June 6, 2004
John Auer, Pastor
Scripture text: Psalm 8, Proverbs
8:1-4, 22-31, Romans 5:1-5
"Founders Keepers: Born To Be in Holy
Communion"
I almost said "Seekers Keepers." My question with bumper
stickers claiming to "find" Jesus is, who does the real
finding? Usually it is we who are lost and need to be found, not Jesus.
Moreover, I like to imply, with the Psalm and Proverbs this morning, we,
with the Spirit of Wisdom, also were there in the beginnings. Something
about each one of us has been and will be here forever!
My favorite Ronald Reagan story could have happened to any president
and just occurred to me several sermons ago but I could not work it in.
I do leave some things out. There was a radio broadcast of the president
making the obligatory "Happy Birthday" call to the oldest
person in the country, who happened to be a very southern-sounding woman
from Mississippi. He said he wanted to know how to do it, how to live so
long. She responded with words only the most discerning could, with
luck, understand. Twice more the president asked her to repeat them.
Then he chuckled, said "The same to you," and hung up. What
she had been saying was, "You can’t do it. God’s got to do
it."
I always felt we projected so much of ourselves onto President
Reagan. He came to office at a time when we as a nation so desperately
needed to "feel good about ourselves again," whatever that
takes, and at whatever expense to the truth, to the depth, of the real
challenges of our time. I thought we adopted a lot of pat (no pun
intended) and easy answers about ourselves and our roles and
responsibilities with and to one another and a fast-changing word.
Therefore it seemed to me the president, and those who acted in his
name, could do just about whatever they wanted to do and keep getting
away with it. That was not literally so. Many members of this
administration came under investigation and even indictment. But the
"Teflon," as we called it, hung tough, even to the end.
Maybe that’s not a bad metaphor for the forgiveness of sins. God
bless him.
So, "We can’t do it. God’s got to do it." Yet, for all
of our faults and our fallennesses, -- for all of our exceptionalism,
exclusivism, elitism, and escapism as a church, for which I believe God
may be in the process of disestablishing us, (Anyone else remember the
12 year-old on "The $64,000 Question" spelling
"antidisestablishmentarianism" to a spellbound world?) – we
human beings are, according to these texts, as close to God as any can
be, "little less than God," says the psalmist, "crowned
with glory and honor," "given dominion over the works of God’s
hands," certainly with the potential to lay waste to all other
things and, effectively, "put them under our feet!"
According to our adaptation of Proverbs, in the bold,
loud, public, provocative voice and vision of the Spirit of Wisdom,
crying out "to all that live," we human beings now are able to
understand ourselves as "created at the beginning of the
work!" The miracle of today’s ever-new scientific capacity for
research and insight, exploration and discovery, so particularized in
the mind-blowing, heart-growing life and the work of the Hubble
telescope, is to begin to grasp the life and work of "Gaia,"
of Earth herself. Not only has she, but everything of her, has been
here, literally, "forever!" Every last atom, every last
molecule making up every current expression of every last life-form of
every last kind on earth – including each part of each one of us! --
has been here, as Proverbs would put it, since the depths were brought
forth! Since the springs first abounded with water! Since the mountains
were shaped, the hills brought forth! Before there were first bits of
soil, or even of heavens!
When the heavens were
established, we were there!
When a circle was drawn
on the face of the deep!
The skies above made
firm! The fountains of the deep established!
The sea assigned its
limits! The foundations of the earth marked out!
Then we were beside God,
like master workers!
We were daily God’s
delight, [Remember our baptisms!] rejoicing before God
always! Rejoicing in the inhabited world and delighting in
the human race!
Delighting in the whole human race. Wouldn’t that be a wonder
again! Imagine the gifts of these founding/keeping texts, and of our
communion with God, who is communal, even "Trinitarian" as we
say this day. It takes us a while in life, to move from autonomy,
through subjectivity, to communion, -- and we ought to wonder what lies
beyond "Trinity," too! Imagine the gifts, -- and we who are in
the "image" of God are also in the "image-in-nation"
of God! We are works in progress! God is not done with us yet. –
Imagine the gifts of a "new cosmology" (as Matthew Fox
portrays it) – deriving from 1) ancient scripture, 2) modern
(post-Newtonian, more-Einsteinian) science, 3) woman Wisdom so long
repressed, and 4) the practices of native peoples!
