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May 30, 2004
John Auer, Pastor
Scripture text: Acts
2:1-21, Exodus 3:1-6, Romans 8:14-17
"Seeing Red: Everyone Gifted with Vision and
Voice"
In our Words for Meditation Terry Tempest Williams gives us a new
trinity (Next Sunday is Trinity Sunday.): black, white, and red.
Remember the old riddle? What’s black and white and red all over? The
newspaper! An embarrassed zebra! The Holy Spirit comes to save us from
seeing the world and our place in it in strictly black- and-white,
either-or, right-or-wrong, good-or-evil, with-us-or-against-us terms.
The Holy Spirit brings nuance, subtlety, discernment, choice. She really
complexifies and diversifies our life, introducing us to a whole new
world of "other," – even "Red, brown, yellow, black and
white, all are precious in God’s sight! Jesus loves the little
children of the world." The Holy Spirit gifts and calls us, equips
and empowers us, for ministries of our everyday lives, and for mission,
re-membering Jesus and re-presenting him, to the ends of the earth!
What might it be like for God to redden us? To ripen us? On this Day
of Pentecost? This feast of first harvest? As Christ gathers fruits of
the resurrection? For us to "turn red?" To "see
red?" Even "better red than dead?" This fiftieth day,
this Jubilee Day since Easter? This Stewardship Sunday? When the Spirit
comes, as in the early church, -- not only for the joyful discernment of
our gifts, the ministries of each one of us, -- but also for the just
distribution of our resources, the mission of us all? To see that the
goodness and grace, justice and peace of God are expanded and extended
to every last person and people on earth, even to every last creature on
earth. (On "Now with Bill Moyers" Friday night (www.pbs.org), they showed a short film on
animal liberation, the Spirit-led resistance movement among chickens,
pigs and cows, called not "The Matrix" but "The Meatrix!"
The work of the Holy Spirit, in the literal sense of Revelation, is to
"lift the veil," what Morpheus in "The Matrix" calls
"the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from
the truth.")
Jesus foresees a time we will not even need special places or
procedures for meeting God anymore. All shall worship "in spirit
and in truth." Anywhere! Everywhere! In every language. In every
faith. In every nation, color, gender, culture, condition of life. The
Spirit comes to lead us in all truth, to "show us the red,"
the passion and the desire, beyond black and white: the world as
God-in-Jesus sees it, the world awash in the kinds and the colors of an
ultimate creativity and an infinite variety -- the world of goodness and
grace as God-and-Jesus-in-us intend for us to live it! Worship in the
Spirit, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Shade of Red, breaks all bonds and
breeches all boundaries of rite and of rote. Jesus sends us to be in the
city this day, in the heart of Jerusalem, scene of the crime against
him, and scene of our fears of being identified with him, -- only now it
is New Jerusalem! City of God! Whether it goes by the name of Reno,
Chicago, Los Angeles, New York! Bogota, Lagos, Manila, Bombay!
The two fastest-growing faith traditions today are populist Islam and
Pentecostal Christianity. They are growing primarily in cities of
poverty, in urban slums. We mention often the rapid multiplication of
nations in the world, -- from about 50 when the United Nations began, to
192, and counting, today! Think about this: in 1950, there were 86
cities in the world of over one million people. Today there are 386! And
counting! Rapidly! For the urban population of today’s world is by
itself, three billion people, more than the total world population in
1960! In fact, the closest I ever imagine to the incredible
cross-cultural communication caused by the Holy Spirit is the universal
"instant translation" at the United Nations.
For all of its shambles and shortfalls at any given moment, the UN
remains the last best hope for a world where the gifts of the Spirit are
honored precisely for all of their difference from one another. We tried
at Babel to impose one set of values and virtues on all, by
"freedom and democracy" or any other name. The Spirit’s
response subverted the tower, to "confused our languages"
there, and scattered to the ends of the earth. The Spirit of Pentecost
calls us to re-connect with the ends of the earth, and to do so with
respect and appreciation for every last vision and voice, -- not as if
out of the many we are to force any one way of being, but that out of
the one, many connected ways -- and counting – may flow!
My sisters and brothers at First Street and West, like a Giving Tree
planted by the Truckee, the river that runs through the streets of this,
our city of God, -- that is the "new world" we live in
already, often in deepest denial, which is not just a river in Egypt.
That is the world we prepare for our children, our grandchildren, to
live in: a world among "Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of
Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and
Pamphylia," -- well, we know the whole drill. We’ve got to find
ways of speaking, of hearing, of acting and building relations with
others, so that we can meet each of them in their own language, in their
own faith, in their own culture, in their own way. We have got to start
seeing all "shades of red" again. Terry Tempest Williams
reports that used to be 360! Now we so narrow our vision, so limit our
voice, as to see and to hear ourselves only – even as
"America" looms over against the whole world.
A line from John Osborne’s play "Look Back in Anger"
sparked a whole new movement of everyday working people in the British
theater of the sixties: Ten years after "the last good war"
was fought, Osborne has his hero declare, "There are no more brave
causes left." There are no more brave causes left. I am a World War
II baby. My father certainly was one of the "Greatest
Generation." I am glad they got their memorial on the mall. They
not only won the war, they dropped the bomb, founded the Information
Age, grew the economy, went to the moon, created the one "Super
Power" on earth, -- and left us, I would say, with a world of
trouble and with the bravest cause of all: the cause of making a just
and a lasting peace that includes the healing and well-being of every
last person on earth. There’s no way that comes at the end of a gun,
or of any other weapon.
