law
within you! I will write it on your hearts! I will be your God! You
shall be my people! No longer shall we teach one another, or order each
other to, "Know the Lord!" For all of us shall know God! From
the least of us to the greatest! For God will forgive our iniquity! And
remember our sin no more! And remember our sin no more.
This is the vocation of Jesus, for us and, through us, for all the
world. This is the gift and the calling, the life and the work, the
baptism and the communion, the witness and the service, the ministry and
the mission, the joy and the justice, the law and the gospel of Jesus
for us. This is what begins from the get-go to cost Jesus his own flesh
and blood. Jesus is bringing the Jubilee home, a greater feat even,
believe it or not, than bringing Spirit home from the far side of Mars!
My mother, whom I revere, and I kept up a playful argument through the
years. She says our only hope as a species was to settle in space and to
start over again. I say our only hope was to see the space within us,
around us, between us, among us, and to start filling it in! Jesus
starts over in each of us all the time.
It followed from Ezra that every Jew learned to know God for
themselves. The temple remained in Jerusalem. But to this day, wherever
at least ten members might meet, a synagogue is created. Every Sabbath
there is a service of worship, of re-membering who and whose we the
people are, led by community members. To this day there are no Jewish
"clergy" in any ordained sense but "rabbis," like
Jesus, set apart for study and teaching. So Jesus, returning to his
homeland of Galilee, does not go directly to preaching but, like any
good organizer, goes around meeting the people, learning the lay of the
land, listening and building trust. It is easy for anyone, -- well, any
man, that is -- to take part in the readings and commentaries, so Jesus
goes among synagogues, finally arriving in Nazareth, "where he had
been brought up."
It is one thing for Jesus to take as his text this announcement of
Jubilee from Isaiah, the coming of Spirit upon him, anointing him to
bring good news to the poor, release to the captives and recovery of
sight to those who are deep in prison, to let the oppressed go free, and
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor! The Jubilee year! All
previous bets are off! All debts are remitted, all slaves released, all
access to land and resources restored, all capital redistributed! It is
quite another, an added thing for Jesus, this upstart, then to roll up
the scroll, give it back to the attendant, sit down, as every eye and
ear waits upon him, and begin to preach, "Today this scripture has
been fulfilled in your hearing."
Today this scripture has been fulfilled in our hearing! Today there
are no more excuses! No more "good reasons" for poverty or
captivity, oppression or exploitation, occupation or exclusion, of any
last person, any last people, on earth! The movements of liberation all
over our church and nation and world and even earth today are no less
miracles than the words and the works of Jubilee Jesus! In this very
moment, in Nazareth, right here, and everywhere, Jesus still is bringing
all of history to a freeness, a fullness, a goodness, a richness, of
life, not of death! Jesus still speaks, and still acts, on, and in, and
with, and for, every last person and people at all who are kept from any
necessity for their free and full life as children and as creations,
creatures of God. All-ee, all-ee, all in free!
The "state" of this and of every last nation today, 192 of
them and counting, is desperate to hear a new and a life-giving,
life-changing word about our human identity, human community, human
diversity, human complexity in today’s world. All we are offered by
most of our so-called "heads of state" is more of the same old
cycles of vengeance and violence, weapons and wars. Is that not what we
are missing most in our leaders of every kind? The lack of imagination
to offer us anything different, anything truly new?
The question of this and of every new year, new day, new moment, is
very plain and simple: Is there hope? Is there hope of anything new? Is
there anything new beneath this sun of God so exalted in psalms? Hans
Ucko writes of "The Jubilee as a Challenge" – The key to
hope is breaking boundaries. A hopeful person sees three answers where
others see one. To teach hope, one must imbue children with "the
logic of water," not "the logic of rock." One must step
out of logic to imagination, which flows around barriers until it finds
a way through. Come, to the Water Gate, come. Come, wounded, broken
Spirit, come. Come, Jesus! Come, Jubilee, come! COME!
Amen.
Rev. John Auer