Let us appropriate, let us appreciate, how the universe not only
reveals but also revels in the beauty and glory of God! Source of our
wonder, Source of our awe, Source of our worship and our respect, -- for
all living, all being, human and otherwise! Sometimes we call this
starting, this founding place of wisdom the "fear" of God, and
a little of that goes a long, long way. But it helps us to ask
ourselves, when we say we care for, and struggle for, the
"soul" of our church or our nation, as if there were some
cosmic/eternal dimension of meaning to them, what really is at stake to
us? What difference do we really think it makes what we stand for? What
we believe? How we act upon how we believe! How we "experiment with
the truth," as Gandhi would say? Until we come close, at least, to
getting it right? "We can’t do it. God’s got to do it."
But we can do a whole lot more for God in this respect than we are doing
now.
How do we work out the meaning of what the psalmist here calls our
"dominion" over the works of God’s hands, which the first
creation story in Genesis 1 claims to be our distinctive role and
responsibility as made in the "image" of God? How do we work
out that meaning in such a way that "dominion" does not come
to be "domination?" Usurpation? Exploitation? Rape? Ruin? (It
is worth noting that Genesis 1:26-28 expressly gives
"dominion" both to made and to female, as God creates us in
the beginning, whereas for millennia now we have repressed the
feminine.) When we grasp, as in these texts, God is creation, God is
communion, -- and we have been co-creators, co-communers with God, as
random assortments of atoms and molecules around and about from the very
beginnings, -- then we may grasp as well, we are no different in
"kind" from every other species, -- in fact, we are
"kin" to all species! Just one among so many!
As we are just one among many peoples, many nations, many languages,
many sexualities, many spiritualities, and all the conditions of life!
Yet the conditions of our capacities and our of choices, not only to
create and commune, but also to destroy and dismember, tempt us so to
see ourselves as completely cut off from and unaccountable to the
"others" of every last difference from us. With another new
film about disastrous consequences, not only to us but to all of
creation, -- "The Day After Tomorrow" -- we realize how good
we are, as church and as culture, at imagining "horror" in our
lives. We know, even as the psalm seems to say, that we have
"deserved the worst!" But is not the church, are not all the
peoples of faith, supposed to be even better at imagining
"wonder" in our lives?
This psalm begins by accentuating the greatness of God and
contrasting our relative smallness and insignificance. It is so clearly
an act of grace, of purely gratuitous generosity, that the Creator and
Communer of all is even aware of, much less attentive, to any, much less
to all, of us! That we are made only a "little less than God,"
and that we seem to be part of the gracious work of God’s Spirit, to
go between God and all creatures, to go between "heaven and
earth." Please look in the "Contents" to The Hymnal
sometime, how the first section of hymns is called "The Glory of
the Triune God," the second section "The Grace of Jesus
Christ," and the third section "The Power of the Holy
Spirit." That is a huge section, nearly 200 hymns, because it
contains all the hymns of "grace!" Prevenient! Justifying!
Sanctifying and Perfecting (or Sustaining) Grace!
Sisters and brothers, especially as Wesleyans, United Methodists,
that is who we are gifted and called, created and communed, consecrated
and commissioned, by the Spirit of Wisdom to be – conveyers of
absolute graciousness! The Spirit is our way of living, of moving, of
finding our being, wherever God is in Christ! We dwell so much on
"original sin." What happens to the "original
blessing" of these texts and of our hymnal? Our Words for
Meditation invite us to receive God today as Creator, Saver, and
Nurturer of all the world through the Spirit of Wisdom, the Holy Spirit
and Shade of Red! We are asked to bear living witness to a living God!
Who never is done with us yet! We are gifted and called to see through
that "third eye" that connects the founding with the keeping,
the all-the-way-back with the all-the-way-yet-to-come!
As per these words from Julian of Norwich, "God showed me a
little thing, the size of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my
hand," – and it is this tiny globe! This infinite and
infinitesimal Earth! I invite us to spend a moment passing it to one
another, seeing it through the eyes of God, with whom we are in every
beginning again, and thinking the words, as we pass it, -- one saying to
the other "What can this be?" What can this be? What can this
be? The other responding, "It is everything that is made." It
is everything that is made. It is everything that is made. For, "’It
lasts, and ever shall last, because God loves it. And in this fashion
all things have their being by the grace of God.’ In this little
thing, I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second
is that God loves it. The third is that God [founds and] keeps it. And
what did I see in this? Truly, the Maker, the Lover, [the Founder and]
the Keeper." Born to be in Holy Communion!
Amen.
Rev. John J. Auer