As of this day we must see ourselves, once again, as sent into all
the world, armed only with the power of Holy Spirit. That was enough to
call Moses out of the "burning bush" in the desert, -- no
political comment intended, -- the desert Terry Tempest Williams says
"is rose is pink is scarlet is magenta is salmon." The desert
teaches us that, like the passion of the early church and the martyrs,
"red endures." We are as God’s "free spirits,"
says Paul, no longer slaves but so free, so adopted, so much a part of
the family, as to call upon God in the very most intimate way, -- Abba!
Papa! Mama! And we are as brothers and sisters, joint heirs, with
Christ. We can do miracles, too! Even greater ones, Jesus says
-- miracles of peace where there is yet to be peace, of justice where
there is no justice yet -- suffering with Christ in identification of
ourselves with others, yet glorified in the gathering cloud of witness,
-- crucified and resurrected with Christ.
No wonder Pentecost is the forgotten one of the three "high
feast" days of the Church: Christmas, Easter, Pentecost. As we
might expect of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost has escaped cultural
captivity and commercialization. We might say that Christmas and Easter
are safer for us, -- the birth of the savior, the new birth of
salvation. We can pretty much handle those in sentimental and in
cerebral terms. But the Spirit is Somebody and Something Else!
Uncontrollable, uncontainable, -- way, way "out of the box!"
Perhaps it’s the birth of the saved and the saving, -- the life and
the work of Christ’s body the Church. We are uncomfortable seeing our
"liberal" selves in such "conservative" terms. We
have allowed being "saved" and "saving" others to be
left to those whose vision and voice for the church may be prudently
privatized, -- individualistic and charitable.
As Bob Broili spoke in adult class last Sunday about water rights
proceeding through those who are furthest upstream, I thought of the
modern parable of a small town downriver where they find a bleeding body
floating in the water. They no sooner pull the person out, treat them
and bandage them, than here comes another body downstream. As soon as
they do the same, here comes another, and another, and another, -- until
the "savers," the rescuers, all are exhausted and out of
supplies, and there’s no more room to put victims! Finally, it dawns
on someone to ask the question, Why don’t we go upstream to see who
and what are causing this carnage! Bishop Dom Helder Camara of Brazil
used to say, "When I only fed the hungry, they called me a saint.
When I asked why so many were hungry, they called me a communist."
He is in the very good company of the early church. The gift of the
saved and saving is shared and sharing alike.
I invite us, as we have begun today in our Corporate Prayer (See
below), to wrestle openly and together with the calls and the challenges
to be as a church "Downtown" and "Progressive" in
the spirit of the Holy Spirit, poured out upon ALL flesh this day! Let
our sons and our daughters prophesy! Our young ones see visions, our old
ones dream dreams! No one is too young or too old, -- too rich or too
poor, -- too red, too brown, too yellow, too black, too white, or too
mixed, -- too male or too female, or mixed, -- too gay or too straight,
or mixed, (The Spirit is a master mixer!) -- too believing or too
unbelieving, -- too liberal or too conservative, -- too this, or too
that, or too anything else, -- to be fully and freely included in this
process! In the meantime I invite us to think about announcing
ourselves, as Artown approaches, -- and we need help with ministries and
mission of hospitality to the world starting here, with our concerts and
drama performances -- perhaps by flying four differently flags above the
doors of our building – the American, United Nations, Earth, and
Rainbow flags.
Please hear, in closing, for this day and for this weekend, these
words from the Cadet Prayer, provided by church and choir member Suzzie
Wein, whose daughter Jacquelynn graduated from West Point yesterday –
Strengthen and increase our admiration for
honest dealing and clean thinking, and suffer not our hatred of
hypocrisy and pretence ever to diminish. Encourage us in our
endeavor to life above the common level of life. Make us to choose
the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be
content with a half truth when the whole can be won. Endow us with
courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, .
. . Guard us against flippancy and irreverence in the sacred
things of life. Grant us new ties of friendship and new
opportunities of service. Kindle our hearts in fellowship with
those of a cheerful countenance, and soften our hearts with
sympathy for those who sorrow and suffer. Amen.
CORPORATE PRAYER TO BE A
"PROGRESSIVE CHURCH"
We pray to be "Progressive"
in the sense of not standing stuck-still.
We pray to be open, active,
outreaching, embracing, accepting, reconciling,
restoring to right relationship,
growing together.
Jesus is always and only for us a
beginning point with God.
God goes by other faces, other names,,
other faiths, other works.
God calls us to be as family with all
others –
to be lovers of diversity with respect
for identity,
to be lovers of complexity with respect
for integrity.
We pray to be "Open,"
expansive and inclusive.
We pray to be "Downtown,"
cosmopolitan and creative.
We consist of believers and agnostics,
skeptical and conventional, hopeful and
despairing,
all colors, all cultures, all classes,
all conditions,
of varying orientations and lifestyles.
Our common desire is to love whom we
call "God"
by loving neighbors we meet on the
life-and-faith journey,
by doing justice, loving kindness,
walking humbly,
no matter what life-in-faith,
move-in-faith may cost us.
adapted from
"Progressive Christian Church" Statement,
adopted by Church
Council, April, 2003,
prayed in worship for
the first time this day!
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